Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: Dr. Jókai Mór]
TALES FROM JÓKAI
TRANSLATED FROM THE HUNGARIAN BY R. NISBET BAIN
_WITH COMPLETE BIOGRAPHY AND PHOTOGRAVURE PORTRAIT OF MAURUS JÓKAI_
[Illustration: SANS PEUR ET SANS REPROCHE]
THIRD EDITION.
LONDON
JARROLD & SONS, 10 & 11, WARWICK LANE, E.C.
[_All Rights Reserved_]
_Dr. Maurus Jókai's Novels_
_The Green Book_
_Black Diamonds_
_Pretty Michal_
_The Lion of Janina_
_A Hungarian Nabob_
_Dr. Dumany's Wife_
_The Poor Plutocrats_
_The Nameless Castle_
_Debts of Honor_
_The Day of Wrath_
_Eyes Like the Sea_
_Halil the Pedlar (The White Rose)_
_'Midst the Wild Carpathians_
_The Slaves of the Padishah_
JARROLD & SONS'
NEW AND RECENT FICTION.
=For Love and Ransom.=
By ESME STUART. Author of "Harum Scarum," &c. Illustrated by HAROLD
PIFFARD. 3_s._ 6_d._
=A Romance of Tennyson-Land.=
=Over Stony Ways.=
By EMILY M. BRYANT. With Notes by T. F. LOCKYER, B.A. Also Six Full-page
Photographs of Somersby and other Bits of Tennyson-Land. 6_s._
='Neath the Hoof of the Tartar; or, The Scourge of God.=
By BARON NICOLAS JOSIKA--the Sir Walter Scott of Hungary. Translated by
SELINA GAYE. With Photogravure Portrait of Author, and Preface by R.
NISBET BAIN. 6_s._
=Half in Jest.=
By W. CLINTON ELLIS, Author of "Our Family Portraits." 6_s._
=More Tales from Tolstoi.=
Translated from the Russian by R. NISBET BAIN. With Biography brought up
to date, and Photogravure Portrait of COUNT LEO TOLSTOI. 6_s._
=Tales from Tolstoi.= =(Fourth Edition.)=
Translated from the Russian by R. NISBET BAIN. With Portrait and
Biography of COUNT LEO TOLSTOI. 6_s._
=Tales from Gorky.= =(Sixth Edition.)=
Translated from the Russian of MAXIM GORKY by R. NISBET BAIN. With
Photogravure Portrait and Biography of Author. 6_s._
London
Jarrold & Sons
10 & 11, Warwick Lane, E.C.
PREFACE
Besides his romances, Jókai has, from time to time, published volumes of
shorter stories which, in the opinion of many good Magyar critics,
contain some of his most notable work. The present selection will enable
English readers to judge of the merits of these stories for the first
time. It does not profess to be the best selection which might be made.
Many excellent tales could not be included within its narrow limits;
others again, equally good, suit Hungarian rather than British taste.
But, anyhow, it claims to be fairly representative, and to give a taste
of the many widely differing qualities of the most Protean of romancers.
Numbers I. and IX., for instance, are models of what historical tales
should be, and could only have been written by an author gifted with the
historical imagination; Numbers II. and V. are light comic sketches;
Number VIII. is a ghost story which Dickens might have written; Numbers
III. and IV. are narratives of a grimmer order, with touches of horror
not unworthy of the author of "Pretty Michal;" Number VI. is a faithful
and picturesque narrative of social life in old Poland--evidently
studied with care; while in Number VII. Jókai gives full rein to his
wondrous imagination, and his Pegasus actually carries the reader right
away to the capital of the lost island of Atlantis!
Finally, a bibliographical note. The earliest in date of these stories
is Number VII., which was originally published, in 1856, under the title
of "Oceánia." Next in chronological sequence come Numbers I.-IV., which
are to be found in the collection "Jókai Mór Dekameronja," published in
1858. Number VIII. first appeared in the collection "A Magyar világból,"
1879; Number V. is taken from "Humoristicus papirszeletek," 1880; Number
IX. from "Kis Dekameron," 1890; and Number VI. is the first story in the
volume entitled, "Kétszer Kettö-negy," 1893.
