In other parts of Transylvania the country-seats of the Hungarian nobility offer a pleasant diversion; but here there is nothing of the sort, all the land about the place being in the hands of Saxon village communities. Social life at Hermanstadt was therefore reduced to a few military families, who either might or might not happen to suit one another; and whoever has experience with this class will know that the cases of non-suitability are, alas! by far the most frequent. “Small towns are so much nicer—don’t you think so?” I heard a gushing creature remark to a gentleman she was endeavoring to captivate. “One gets to know people so much better than in large towns. Isn’t it true?” “Very true,” he replied, dryly; “one gets to know and to dislike people so much more thoroughly than in a large town.” Of course there were exceptions; but even if you do succeed in finding one or two friends whose society you care to cultivate, the case is not really much better—for whose feelings, what affection could stand the test of meeting their best friend six times a day in every possible combination of weather, locality, and costume?—in church, on the promenade, at the confectioner’s, and in every second shop, till you have long exhausted your whole _répertoire_ of smiles, nods, and ejaculatory salutations. What galvanized attempts were made at gayety only served to bring out the social barrenness into stronger relief; for how was it possible to get up interest in a ball when you knew exactly beforehand what every woman would wear, what each man would say, and which of them would dance together? None of the military families then stationed at Hermanstadt happening to have grown-up daughters, the absence of girls from most social reunions gave them much of the effect of a third-class provincial theatre, where the part of _soubrette_ is performed by a respectable matron of fifty, and where Juliets and Ophelias are apt to be _passée_ and wrinkled. We hear so much about the corruption of large towns; but for a good, steady, infallible underminer of morals, commend me to the life of a dull little country town. People here began to flirt out of very _ennui_ and desolation of spirit; beardless boys at a loss to dispose of their soft green hearts, desperately offered them to women twice their age; couples who had lived happily together in the whirl of a dissipated capital now drifted asunder under the deadening influence of this idyllic _tête-à-tête_, each seeking distraction in another direction—the result of all this being an amount of middle-aged flirtation exceedingly nauseous to behold. Each evening-party was thus broken up into duets of these elderly lovers, while by daytime every man walked with his neighbor’s wife beneath the bare elm-trees which shaded the only dry walk near the town.