“I should like to go. Retyezat was the scene of Rudolf’s first visit to Transylvania--he was the guest of Count Samuel Teleky who took him to Boldogfalva, the castle of Baron Kendeffy--it is not far from Zrinyi’s castle--and they went into camp on Lake Zenoga. That was one of the most delightful experiences of Rudolf’s life! He hunted the bear all over those frozen peaks, high above any vegetation except the Alpine roses. He used to thrill me with his descriptions of those terrible rugged mountains, the breathless wait for the bear, sometimes terrified, as often stolidly unsuspecting, and then the wild dance of the Wallach and Roumanian beaters round the camp-fire at night to the music of their flutes. Rudolf and all the others of the party sat huddled under a rock, muffled in furs, smoking the long Hungarian pipe; but the wild men of the mountains were warm enough, for they danced like fiends, and the effect of the wild gyrations almost in the very midst of the leaping flames, the great teeth of the rocks cutting the sky on every side, the gathering storm shrieking into the sweet wild music of the flutes, the infernal cries of the excited creatures--I remember Rudolf swept all the things off my most precious table in his animation the first time he told me the story! Those were his happiest days--his hunting expeditions to Transylvania for bear and other game, and he loved to talk to me about them, for no one else cared to listen--at home, at least. Even when I was a child he often came and spent an hour with me, partly out of pity for my loneliness, partly because I was so much like himself in many ways, and in despair that I could not join in all his sports. He promised me the last time he returned from Transylvania that the next year I should go with him to Görgény--the crown property where he always went after that first visit. The occasion upon which he won his oak as a Transylvanian bear-hunter was almost as exciting in another way. When he had killed his first bear the beaters tied its legs together, and raising it on crossed poles carried it through the forest to the stretchers, followed by all the Roumanians in their strange costumes shouting _Setreasca! Setreasca!_ The guests surrounding Rudolf responded with _Élyens_ almost as wild, and Count Teleky dipped an oak twig in the bear’s blood and presented it to Rudolf, who stuck it in his cap. When he returned to the castle in the evening, all the delighted and shouting people knew by that sign that their prince had taken his position among the great bear-hunters of Transylvania.” Ranata had been speaking rapidly and excitedly. As she finished she sprang to her feet. The blood was in her cheeks, and her eyes were flashing with a curious angry animation.