R. NISBET BAIN.
_May, 1904._
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
BIOGRAPHY OF JÓKAI ix
I. THE CELESTIAL SLINGERS (1858) 1
II. THE COMPULSORY DIVERSION (1858) 19
III. THE SHERIFF OF CASCHAU (1858) 35
IV. THE JUSTICE OF SOLIMAN (1858) 55
V. LOVE AND THE LITTLE DOG (1880) 71
VI. THE RED STAROSTA (1893) 74
VII. THE CITY OF THE BEAST (1856) 141
VIII. THE HOSTILE SKULLS (1879) 227
IX. THE BAD OLD TIMES (1890) 244
BIOGRAPHY OF JÓKAI
JÓKAI MÓR
At the general meeting of the Hungarian Academy on October 17, 1843, the
secretary reported that the 100-florin prize for the best drama of the
year had been awarded to Károly Obernik's _Föur és pór_ (Squire and
Boor), but that another drama, entitled _Zsido fiú_ (The Jew Boy), had
been honourably mentioned, and, indeed, in the opinion of one of the
judges, Joseph Bajza, was scarcely inferior to the prize-play itself.
The author of the latter piece was a youth of eighteen, Maurus Jókai, a
law student at Kecskemet, whose literary essays had already begun to
attract some notice in the local papers. That name is now one of the
most illustrious in Hungary, and one of the best known in Europe.
Maurus Jókai was born at Rév-Komárom on February 18, 1825. His father,
Joseph, a scion of the Ásva branch of the old Calvinist Jókay family,
was a lawyer by profession, but a lawyer who had seen something of the
world, and loved art and letters. His mother came of the noble Pulays.
She was venerated by her son, and is the prototype of the downright,
masterful housewives, with warm hearts, capable heads, and truant sons,
who so frequently figure in his pages. Maurus was their third and
youngest child and the pet of the whole family. He seems to have been a
super-sensitive, very affectionate lad, always fonder of books than of
games, but liking best of all to listen to the innumerable tales his
father had to tell of the Napoleonic wars, in which he himself had borne
a humble part, or of the still more marvellous exploits and legends of
the old Magyar heroes. It was doubtless from his father that Maurus
inherited much of his literary and artistic talents.
At a very early age little Maurus was remarkable for an extraordinarily
vivid imagination, but this quality, which, at a later day, was to bring
him both fame and fortune, made his childhood wretched. Naturally timid,
his nervous fancy was perpetually tormenting him. He had a morbid fear
of being buried alive; old, long-bearded Jews and stray dogs inspired
him with dread; his first visit to a day-school, at the age of four, was
a terrifying adventure, though his father went with him. Even now,
however, the child's precocity was prodigious. To him study was no toil,
but a passion. His masters could not teach him quickly enough.
In his twelfth year occurred the first calamity of his life. He was
summoned from his studies to the death-bed of his beloved father, a
catastrophe which he took so much to heart that he fell seriously ill,
and for a time his own life was despaired of. He owed his recovery
entirely to "my good and blessed sister Esther," as he ever afterwards
called her, who nursed him through his illness with a rare and skilful
devotion. He recovered but slowly, and for the next five years was
haunted by a black melancholy which he endeavoured to combat by the most
intense application to study. At the Comorn Gymnasium, whither he was
first sent, he had the good fortune to have for his tutor Francis Vály,
subsequently his brother-in-law, a man of rigid puritan principles,
profound learning, and many-sided accomplishments, in every way an
excellent teacher, who instructed him in French, English, and Italian,
and prepared him for college. Vály's influence was decidedly bracing,
and his pupil rewarded his conscientious care with a lifelong gratitude.
It was Vály, too, who first taught Jókai the useful virtue of early
rising. Summer and winter he was obliged to be in his tutor's study at
five o'clock every morning. The habit so acquired was never abandoned,
and is the simplest explanation of Jókai's extraordinary productivity.
By far the greater part of his three hundred volumes has been written
before breakfast.
From the Gymnasium of Comorn Jókai proceeded, in 1841, to the Calvinist
college at Pápá. It was here that he fell in with a number of talented
young men of his own age, including that brilliant meteoric genius
Alexander Petöfi, who was presently to reveal himself as one of the
greatest lyric poets of the century. The young men founded a mutual
improvement society, whose members met regularly to criticise each
other's compositions, and Jókai was also one of the principal
contributors to the college magazine. Yet curiously enough he displayed
at this time so much skill as a painter, sculptor, and carver in ivory
that many seriously thought he would owe the future fame which every
one already predicted for him rather to his brush and chisel than to his
pen.
