just as if he were bound hand and foot, and a dozen horses were all tugging at him, dragging him to the wineshop.

[Pg 23]

"I won't go!" said he to himself, sadly but firmly. "It's not the first time I have known what it is to be hungry for twenty-four hours; and he is in a hurry—it's important business."

With that he stepped up to the entrance of the low white house, daring himself, as it were, to go any further, asked for some bread, which he paid for and began to devour at once, drank a good draught of water from the well-bucket, and then ran on as if the Tatars were at his heels, or as if he were afraid to trust himself any longer in such a dangerous neighbourhood.

No royal banquet could have been more delicious than that hunch of dry bread seemed to him, and something in the beggar boy's heart cheered him more than even the best Tokay would have done.

"Miska,[5] you're a man!" he said to himself. "I shall soon be in Visegrád, where I shall feast like a[Pg 24] lord. I don't know how it is, but I declare I feel better satisfied with this bit of bread than if I had eaten a whole yard of sausage."

[Pg 24]

[5] Short for Mihály = Michael.

[5]

But Visegrád was still a long way off—long, that is, when the journey had to be made on foot; for the castle stood on a hill on the Danube, just where the river makes a sudden bend to the south. On the hillside, under the wing of the old fortress, stood a palace built by one of the former kings of Hungary, which is said to have been equal in splendour to Versailles or any other of the most magnificent palaces of Europe; for with its three hundred and fifty rooms it could accommodate two kings, several foreign dukes and marquises, with their respective suites, all at the same time.

The floor of the great hall was paved with valuable mosaics, the ceiling was adorned with Italian frescoes, and the gardens, with their musical fountains, brilliant flower-beds, and marble statues, were declared to be a faithful imitation of the hanging gardens of Babylon!

But Miska's business was with the castle, not the palace; and at last, after a journey which was becoming every hour more and more wearisome, he beheld it rising before him in the distance. It looked, indeed, as if it were but a little way off, so 

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