THE SWORD OF GOD.
For some time past God's marvels had been multiplied over Transylvania.
No longer were they disquieting rumours which popular agitators invented
for the disturbance of the public peace, but extraordinary natural
phenomena whose rapid sequence stirred the heart of even the coldest
sceptic.
One summer morning at dawn, after a clear night, an unusually thick
heavy mist descended upon the earth, which only dispersed in the
afternoon, spread over the whole sky in the shape of an endless black
cloud, and there remained like a heavy motionless curtain. Not a drop of
water fell from it, and at noonday in the houses it was impossible to
see anything without a candle.
Towards evening every bird became silent, the flowers closed their
calices, the leaves of the trees hung limply down. The people walking
about outside began to complain of a stifling cough, and from that time
forth the germs of every disease antagonistic to nature were seen in
every herb, in every fruit; even the water of the streams was corrupted.
The hot blood of man, the earth itself was infected by a kind of
epidemic, so that weeds never seen before sprang up and ruined the
richest crops, and the strongest oaks of the forest withered beneath the
assault of grey blight and funguses, and the good black soil of the
fruitful arable land was covered with a hideous green mould.
For three whole days the sky did not clear. On the evening of the
fourth day the stifling stillness was followed by a frightful hurricane,
which tore off the roofs of the houses, wrenched the stars and crosses
from the steeples of the churches, swept up the dust from the
high-roads, caused such a darkness that it was impossible to see, and
bursting open the willow trees, which had just begun to bloom, drove the
red pollen before it in clouds, so that when the first big rain-drops
began to fall they left behind them blood-red traces on the white walls
of the houses. "It is raining blood from Heaven!" was the terrified cry.
Not long afterwards came the cracking thunderbolts flashing and flaming
as if they would flog the earth with a thousand fiery whips, while one
perpendicular flash of lightning plumped right down into the middle of
the town, shaking the earth with its cracking concussion, so that
everyone believed the hour of judgment was at hand.
Nevertheless the storm had scattered the clouds, and by eventide the sky
had cleared, and lo! before the eyes of the gaping multitude a gigantic
comet stood in the firmament, all the more startling as nobody had been
aware of its proximity because for three days the sky had been blotted
out by clouds.
The nucleus of the comet stood just over the place where the sun had
gone down, and the blood-red light of evening was not sufficient to dim
the brightness of the lurid star; it appeared as if it had just slain
the sun and was now bathing in its blood.
The comet was so long that it seemed to stretch across two-thirds of the
firmament, and the end of it bulged out broadly like a Turkish scimitar.
"The sword of God!" whispered the people with instinctive fear.
For two weeks this phenomenon stood in the sky, rising late one day and
early the next. Sometimes it appeared with the bright sun, and in the
solar brightness it looked like a huge streak of blue enamel in the sky
and spread around it a sort of febrile pallor as if the atmosphere
itself were sick: on bright afternoons the sun could be regarded with
the naked eye.
The people were in fear and terror at this extraordinary phenomenon, and
when the blind masses are in an unconscious panic then a storm is close
at hand, then they are capable of anything to escape from their fear.
In those days the priests of every faith could give strange testimony of
the general consternation which prevailed in Transylvania. The churches
were kept open all day long, and the indefatigable curers of souls spoke
words of consolation to the assembled hosts of the faithful. Magyari,
the Prince's chaplain, preached four sermons every day in the cathedral,
which was so crowded at such times that half the people could not get in
at all but remained standing outside the doors.
One evening the church was so filled with faithful worshippers that the
very steps were covered with them, and all sorts of Klausenberg
burgesses intermingled with travelling Szeklers in a group before the
principal door, and after the hymn was finished they clapped to their
clasped psalm-books and began to talk to each other while the sermon was
going on inside.
"We live in evil times," said an old master-tanner, shaking his big cap.
"We can say a word about that too," interrupted a Szekler, who was up in
town about a law-suit, and who seized the opportunity of saying what he
knew because he had come from far.