In 1843, his mother sent him to Kecskemet to study jurisprudence, and in
the fine, bracing air of the Alföld, or great Hungarian plain, amidst
miles of orchards and vineyards, the delicate young student recovered
something like normal health. It was here, too, that he was first
brought into contact with the true Magyar folk-life and folk-humour, and
as he himself expressed it, "became a man and a Hungarian writer."
Forty-nine years later he was to record his impressions of the place in
the exquisite tale "A sarga rózsa" (The Yellow Rose), certainly one of
the finest of his later works. It was at Kecskemet, too, as already
mentioned, that he now wrote his first play, _The Jew Boy_. At the same
time he won a considerable local reputation as a portrait-painter.
Yielding to the wishes of his friends, Jókai now resolved to follow his
father's profession, and for three years continued to study the law with
his usual assiduity at Comorn and Pest. In 1844 he obtained his
articles, and won his first action. It had needed no small heroism in an
ambitious youth of nineteen to submit to the drudgery of the law after
such a brilliant literary _début_ as the honourable mention of his first
play by the Hungarian Academy in a prize competition (though his
admirers certainly never will begrudge the time thus spent in a lawyer's
office, where he picked up some of his best comical characters, mainly
of the Swiveller type); but, yielding now to natural bias, Jókai made up
his mind to go to the capital, and try his luck at literature.
Accordingly, in 1845, the youth (he was barely twenty), undismayed by
many previous terrifying examples of misery and ruin, cited _in
terrorem_ by his apprehensive kinsmen, flitted to Pest with a manuscript
romance in his pocket. His friend Petöfi, who had settled there before
him, and was becoming famous, received him with open arms, and
introduced him to the young army of _literati_ whom he had gathered
round him at the Café Pillwax, as "a true Frenchman." In those days such
a description was the highest conceivable praise. The face of every
liberty-loving nation was then turned towards France, and thence the
dawn of a new era was confidently anticipated. The young Magyars read
nothing but French books. Lamartine's "History of the Girondists" and
Tocquevelle's "Democracy" were their Bibles. Petöfi worshipped Beranger,
whom he was speedily to excel, while Jókai had found his ideal in Victor
Hugo. "This school might easily have become dangerous to us," says
Jókai, "had not its influence, fortunately, coincided with the opening
up of a new and hitherto unexplored field--the popular romance. Hitherto
it had been the endeavour of Magyar writers to write in a style distinct
from the language of ordinary life. Our group, on the other hand,
started with the idea that it was just the very expressions,
constructions, and modes of thought employed in everyday life that
Hungarian writers ought to take as the fundamental principle of their
writing, nay, that they should even develop ideally beautiful poetry
itself from the life of the common people. . . . My own ambition," he
adds, "was to explore those regions where the hoof of Pegasus had
hitherto left no trace." And in this he certainly succeeded when he
wrote his first considerable romance "Hétköznapok."
The novel had been successfully cultivated in Hungary long before Jókai
appeared upon the scene. As early as 1794, Joseph Kármán had written
"Fanni hagyományai" (Fanny's Legacies), obviously suggested by "Pamela,"
and still one of the best purely analytical romances in the language. A
generation later, two noblemen, Baron Joseph Eötvös and Baron Michael
Jósika, Jókai's elder contemporaries, respectively founded the didactic
novel with a purpose and the historical romance. Eötvös, one of the most
liberal and enlightened spirits of his age, fought, almost
single-handed, against the abuses of feudalism in his great "A falu
jegyzöje" (The Village Notary), while Jósika, an intelligent disciple of
Walter Scott, enriched the national literature with a whole series of
original historical romances which gave to Hungarian prose a new
elevation and a distinction. But "Hétköznapok" was something quite
new--so much so, indeed, that Jókai himself was doubtful about it, and
determined that it should stand or fall by the verdict of the
academician Ignatius Nagy, one of the most productive and ingenious
writers of his day, whose influence was then at its height, and who was
regarded as an oracle by literary "young Hungary." Jókai, who had never
seen the great man before, approached him with considerable trepidation,
which was not diminished by the very peculiar appearance of this
Aristarchus. "He had," Jókai tells us, "a most embarrassing face covered
with dark-red spots right up to his astonishingly lofty forehead, whose
shiny baldness was half cut in two, as it were, by a bright black
peruke. He had also an inconceivably big red nose, at which, however,
you had no time to be amazed, so instantly were you spell-bound by a
couple of squinting eyes--one of which glared as fixedly at you as if it
was made wholly of stone. His voice, on the other hand, was as the voice
of a little child. And within this repulsive frame dwelt the noblest of
souls, in this crippled body the most energetic of characters. From no
other strange face did I ever get a kinder glance than I got from those
stiff, fishy eyes, and that rich voice announced to me my first great
piece of good luck. Upon his recommendation, the publisher Hartleben
agreed to publish my first romance, and gave me 360 silver florins for
it--in those days an immense fortune to me. I had no further need now to
go scribbling all day long in a lawyer's office at six florins a month."
