The house was "replete" with every Hungarian comfort. It was enough to make a Magyar's heart leap with joy, for the first condition of comfort is unquestionably the not being hampered in your movements. Mr. Skinner's room realised this condition to an all but unreasonable extent. No bed on earth could be narrower than the one which occupied one corner of the apartment, and the chest of drawers, which was equally small, was an asylum for any odd things that wanted a place. It was heaped with clothes, baskets, hats, and sticks; while a very small table, and a still smaller chair and sofa, presented no obstacles to the movements of the inmates. The oak table in the middle of the room was indeed an exception. It was very large; but then it served for a variety of purposes. A man might do as he liked in such a room. There was nothing to impede the free use of one's limbs. And the walls were most comfortably browned by the smoke, and covered with the pictures of Magyar heroes, in bright-coloured attilas. Fine men they were, with fabulous moustaches, with their legs, which were bent in with an excess of strength, stuck into yellow Tshismen, with calpacs on their heads, and the Buzogany[18], or a standard, in their hands: fine men, indeed, and most cheerful companions in a winter night. And the flooring of the room, which was covered with clay, and the very cobwebs which hung from the ceiling, seemed to say, "Don't stand upon ceremony! Make yourself at home! Do as you please! We are none the worse for any thing you may do!"
Mr. Skinner was fully alive to the comforts of his home. He leant back in his chair, and his soul was lost in happy dreams, such dreams as belong only to people who have been re-elected. "We're in!" said he at times, with a gentle sneer. "We're in!" he repeated, striking the table with his fist. "They'd better mind what they are about!" And he ground his teeth. He was brimful of happiness; his joy was so great he would fain have thrashed every man, woman, and child in the county to vent it. At other moments he was sad; for such is the nature of man, "that pendulum between a smile and tear:" his house spoke to him of bygone days. This was the table on which, forty-five years ago, immediately after his birth, he had been washed for the first--and, as many people in the county said, for the last--time in his life. His saddest and his brightest moments had been passed at that table, for it was here he had learned to read, and it was here he had been initiated into the mysteries of card-playing. His dearly beloved wife, too, sat by that table when he brought her to his house, and when he got so drunk with joy that he could never recollect how and when he got into bed that night. That table was the scene of many drinking bouts and heavy sentences, of which it still bore the marks in wine and ink. And he thought of the seventy florins and forty-five kreutzers which he had spent on the election, and of his sweet father, who was a justice before him; nor did he forget to think of his dolman, which had been torn by the Cortes, and of his wife having, two years ago, lost two of her front teeth, but, amidst all these conflicting thoughts, his lips smiled. "We are in," said he; "so begone dull care! There are lots of Jews in this district," thought he; "and if my sweet father were not dead, he'd be justice in my place; and, after all, I got that dolman without paying for it, and I'll have another on the same terms; and though my wife has lost two teeth, they are after all but front teeth, and there's not a woman in Hungary can cook such a mess of Tokany[19] as she does; and, taking one thing with another, I am the luckiest dog in three counties." Kenihazy, too, was most happy, especially if it be true that he is most blessed who is least conscious of his own existence. Mr. Kenihazy sat with his elbows on the table, singing his favourite song of--