"Then you also have seen the sword of God?" inquired a young man.
"Not only have we seen it, my little brother, but we have felt it also.
Not a single evening do we lay down to rest without reciting the prayers
for the dead and dying, and scarce a night passes but what we see the
sky a fiery red colour, either on the right hand or to the left."
"What would that be?"
"Some village or town burning to ashes. They say the whole kingdom is
full of destroying angels; one never knows whose roof will be fired over
his head next."
"God and all good spirits guard us from it."
"We hear all sorts of evil reports," said a gingerbread baker.
"Yesterday I was talking to a Wallachian woman whose husband was faring
on the Jaras-water on a raft taking cheese to Yorda. He was not a day's
journey from his home when the Jaras turned, began to flow upwards, and
took the Wallachian back to his house from which he had started."
A listening clergyman here explained the matter by saying that the
Aranyos, into which the Jaras flows, was greatly flooded just then, and
it was its overflow which filled up the Jaras; in fact it was Divine
Providence which brought the Wallachian back, for if he had been able to
go on farther, the Tartars would certainly have fallen upon him and cut
him to pieces.
"I have experienced everything in my time," said the oldest of the
burgesses, "war, plague, flood and pestilence, but there's only one
thing I am afraid of, and that is earthquake, for a man cannot even go
to church to pray against that."
At that moment the preacher in the church began to speak so loudly that
those standing outside could hear his words, and, growing suddenly
silent, they pressed nearer to the door of the church to hear what he
was saying.
The right rev. Magyari was trouncing the gentlemen present unmercifully:
"God prepares to war against you, for ye also are preparing to war
against Him. You have broken the peace ye swore to observe right and
left, and ye shall have what you want, war without and war within, so
that ye may be constrained to say: 'Enough, enough, O Lord!' and ye
shall not see the end of what you have so foolishly begun."
Magyari already knew that Teleki, at the Diet of Szamosujvar, had
announced the impending war.
Just at this very time two men of the patrician order in sable kalpags
were seen approaching, in whom the Klausenbergers at once recognised
Michael Teleki and Ladislaus Vajda, and so far as they were able they
made room for them to get into the church through the crowd; but the
Szekler did not recognise either of them, and when Ladislaus Vajda very
haughtily shoved him aside with his elbows, he turned upon him and said:
"Softly, softly, sir! This is the house of God, not the house of a great
lord. Here I am just as good a man as you are."
Those standing beside him tried to pull him aside, but it is the
peculiarity of the Szeklers that they grow more furious than ever when
people try to pacify them; and on perceiving that Ladislaus Vajda,
unable to make his way through the throng, began to look about him to
see how he best could get to his seat, the Szekler cried in front of
him:
"Cannot you let these two gentlemen get into the church? don't you see
that the lesson is meant for them?"
Teleki meanwhile had forced his way just over the threshold, and taking
off his kalpag, exposed his bald, defenceless head in the sight of all
the people, with his face turned in the direction indicated by the
boisterous Szekler.
Magyari continued his fulminating discourse from the pulpit.
"Nobody dare speak against you now, for your words are very thunderbolts
and strike down those with whom you are angry--nay, rather, men bow the
knee before you and say, 'Your Excellency! Your Excellency!' but the
judgment of the Lord shall descend upon you, the Lord will slay you, and
then men will point the finger of scorn at you and say: 'That is the
consort of the accursed one who betrayed his country!--these are the
children of that godless man!' And your descendants will blush to bear
the shameful name you have left them, for then the tongue of every man
will wag in his mouth against you, and they will cry after your
posterity: 'It was the father of those fellows who betrayed Transylvania
and plunged us into slime from which we cannot now withdraw our feet'
..."
"Come away, your Excellency!" said Ladislaus Vajda to Teleki, whom the
parson seemed to have seen, for he turned straight towards him as he
spoke.