"Hétköznapok" was published, in two volumes, in 1846. The book caused a
profound sensation. Its very extravagance suited the taste of an age
steeped in Eugene Sueism, and Petöfi, in introducing Jókai to Professor
Roye as "a writer who writes French romances in Magyar," hit off both
the book and its author to a nicety. It was just the brilliant,
exuberant, fanciful sort of thing that a clever youth with a boundless
imagination, and no knowledge whatever of the world, would be likely to
produce. Still, even the writers who pointed out its crudities and
morbidities, praised its striking originality and charm of style, and
though it gave but a faint indication of the real genius of the author
it brought him into notice, and editors began to look kindly upon him.
Thus Frankenburg, the editor of the literary review _Életképek_, who
had just parted with his dramatic critic for being a little too
unmerciful to the artistes, was induced to take on Jókai in his place.
By way of honorarium, he offered the young aspirant a free seat at the
theatre and ten florins a month. But Jókai's year of office came to an
end the very first week. To make up for his predecessor's want of
gallantry, and obeying the dictates of his youthful enthusiasm, he
lauded every lady _artiste_ to the skies. "I can honestly say," Jókai
tells us, with evident enjoyment of the laugh against himself, "that I
meant every word of it. It was then that I saw a ballet for the first
time in my life, and it was my solemn conviction that I was bound by a
debt of gratitude to say a good word for the excellent damsel who
exhibited her natural charms to the public eye with such magnanimous
frankness. And a pretty lecture Frankenburg read me for it, too.
'Delightful Sylphid, indeed!--a clumsy stork, I should say!' Still,
_that_ might have passed. But it was my magnifying of Lilla Szilágyi,
who took the part of Smike in _The Beggars of London_, which did the
business for me. I called her 'a lovely sapling!' and promised her a
brilliant future in her dramatic career. 'Leave her alone--she has no
reputation at all,' said the editor. 'Then she'll get one!' said I. 'But
you'll never get to be a critic,' said he. And so, for Lilla Szilágyi's
sake, I laid down my _rôle_ of critic; and yet I was right, after all,
for she really _did_ become a great artiste. I felt this snub very much
at the time, but now I bless my fate that things fell out as they did.
Fancy if _now_ my sole title to fame rested upon my reputation as a
dramatic critic!--terrible thought!"
A few days afterwards a new career suddenly opened out before Jókai.
Paul Királyi, the editor of the _Jelenkor_, invited Jókai to join his
paper as a correspondent at a salary of thirty-five florins a month. Of
course he jumped at it; a newspaper contributor in Hungary was then a
personage of some importance. About the same time he passed his first
legal examination, and became a certificated lawyer. His diploma, if not
_præclarus_, was, at any rate, _laudabilis_. The oral _rigorosum_ he
passed through brilliantly, but, oddly enough, his _Hungarian style_ was
not considered satisfactory. The publication of his diploma was a
sufficiently dignified excuse for a visit to his native place. He was
well received in the bosom of his family; the whole clan Jókai came
together for dinner at his mother's, and for supper at the house of his
brother-in-law, Francis Vály. The two Calvinist ministers of the place
were also invited, and one of them toasted him as "the ward of two
guardians, and guardian of Two Wards," the first allusion being to their
spiritual guardianship, and the second to his new drama, _The Two
Wards_. "It was the first toast that ever made me blush," says Jókai.
The next day was fixed for the meeting of the County Board, and at the
end of the proceedings his diploma was promulgated. On the same day his
mother gave him his father's silver-mounted sword and the cornelian
signet-ring with the old family crest upon it, which the elder Jókai had
been wont to wear. "Democrat as I am," says Jókai, "I frankly confess
that to me there was a soul-steeling thought in the reflection that with
this sword my worthy ancestors, much better men than I, had defended
their nation and constitution of yore, and that this signet-ring had
put the seal upon their covenanted rights for all time."
