CHAPTER IX.
THE GEINA MAID-MARKET "Would your ladyship believe,"-- so Todor[24] Ruban began his story of Juon the strong,--"sitting here as you do by the fireside, accustomed from your birth to every elegant luxury, with a particular servant always ready to fly obediently to accomplish each separate command, and with different glasses and porcelain for each several course at meals--would your ladyship believe, I ask, that there are people in this world who know not what it is to have a roof above their heads when they go to sleep, who would not recognize a bed or a dinner service if they saw them, nay, who often are in want of bread--and yet, for all that, are happy?
[Footnote 24: Theodore.] "And yet such people live quite close to us.

We need not think of the savage inhabitants of Oceania,--we can see enough of them and to spare in this very place.

Your ladyship can hear from your balcony the melancholy songs of their pastoral flutes, especially of an evening, when the milch-goats are returning from the deep valleys.
"The herdsman here never sleeps beneath a roof either summer or winter; every spring he counts the goats of his master's herds and the half of every increase belongs to him; nobody enquires how he lives there among his herds in the lofty mountain-passes, how he defends himself against hurricanes and snow-storms, yes, and against the wild beasts of the forest, the bears and wolves--nobody troubles his head about all that.
"Such a goatherd is that same Juon whom your ladyship has learnt to know.

Perhaps we shall hear something more about him some other time, for his life has been very romantic; now, however, I will only tell you of a single episode therein: "There once lived near here in the district of Vlaskutza, a rich _pakular_[25] who had scraped together a lot of gold out of a mining venture at Verespatak, and therefore went by the name of wealthy Misule.
[Footnote 25: Roguish speculator.] "He had an only daughter, Mariora by name,--and has your ladyship any idea of what Roumanian beauties are?
A sculptor could not devise a nobler model.

So beautiful was she that her fame had spread through the Hungarian plain as far as Arad, and whenever great folks from foreign lands came to see Gyenstar and Brivadia they would make a long circuit and come to Vlaskucza in order to rest at the house of old Misule, where the finest prospect of all was a look into the eyes of Mariora.
"This wonderously beautiful maiden loved the poor goatherd Juon, who possessed nothing in the world but his sheepskin pelisse and his alpenstock; him she loved and him alone.