"What are you thinking of?" Teleki whispered back; "the parson is
speaking the truth, but it doesn't matter."
"Whither would ye go, ye senseless vacillators!" continued Magyari, "who
empowered you to make the men of Transylvania fugitives, their wives
widows, and their children orphans? Verily I say to you, ye shall fare
like the camel who went to Jupiter for horns and got shorn of his ears
instead."
"It may be so," said Teleki to Vajda, "but we shall pursue our course
all the same."
The parson saw that the Minister of State was paying attention to his
discourse, so he wrinkled his forehead, and thus proceeded:
"When King Louis perished on the field of Mohacs, the Turkish Emperor
had the dead body brought before him, and recognising at the same time
the corpse of an evil Hungarian politician lying there, he struck off
its head with his sword, and said: 'If thou hadst not been there, thou
dog! this honest child-king would not be lying dead here.' God grant
that a foreign nation may not so deal with you."
Teleki scratched his head, and whispered:
"It may happen to me likewise, but that makes no difference."
Shortly afterwards another hymn was sung, the two magnates put on their
kalpags and withdrew, and the emerging crowd of people flowed along all
around them, among whom the Szekler, as recently mentioned, followed
hard upon the heels of the two gentlemen with singular persistency,
lauding to the skies before everyone, in a loud voice, the sermon he had
just heard, so as to insult the two gentlemen walking in front of him as
much as possible.
"That was something like a sermon," he cried, "that is just how our
masters ought to have their heads washed--without too much soap. And
quite right too! Why saddle the realm with war at all? Why should
Transylvania put on a mustard plaster because Hungary has a pain in its
stomach? What has all this coming and going of foreigners to do with us?
Why should we poor Transylvanians suffer for the sake of the lean
foreigners among us?"
Ladislaus Vajda could put up with this no longer, and turning round,
shouted at the Szekler:
"Keep your distance, you rascal, speak like a man at any rate; don't
bark here like some mad beast when it sees a better man than itself."
At these words the Szekler thrust his neck forward, stuck his face
beneath the very nose of the gentleman who had spoken to him, looked him
straight in the face with bright eyes that pricked like pins, and said,
twisting his moustaches fiercely:
"Don't you try to fix any of your bastard names on me, sir, for if I go
home for my sword I will pretty soon make you a present of a head, and
that head shall be your own."
Ladislaus Vajda would have made some reply, but Teleki pulled him by the
arm and dragged him away.
"Nothing aggravates your Excellency," said the offended gentleman.
"Let him growl, he'll be all the better soldier if we do have war; never
quarrel with a Szekler, my friend, for he always has a greater respect
for his own head than for anyone else's."
And so the two gentlemen disappeared through the gates of the Prince's
palace.
* * * * *
The Prince himself was present at this sermon, and it produced this much
impression that he enjoined a fast upon his whole household and then
went to bed. In the night, however, he awoke repeatedly, and had so many
tormenting visions that he woke up all his pages, and it was even
necessary at last to send for the Princess herself, and only then did he
become a little calmer when she appeared at his bedside; in fact, he
kept her with him till dawn of day, continually telling her all sorts of
sad and painful things so that the Princess's cries of horror could be
heard through the door.
In the morning, after the Princess had retired to her own apartments,
she immediately summoned to her presence Michael Teleki, who, living at
that time at the Prince's court as if it were his own home, was not very
long in making his appearance, and obeyed the command to be seated with
as much cheerful alacrity as if he had been asked to sit down at a
banquet, though well aware that a bitter cup had been prepared for him
which he must drain to the dregs.
"Sir," said the Princess, "Apafi was very ill last night."
"That was owing to the fast, he isn't used to such practices. Generally,
he has a good supper, and if he departs from his usual course of life he
is bound to sleep badly. Bad dreams plague an empty stomach just as much
as an overburdened one."