On returning to Pest, he found awaiting him a letter from Petöfi,
informing him that he had just married Julia Szendrey, and begging Jókai
to seek out a convenient lodging where they and he could live together.
That a newly married husband should invite his faithful bachelor comrade
to live with him under the same roof was, as Jókai well remarks, a fact
belonging to the realm of fairy-tale. Jókai immediately hunted up a nice
first-floor apartment in Tobacco Street, consisting of three rooms and
their appurtenances, the first room being for the Petöfis, the second
for himself, while the intermediate one was to be a common dining-room,
each with a separate entrance. The young couple came in during the
autumn; they kept one maid, and Jókai had an old man-servant to wait
upon him. The furniture was primitive. Mrs. Petöfi, who had left the
mansion of her wealthy and eminent father without either dowry or
blessing--the family utterly opposing the match, and visiting the
enamoured young lady with the full weight of their heavy
displeasure--had not so much as a fashionable hat to put on, and sewed
together a sort of head-dress of her own invention, which, when
finished, she had not the courage to wear. They had nothing, and yet
were perfectly happy, and so was Jókai. Their dinners were sent in from
a tavern, the Golden Eagle, close at hand, and their chief amusement was
to learn English and laugh at each other's blunders.
A quarrel with the naturally irritating and overbearing Petöfi put an
end to this symposium, and, doubtless to every one's relief, Jókai
started a bachelor establishment of his own, consisting of a couple of
rooms, which he furnished himself. Properly speaking, it only became a
bachelor's establishment when he entered it. Previously thereto it had
been occupied by a little old woman, popularly known as Mámi, who kept a
well-known registry office for servants, and the consequence was that a
whole mob of cooks, parlour-maids, and nursery-maids invaded Jókai's
premises at all hours, under the persuasion that he could provide them
with places. This constant flow of petticoats to his door not only
disturbed his work terribly, but was sufficient to have brought a less
studious and conscientious man into disrepute. It was at this time that
Jókai became the responsible editor of the _Életképek_ during the
temporary absence of Frankenburg, and so began his political career. The
_Életképek_ was one of the most widely read journals of those days.
Under Frankenburg's able editorship it had become the leading radical
print, and it was no small glory for Jókai that, despite his youth, he
should have been thought worthy of directing it. It numbered among its
contributors some of the most brilliant names in the Hungarian
Literature, from Vörösmarty to Arany. His literary colleagues assembled
regularly at Jókai's lodgings to discuss current political events, and
more than one idea of reform was hatched under the wing of the
_Életképek_. It was in this occupation that the stormy, headlong month
of March, 1848, found our hero. It was to tear him away from his
moorings and cast him upon a veritable sea of troubles; but it was also
to arouse and develop his capabilities in the school of life and
action.
On February 23, 1848, a revolution broke out at Paris, and in a
couple of days Louis Philip was a dethroned exile. Such a facile
victory of liberal principles encouraged other liberty-loving nations
to follow the example of the mother of constitutions, and the
Hungarians were among the first to rise. In the Diet, Louis Kossuth
eloquently demanded equality before the law, a popular representative
parliament, and an independent, responsible ministry; but the new wine
of nineteenth-century liberalism speedily burst the old bottles of
obsolete, if picturesque, constitutional forms, and the direction of the
movement, which became more and more impetuous every moment, slipped
from the control of the cautious diplomatists and politicians at Vienna
into the hands of the enthusiastic journalists and demagogues of
Budapest. Amongst these, young Jókai, from the first, took a leading
part. Early in the morning of March 15, he and his friends, Petöfi,
Vasváry, and Bulyovszky, met in Jókai's room, by lamplight, and his
comrades entrusted him with the framing of a manifesto, based upon the
famous _Twelve Points_, or Articles of Pest, drawn up the day before by
Joseph Irinyi, embodying the wishes of the Hungarian nation. This done,
they rushed out into the public squares and harangued the mob, which had
assembled in thousands. But speech-making was not sufficient; they
wanted to _do_ something, and the first thing to be done was, obviously,
