like one man, the portals were thrown open, and a loud voice announced a shy little pink Welshman, Mr. Hugh Price Jones, who had innocently looked in for the purpose of a familiar call. My original intention, when I joined my friends at Cannes, had been to remain on the Riviera till April, and then go back to England, but I received one morning a letter which suggested a project of a more adventurous kind, the thought of which stirred me as much as my last year's voyage to Cyprus, though it would not geographically take me to any such remote distance. This came about as follows. Among the country houses of England with which I became familiar soon after leaving Oxford was Eaglehurst, situated on the Solent and immediately facing Cowes. It was then occupied by Count and Countess Edmund Batthyany, subsequently Prince and Princess. The countess, who had seen much of the diplomatic life of Europe, was a shrewd, kindly, and a most agreeable woman, who spoke English like a native. Her husband, who had been educated at Eton, was English in all his tastes and at Cowes he was an illustrious character, on account of the many victories of his racing yacht _Kriemhilda_. From the Cowes Week till the middle of September he kept open house at Eaglehurst, where for ten days or a fortnight I had many times been his guest. All kinds and degrees of ornamental and agreeable people, from archdukes downward, flocked to Eaglehurst from The Island, and made day after day a garden party on its lawns. When the count, on the death of his father, succeeded to the family honors, he gave up his lease of Eaglehurst, and the now Prince and Princess took up their abode at the castle of Koermend in Hungary. The Prince subsequently discovered that Vienna was more to his taste. The Princess, however, preferred Koermend, which nothing would induce her to abandon, and there she invited a number of her English friends to visit her. I was one of the number. Her invitation was often renewed, but for this reason or that I had never been able to accept it. I had, indeed, put the matter quite out of my mind when, during my visit at Cannes, I heard from her once again. "I saw, in some paper," she said, "that you were going to be at Cannes for the winter. Come on to me afterward and I will show you a Hungarian spring." If any country had ever roused in my imagination more interest than Cyprus, that country was Hungary. Of all European countries I gathered that it was the least progressive; that all sorts of impossible things might happen in its enchanted forests; that the rulers were still noble; that the peasants were still contented (a fact which they signalized by kissing their lords' hands), and that nothing was very different from what it had been before the first French Revolution. Here was temptation too strong to resist. I was asked to be a guest at Koermend from April till the end of May. I wrote to say I would come, and when the time arrived I went.