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Baroness Salomena’s time was chiefly taken up with cares relating to the management of the estate and the supervision of the officials and menials employer upon it, she still found time enough to devote now and then to a good deal of gossip. It was all the same to her if it concerned the officials themselves, or their wives and families, or the clergy, or even the farmers—with whom she had, in fact, nothing whatever to do. She never shut her ears to any news about them, following the principle that what was done in the households and private life of the people, was more instructive as to their character than their public doings. The worthy lady had even her secret agents and spies, who placed themselves readily at her service in these matters.

She was hardly come back from her winter sojourn in Prague—which luxury, by-the-by, she only indulged in generally about once in three years—when everything was faithfully reported to her that had taken place during her absence at the priest’s house in Záluz̓í. This gossip was a good deal enlarged and seasoned with all sorts of fictions; but whatever was added or enlarged was on the whole, put down to the account of Father Cvok, the informers being wise enough not even to breathe the