to give practical application to the doctrine of a free press. So they
determined to print forthwith the Twelve Articles, the Manifesto, and
Petöfi's incendiary song, "Talpra Magyar," without the consent of the
censor. What followed must be told in Jókai's own words:--
"The printing-press of Landerer and Heckenast was honoured with this
compulsory distinction. The printers, naturally, were not justified in
printing anything without the permission of the authorities, so we
turned up our sleeves and worked away at the hand-presses ourselves. The
name of the typewriter who set up the first word of freedom was
_Potemkin_! While Irinyi and other young authors were working away at
the press, it was my duty to harangue the mob which thronged the whole
length of Hatváni Street. I had no idea how to set about it, but it came
of its own accord. My worthy and loyal contemporary, Paul Szontagh,
occasionally quotes to me, even now, some of the heaven-storming phrases
which he heard me utter on that occasion, _e.g._ '. . . No,
fellow-citizens! he is no true hero who can only _die_ for his country;
he who can _slay_ for his country, he is the true hero!' That was the
sort of oratory I used to practise in those days. Meanwhile the rain was
beginning to fall, and rain is the most reactionary opponent of every
revolution. But my people were not to be dispersed by the rain, and all
at once the whole street was filled with expanded umbrellas. I was
outraged at the sight. 'What, gentlemen!' I thundered, from the corner
of the street, 'if you stick up your umbrellas now against mere
rain-drops, what will you stick up against the bullets which will
presently begin to fall?' It was only then that I noticed that there
were not only gentlemen around me, but ladies also. I exhorted the
ladies to go home. Here they would get dripping wet, I said, and some
other accident might befall them. 'We are no worse off here than you
are,' was the reply. They were determined to wait till the printed
broad-sides were ready. Not very long afterwards, Irinyi appeared at the
window of the printing-office, for to get out of the door was a sheer
impossibility. He held in his hands the first printed sheets from the
free press. Ah, that scene, when the very first few sheets were
distributed from hand to hand! . . . And now a young county official was
seen forcing his way through the dense crowd right to the very door of
the printing-office, and from thence he addressed me. The
Vice-Lieutenant of the county, Paul Nyáry, sent word that I was to go to
him at the town hall. 'Why should _I_ go?' I cried, from my point of
vantage. 'I'll be shot if I do! If the Vice-Lieutenant of the county
wants to speaks to me, let _him_ come _here_! We are "the mountain"
now.' And Mohammed really _did_ come to 'the mountain,' and, . . . what
is more, he came to approve of what we had done hitherto, and then to go
along with us to the town hall to ratify the articles of the liberal
programme. . . . The town hall was crammed to suffocation. Those who
were called upon to speak, stood upon the green table, and remained
there afterwards, so that at last the whole magistracy of the county,
and I and all my colleagues, were standing on the table. The Burgomaster
announced from the balcony of the town hall that the town of Pest had
adopted the Twelve Articles, and with that the avalanche carried the
whole of the burgesses along with it. . . . In the evening the town was
illuminated, and a free performance was given at the theatre, _Bánk
Bán_, Katona's celebrated historical drama, being the piece selected.
But the mob, which, by this time, was in a state of ecstasy, had no
longer the patience to listen to the sublime declamations of the Ban
Peter. It called for 'Talpra Magyar!' (Up, up, Magyars!), the Hungarian
Marseillaise. What was to be done? The brilliant court of King Andrew
II., with the Queen and _Bánk Bán_ to boot, had to form a group round
Gabriel Egressy, who, in a simple _attila_, and with a sword by his
side, stood in the middle of the stage and declaimed, with magnificent
emphasis, Petöfi's inspiring poem. . . . Then the band struck up the
Rákóczy march, so long prohibited in Hungary because of its supposed
revolutionary tendency. This naturally increased the excitement instead
of extinguishing it. . . . Then a voice from the gallery suddenly cried,
'Long live Tancsis!'--Tancsis, by the way, was a political prisoner who
had been released that very morning from the citadel of Buda by the
mob--and with that the whole populace suddenly roared with one voice,
'Tancsis! Tancsis!' A frightful tumult arose. Tancsis was not at hand.