"And how about an overburdened conscience, sir? I have spent the whole
night at his bedside, only this instant have I quitted him; he would not
let me leave him, he pressed my hand continually, and he talked, soberly
and wide-awake, of things which I should have thought could only have
been talked about in the delirium of typhus. He said that that night he
had stood before the judgment-seat of God, before a great table--which
was so long that he could not see the end of it--and at this table sat
the accusing witnesses, first of all Denis Banfy, and then Beldi, Dame
Beldi and their daughter, and eldest son, who died in prison; Kepi,
too, was there, and young Kornis, and old John Bethlen, and the rest of
them; all these familiar faces were before him, and as tremblingly he
approached the throne of God they all fixed their eyes upon him and
pointed their fingers at him. Sir, it was a terrible picture."
"Does your Highness fancy that I am an interpreter of dreams?" asked
Teleki maliciously.
"Sir, this is more than a dream--it is a vision, a revelation."
"It may be so; the souls of the gentlemen enumerated are, no doubt, in
Heaven, and it is possible that countless other souls will follow them
thither."
"And will the soul that shed their blood ascend thither too?"
"Will your Highness deign to speak quite plainly--I suppose you mean me?
Of course, I am the cause of all the evils of Transylvania. Till I came
upon the scene, none but lamb-like men inhabited this state, in whose
veins flowed milk and honey instead of blood! King Sigismund, Bethlen,
Bocskai, George Rakoczy, for instance! Under them only some fifty or
sixty thousand men lost their lives in their party feuds and ambitious
struggles! Fine fellows, every one of them of course, everyone calls
them great patriots. But I, whose sword has never aimed at a self-sought
crown, I, who am animated by a great and mighty thought, a sublime idea,
I am a murderer, and responsible not only for those who have fallen in
battle, but also for those who have died quietly in their beds, if they
were not my good friends."
"There was a time, sir, when you used every effort to prevent
Transylvania from going to war."
"That was the very time when your Highness pleaded before the Prince for
war in the name of your exiled Hungarian kinsfolk. Other times, other
men."
"I knew not then that such a desire would lead to the ruin of so many
great and honourable men."
"You feared war, and yet you fanned it. He who resists a snow-storm is
swept away. Not the fate of men alone, but the fate of kingdoms also is
here in question. Apafi may console himself with the reflection that God
regards us both as far too petty instruments to lay upon our souls what
He Himself has decreed in the fullness of time, and what will and must
happen in spite of us, for the weeping and mourning which we listen to
here is also heard in Heaven. The mottoes of our escutcheons go very
well together. Apafi's is '_Fata viam inveniunt_,' mine is '_Gutta cavat
lapidem_.' Let us trust ourselves to our mottoes."
The Princess, with folded arms, gazed out of the window and remained in
a brown study for some time. And now, as though her thoughts were
wandering far away, she suddenly sighed: "Ah! this Beldi family so
unhappily ruined, and how many more must be ruined likewise!"
"Your Highness!" rejoined the Minister, without moving a muscle of his
face, "when, in time of drought, we pray for rain the whole day, does
anybody inquire what will become of the poor travellers who may be
caught in the downpour? Yet it may well happen that some of them may
take a chill and die in consequence."
"I don't grasp the metaphor."
"Well, the whole Principality is now praying for rain--a rain of blood,
I admit--and there is every sign that God will grant it. I do not mean
those signs and wonders in which the common folks believe, but those
signs of the times which rivet the attention of thinking men. Formerly
there was a large party in Transylvania which had engaged to uphold an
indolent peace, and which had so many ties, amongst the leading men both
of the Kaiser and the Sultan, that Denis Banfy could at one time boldly
tell me to my face that that Party was a hand with a hundred fingers,
which could squeeze everything it laid hold of like a sponge. And lo!
the fingers have all dropped off one by one. Denis Banfy has
perished--they say I killed him. Paul Beldi has died in prison--they say
I have poisoned him. God hath called John Bethlen also to Himself. Kapi
has died. The boldest of my enemies, Gabriel Kornis, has also died in
the flower of his youth--naturally they attribute his death to me
likewise. All those, too, who opposed war in the Divan have disappeared
one by one. Kucsuk Pasha has been shot down by a bullet at Lippa.
