In the great hall, where we dined all together,--the distinguished guests at one end of the table, the lesser notabilities lower down, and the menials last of all,--there was ever a place reserved for sudden arrivals; and it was rare that the meal went over without some such. A hearty welcome and a cordial greeting were soon over, and the work of festivity went on as before. I was soon given to understand that, not only I might dispose of my time how I pleased, but that every appliance to do so agreeably was at my disposal, and that I might ride or drive or shoot or sledge, just as I fancied. And though I was cautious to show that my personal pretension were of the very humblest, this fact seemed no barrier whatever to my enjoyment of all these courteous civilities. “We 're always glad when any one will ride the _juckers_,” said a Jäger to me; “they are ruined for want of exercise, and if you like three mounts a day, you shall have them.” It was a rare piece of good luck for me that I could both ride and shoot. No two accomplishments could have stood me in such request as these, and I rose immensely in the esteem of those amongst whom I sat at table when they saw that I could sit a back-jumper and shoot a wood-pigeon on the wing. While I thus won such humble suffrages, there was a higher applause that my heart craved and longed for. As the company--some five-and-twenty or thirty persons--who dined at the upper table withdrew after dinner, they passed into the drawing-rooms, and we saw them no more. Of the music and dancing, in which they passed the evening, we knew nothing; and we in our own way had our revels, which certainly amply contented those who had no pretensions to higher company; but this was precisely what I could not, do what I might, divest myself of. Like one of the characters of my old favorite Balzac, I yearned to be once more in the _salon_, and amongst _ces épaules blanches_, where the whole game of life is finer, where the parries are neater, and the thrusts more deadly. An accident gave me what all my ingenuity could not have effected. A groom of the chambers came suddenly, one evening, into the hall where we all sat, to ask if any one there could play the new _csardas_ called the “Stephan.” It was all the rage at Pesth; but no copy of it had yet reached the far East. I had learned this while at Pesth, and had the music with me; and of course, offered my services at once. Scarcely permitted a moment to make some slight change of dress, I found myself in a handsome _salon_ with a numerous company. In my first confusion I could mark little beyond the fact that most of the persons were in the national costume, the ladies wearing the laced bodies, covered with precious stones, and the men in velvet coats, with massive turquoise buttons, the whole effect being something like that of a splendid scene in a theatre.