Page:Pantadeuszorlast00mick.djvu/168

Rh at last, "the servant of God has rightfully won the first reward; but it is not easy to decide who is the next to him, for all seem to me to have equal merits, all to be equal in skill, adroitness, and courage. Fortune, however, has this day distinguished two by the danger in which they were; two were nearest to the bear's claws, Thaddeus and the Count; to them the skin belongs. Thaddeus will yield, I am sure, as the younger, and as the kinsman of our host; hence Your Honour the Count will receive the spolia opima. Let this trophy adorn your hunting chamber, let it be a reminder of to-day's sport, a symbol of fortune in the chase, a spur to future glory."

He concluded gaily, thinking that he had soothed the Count, and did not know how grievously he had stabbed his heart. For at the mention of his hunting chamber the Count involuntarily raised his eyes; and those horns of stags, those branching antlers like a forest of laurels, sown by the hands of the fathers to form crowns for the sons, those pillars adorned with rows of portraits, that coat of arms shining in the vaulting, the old Half-Goat, spoke to him from all sides with voices of the past. He awoke from his musings, and remembered where he was and whose guest; he, the heir of the Horeszkos, was a guest within his own threshold, was feasting with the Soplicas, his immemorial foes! And moreover the jealousy that he felt for Thaddeus incensed the Count all the more powerfully against the Soplicas. So he said with a bitter laugh:—

"My little house is too small; in it there is no worthy place for so magnificent a gift: let the bear rather abide amid these horned trophies until the Judge deign to yield it to me together with the castle."