“If it were not for that stupid superstition which forbids one to proclaim his happiness, I should tell you how happy I am, very happy.  Yes, the happiest of men,” he added.

Meanwhile, the little Baroness Dinati, the pretty brunette, who had just found Varhely a trifle melancholy, had turned to Paul Jacquemin, the accredited reporter of her salon.

“That happiness, Jacquemin,” she said, with a proud wave of the hand, “is my work.  Without me, those two charming savages, so well suited to each other, Marsa and Andras Zilah, would never have met.  On what does happiness depend!”

“On an invitation card engraved by Stern,” laughed Jacquemin.  “But you have said too much, Baroness.  You must tell me the whole story.  Think what an article it would make:  The Baroness’s Matchmaking!  The romance!  Quick, the romance!  The romance, or death!”

“You have no idea how near you are to the truth, my dear Jacquemin:  it is indeed a romance; and, what is more, a romantic romance.  A romance which has no resemblance to—­you have invented the word—­those brutalistic stories which you are so fond of.”

“Which I am very fond of, Baroness, I confess, especially when they are just a little—­you know!”

“But this romance of Prince Andras is by no means just a little—­you know!  It is—­how shall I express it?  It is epic, heroic, romantic—­what you will.  I will relate it to you.”

“It will sell fifty thousand copies of our paper,” gayly exclaimed Jacquemin, opening his ears, and taking notes mentally.

CHAPTER III

THE STORY OF THE ZILAHS

Andras Zilah, Transylvanian Count and Prince of the Holy Empire, was one of those heroes who devote their whole lives to one aim, and, when they love, love always.

Born for action, for chivalrous and incessant struggle, he had sacrificed his first youth to battling for his country.  “The Hungarian was created on horseback,” says a proverb, and Andras did not belie the saying.  In ’48, at the age of fifteen, he was in the saddle, charging the Croatian hussars, the redcloaks, the terrible darkskinned Ottochan horsemen, uttering frightful yells, and brandishing their big damascened guns.  It seemed then to young Andras that he was assisting at one of the combats of the Middle Ages, during one of those revolts against the Osmanlis, of which he had heard so much when a child.

In the old castle, with towers painted red in the ancient fashion, where he was born and had grown up, Andras, like all the males of his family and his country, had been imbued with memories of the old wars.  A few miles from his father’s domain rose the Castle of the Isle, which, in the middle of the sixteenth century, Zringi had defended against the Turks, displaying lofty courage and unconquerable audacity, and forcing Soliman the Magnificent to leave thirty thousand soldiers