Baroness B——­ was very anxious to impress upon me that certainly in Transylvania the ladies of good society do not affect “fast” manners or style.  “Very few amongst us,” she said, “adopt the nasty habit of smoking cigarettes.  I am very sorry that Countess A——­ has attempted to introduce this fashion from Pest.”

Buda-Pest, though the capital, is not the place to find the best Hungarian society.  Many of the old families prefer Pressburg; and Klausenburg is to Transylvania what Edinburgh was to Scotland, socially speaking, before the days of railroads.  In the season good society may be met with at the various baths, but every year the facilities of travel enable people to go farther a-field health-seeking and for pleasure.

CHAPTER XXIX.

A visit at Schloss B------National characteristics--Robber
stories—­Origin of the “poor lads”—­Audacity of the
robbers—­Anecdote of Deak and the housebreaker—­Romantic story of a
robber chief.

The three weeks I remained at Schloss B——­ were amongst the most agreeable days I spent in Transylvania.  There were a great many visitors coming and going, affording me an excellent opportunity of seeing the society of that part of Hungary.  With regard to the younger generation, the Transylvanians are like well-bred people all the world over.  The ladies have something of the frankness of superior Americans—­the sort of Americans that Lord Lytton describes in ’The Parisians’—­and in consequence conversation has more vivacity than with us.

In the elder generation you may detect far more of national peculiarity; in some cases they retain the national dress, and with it the Magyar pride and ostentation, so strongly dashed with Orientalism.  Then again, in the houses of the old nobility, one is struck by many curious incongruities.  For example, Count T——­ has a large retinue of servants—­five cooks are hardly able at times to supply his hospitable board, so numerous are the guests—­yet the walls of his rooms are simply whitewashed, and the furniture is a mixture of costly articles from Vienna and the handiwork of the village carpenter.  A whole array of servants, who are in gorgeous liveries at dinner, may be seen barefooted in the morning.

In talking with some of the elderly members of the family, I heard many curious anecdotes of old Hungarian customs; but “the old order changeth” here as elsewhere, and a monotonous uniformity threatens the social world.  Even as it is, everybody who entertains his friends at dinner is much the same as everybody else, be he in Monmouth or Macedon.  Distinctive characteristics of race are found more easily in the common people, who are less amenable to the change of fashion than their superiors.  Baroness B——­ had a complete repertory of robber stories, some of which are so characteristic that I will repeat them here.