They Were Divided by Miklós Bánffy

short-cut hair and well-trimmed beard, and had an air of authority which suited his position as one of the pillars of the Protestant church.
    Despite the fact that she herself was as expert as any of them, Countess Roza always liked to have these two with her when these important decisions had to be made. Jäger and Szakacs could voice opinions without being asked, but Feri Rigo, the head coachman who was also always present, could only speak up when appealed to. At present he was standing some ten paces away and passing on his employer’s instructions to the other lads who were walking and trotting the young horses.
    The selection took a long time and finally there were just three colts from which the pair had to be chosen. Countess Roza asked for two of them to be walked up until they were side by side facing where she was sitting, as that was how they would appear when in harness as a pair.
    Roza Abady looked at them for a few moments in silence. Then she rose and walked all round them with her two companions close behind. The young horses stood quite still, not moving until she got close to their heads when both stretched out their necks expecting to be given lumps of sugar; but as today was oneof decision and not of cosseting, none was forthcoming. Back went their ears in disappointment. At last she spoke:
    ‘They are very much alike, but I fancy this one is just a trifle shorter. Young Simon, please bring me the measuring stick!’ She still called him ‘Young Simon’ – though as Chief Lad he was addressed as ‘Sir’ by everyone else – just as she had thirty-five years ago when he had been a little stable-boy and she had been almost grown up. Apart from this she had never used the familiar form of address after he had been promoted.
    ‘I have measured him already, my Lady … when he was brought in. He is two centimeters shorter, but he comes from a line that has always developed slowly and I’m sure that in a year or two’s time he will have caught up and then they’ll be just the same.’
    ‘We should still try him beside the Merges filly,’ suggested old Szakacs, waving to the lads to bring up the third choice whose name was ‘Mandula!’. Taking the halter he said, ‘ Komelo ’ – a strange word that for most people held no meaning.
    Many years before Szakacs had gone to England with Countess Roza’s father who had wanted to find a thoroughbred stallion to improve the breed in Transylvania. There he had learned many things including the English way of strapping the horses with only one hand – though putting the whole body’s weight behind it – the use of flannel bandages, how to make a bran mash and what was meant by ‘blistering’. He also learned a few stable commands in English, though they became somewhat tangled when he tried to use them himself. But the stable lads, and the horses, soon understood what was expected of them; and now Mandula stepped smartly forward as if she already knew that Komelo meant ‘Come along!’.
    Again they looked for a long time at the three possible choices and, as in all long-established studs where the breeding followed a set pattern, there was really very little to choose between them, and any one would have been a splendid match with either of the others. Finally Countess Roza turned to the coachman, Feri, and asked what he thought.
    ‘If your Ladyship pleases, I would be happy with any of them; still I rather think that Csujtar’s trot is the longer and that he would therefore be better for carriage-work.’
    Simon Jäger’s eyes shone: ‘Mandula would look well with our other hunters’, he said. And in so speaking of the horses as ‘ours’ he was doing what everyone employed at Denestornya alwayshad. Everything about the great castle and the estate was known, even to the youngest and humblest stable lads, as ‘ours’, in the first person plural, in pluralis majesteticus – the royal ‘we’.
    They would say: this is ‘our’ lucerne,