Kiuprile Pasha has been stifled by his own fat; and the youngest of the
Viziers, Feriz Beg, has gone mad.
"Gone mad!" cried the Princess, covering her face with her hands; "that
noble, worthy youth who loved Transylvania so well?"
"Do you not see the hand of God in all this?" asked the Minister.
"No, sir," said the Princess, rising with a face full of sadness and
approaching the Minister so as to look him straight in the face while
she spoke to him, "it is your hand that I see everywhere. Denis Banfy
perished, but it was you who had him beheaded. Beldi is dead, but it was
you who drove him to despair. It was you, too, who threw his family into
prison, and only let them out when the foul air had poured a deadly
sickness into their blood. And Feriz Beg has gone mad because he loved
Beldi's daughter, and she is dead."
"Very well, your Highness, let it be so," replied the imperturbable
Minister. "To attribute to me the direction of destiny is praise indeed.
Believe, then, that everything which happens in the council chamber of
this realm and in the heart of its members derives from me. I'll be
responsible. And if your Highness believes that that flaming comet,
which they call the Sword of God, is also in my hand--why--be it so! I
will hurl it forth, and strike the earth with it so that all its hinges
shall be out of joint."
At that very moment the palace trembled to its very foundations.
The Princess leaped to her feet, shrieking.
"Ah! what was that?" she asked, as pale as death.
"It was an earthquake, madame," replied Teleki with amazing calmness.
"There is nothing to be afraid of, the palace has very strong vaults;
but if you _are_ afraid, stand just beneath the doorway, that cannot
fall."
On recovering from her first alarm the Princess quickly regained her
presence of mind.
"God preserve us! I must hasten to the Prince. Will not you come too?"
"I'll remain here," replied Teleki coolly. "We are in the hands of God
wherever we may be, and when He calls me to Him I will account to Him
for all that I have done."
The Princess ran along the winding corridor, and, finding her husband,
took him down with her into the garden.
It was terrible to see from the outside how the vast building moved and
twisted beneath the sinuous motion of the earth; every moment one might
fear it would fall to pieces.
The Prince asked where Teleki was; the Princess said she had left him in
her apartments.
"We must go for him this instant!" cried the Prince, but amongst all the
trembling faces around him he could find none to listen to his words,
for a man who fears nothing else is a coward in the presence of an
earthquake.
Meanwhile the Minister was sitting quietly at a writing-table and
writing a letter to Kara Mustafa, who had taken the place of the dead
Kiuprile. He was a great warrior and the Sultan's right hand, who not
long before had been invited by the Cossacks to help them against the
Poles, which he did very thoroughly, first of all ravaging numerous
Polish towns, and then, turning against his confederate Cossacks, he cut
down a few hundred thousands of them and led thirty thousand more into
captivity.
To him Teleki wrote for assistance for the Hungarians.
Every bit of furniture was shaking and tottering around him, the windows
rattled noisily as if shaken by an ague, the very chair on which he sat
rocked to and fro beneath him, and the writing-table bobbed up and down
beneath his hand so that the pen ran away from the paper; but for all
that he finished his letter, and when he came to the end of it he wrote
at the bottom in firm characters:
"Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinae!"
Mustafa puzzled his brains considerably when he came to that part of the
letter containing the verse which had nothing to do with the text, which
the Minister, under the influence of an iron will struggling against
terror, had written there almost involuntarily.
When the menacing peril had passed, and the pages had returned to the
palace, he turned to them reproachfully with the sealed letter in his
hand.
"Where have you been? Not one of you can be found when you are wanted.
Take this letter at once, with an escort of two mounted drabants, to
Varna, for the Grand Vizier."
And then he began to walk up and down the room as if nothing had
happened.