Your most faithful v.B.

Evening.

I have not yet found an opportunity to send this.  Again the lights are shining up from Pesth, lightning appears on the horizon in the direction of the Theiss, and there is starlight above us.  I have been in uniform most of the day, handed my credentials to the young ruler of this country at a solemn audience, and received a very pleasing impression of him—­twenty-year-old vivacity, coupled with studied composure.  He can be very winning, I have seen that; whether he always will, I do not know, and he need not, for that matter.  At any rate, he is for this country exactly what it needs, and more than that for the peace of its neighbors, if God does not give him a peace-loving heart.  After dinner all the court went on an excursion into the mountains, to a romantic spot called the Pretty Shepherdess, who has long been dead, King Matthias Corvinus having loved her many hundred years ago.  Thence the view is over woody hills, like those on the Neckar banks to Ofen, its castle, and the plain.  A popular festival had brought thousands up to it, and the Emperor, who mingled with them, was surrounded with noisy cheers; Czardas danced, waltzed, sang, played, climbed into the trees, and crowded the court-yard.  On a grassy slope was a supper-table of about twenty persons, sitting along one side only, leaving the other free for a view of wood, hill, city, and country, high beeches over us, with Hungarians climbing among the branches; behind us a densely crowded and crowding mass of people near by, and, beyond, alternate horn-music and singing, wild gipsy melodies.  Illumination, moonlight, and evening glow, interspersed with torches through the wood; the whole might have been served, unaltered, as a great scenic effect in a romantic opera.  Beside me sat the whitebearded Archbishop of Gran, primate of Hungary, in a black silk talar, with a red cape; on the other side a very amiable and elegant general of cavalry, Prince Liechtenstein.  You see, the painting was rich in contrasts.  Then we rode home by moonlight, escorted by torches; and while I smoke my evening cigar I am writing to my darling, and leaving the documents until tomorrow. * * * I have listened today to the story of how this castle was stormed by the insurgents three years ago, when the brave General Hentzi and the entire garrison were cut down after a wonderfully heroic defence.  The black spots on my floor are in part burns, and where I am now writing to you the shells then danced about, and the combat finally raged on top of smoking debris.  It was only put in order again a few weeks ago, against the Emperor’s arrival.  Now it is very quiet and cozy up here; I hear only the ticking of a clock and distant rolling of wheels from below.  For the second time from this place I bid you good-night in the distance.  May angels watch over you—­a grenadier with a bear-skin cap does that for me here; I see his bayonet two arm-lengths away from me, projecting six inches above the windowsill, and reflecting my light.  He is standing on the terrace over the Danube, and is, perhaps, thinking of his Nan, too.