The Decurio drew a pistol from his breast, and approached the cask of gunpowder.

With a fearful howl, they rushed upon him; the shriek of despair was heard for an instant, then the terrible explosion which caused the rocks to tremble, while the flames rose with a momentary flash amidst clouds of dust and smoke, scaring the beasts of the forest, and scattering stones and beams, and hundreds of dismembered limbs, far through the valley, and over the houses of the terrified inhabitants!

When the smoke had dissipated, a heap of ruins stood in the place of Numa’s dwelling.

The sun rose and smiled upon the earth, which was strewed with the last leaves of autumn, but where were those who had assembled at the spring-time of the year?

The evening breezes whispered mournfully through the ruined walls, and strewed the faded leaves upon eleven grassy mounds.

The pen trembles in my hand—­my heart sickens at the recital of such misery.

Would that I could believe it an imagination—­the ghostly horror of a fevered brain!

Would that I could bid my gentle readers check the falling tear or tell them:  “Start not with horror; it is but romance—­the creation of some fearful dream—­let us awake and see it no more!”

FOOTNOTES TO THIRTEEN AT TABLE: 

[1:  There is a race of the Hungarians in the Carpath who, unlike the Hungarians of the plain, have blue eyes and often fair hair.]

[2:  Part of the free corps raised in 1848.]

[3:  Blue and gold are the colors of Transylvania.]

[4:  Transylvania.]

[5:  Klausenburg.]

[6:  The Wallachians were, in the days of Trajan, subdued by the Romans, with whom they became intermixed, and are also called Roumi.]

[7:  Everything on which a double-headed eagle—­the emblem of the Austrian Government—­was painted, engraved or sculptured, the Wallachians called paszura.]

[8:  Olah, Wallachian—­ok, plural.]

[9:  Brasso, or Kyonstadt, a town in the southeast of Transylvania, on the frontier of Wallachia.]

[10:  A district inhabited by a colony of Saxons.]

[11:  Czine mintye!—­A Wallachian term signifying revenge.]

ETIENNE BARSONY

THE DANCING BEAR

Fife and drum were heard from the big market-place.

People went running towards it.  In a village the slightest unusual bustle makes a riot.  Everybody is curious to know the cause of the alarm, and whether the wheels of the world are running out of their orbit.  In the middle of the great dusty market-place some stunted locust trees were hanging their faint, dried foliage, and from far off one could already see that underneath these miserable trees a tall, handsome, young man and a huge, plump dark-brown, growling bear were hugging each other.