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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:-