He lived somewhere in a distant suburb. But even had he been near, it
would have been a cruel thing to have dragged on to the stage a poor,
worn-out invalid, that he might merely make his bow to the public. But
what was to be done? 'Well, my sons,' said Nyáry, with whom I was
standing in the same box, 'you have awakened this great monster; now see
if you can put him to sleep again!' All my young friends, one after the
other, attempted to address the people. . . . The curtain was let down,
but then the tumult grew more than ever, the gallery stamped like mad;
it was a perfect pandemonium. Then an idea occurred to me. I could get
on to the stage from Nyáry's box. I rushed on through the side wings. A
pretty figure I cut, I must say. I was splashed up to the knees with
mud, from scouring the streets all day. I wore huge goloshes; my
battered cylinder, surmounted by a gigantic red feather, was drenched
with rain, so that I could easily have thrust it under my arm and made a
crush hat of it. I looked around me and perceived Egressy. I told him to
draw up the curtain; I would harangue the people from the stage. Rozsa
Laborfalvi, who played the part of 'Queen Gertrude,' came towards me.
She smiled upon me with truly majestic grace, greeted me, and pressed my
hand. She was wearing the Magyar tricolour cockade--red, white, and
green--on her bosom, and she took it off and pinned it on my breast.
Then the curtain was raised. When the mob beheld my muddy, saturated
figure, it began to shout afresh, and the uproar gradually became a call
for every one to hear me. When at last I was able to speak, I delivered
myself of this masterly piece of oratory: 'Brother citizens! Our friend
Tancsis is not here, he is at home in the bosom of his family. Allow the
poor blind man to taste the joy of seeing his family once more.' It was
only then that I became conscious of the nonsense I was talking. How
could a _blind_ man _see_ his family? If the mob began to laugh I was
done for! It was the tricoloured ribbon which saved me. 'Regard this
tricoloured cockade on my breast!' I cried. 'Let it be the badge of this
glorious day! Let every man who is freedom's warrior wear it! It will
distinguish us from the hirelings of slavery. These three colours
represent the three sacred words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! Let
every one in whom Magyar blood and a free spirit burns wear them on his
breast.' And so the thing was done. The tricoloured cockade preserved
order. Whoever wished to pin on the tricoloured cockade had to hurry
home first. Ten minutes later the theatre was empty, and the next day
the tricoloured cockade was to be seen on every breast. . . . In the
intoxication of my triumph I hastened after Rozsa Laborfalvi as soon as
this scene was over and pressed her hand. And with that pressure our
engagement began. . . . And the honeymoon was in keeping with the
engagement. The roar of cannon and the clash of arms was the music that
played at _my_ wedding."
The lady whose heart and hand Jókai won under such stimulating
circumstances was in every way worthy of him. Born at Miskolcz in 1817,
Judith Laborfalvi-Benké, to give her her full family name, was thus
eight years her husband's senior. Her father, Joseph Benké, a retired
actor, and subsequently a teacher at the Roman Catholic girls' school at
Miskolcz, permitted her, in her sixteenth year, to try her fortune on
the stage, at Budapest. But the first attempt was a decided failure, and
she returned home, apparently disillusioned. A second attempt proved
much more successful. Her fine figure, handsome face, and sweet voice
now made a great impression, and the experienced stage-manager, Egressy,
recognizing her great capabilities, encouraged her to proceed. By 1837
she had superseded Madame Kantor, hitherto the chief heroine of the
Magyar stage, and henceforth, till her retirement from the stage in
1859, was accounted one of the leading Hungarian actresses. Her best
_rôles_ were "Volumnia," "Lady Macbeth," "Adrienne Lecouvreur," "Mary
Stuart" in Schiller's play of that name, and "Queen Gertrude" in _Bánk
Bán_. She had already reached the height of her fame when she gave her
hand to young Jókai, and it was her courage and devotion which sustained
him during the dark years of trial and depression upon which he was now
about to enter.
But at first there was no thought of calamity. Jókai flung himself heart
and soul into the revolutionary movement. He converted the literary
_Életképek_ into a political organ of the most uncompromising character,
which he edited along with Petöfi; rejected the aristocratic terminal
"y" of his name for the more democratic "i,"[1] and adopted for his
journal the motto: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." Yet Jókai was no
friend of unnecessary violence; and when his co-editor, Petöfi, during
Jókai's absence for a few days on his honeymoon (he married Rozsa
Laborfalvi on August 27, 1848), inserted, contrary to his solemn
promise, an abusive tirade against the poet Vörösmarty, Jókai severely
blamed his friend's want of straightforwardness in an editorial in
_Életképek_. Petöfi instantly and most virulently attacked Jókai in the
columns of the same paper; accused him of ingratitude, declined to be
lectured, threw up his co-editorship, and broke off all intercourse with
him. Some coolness had previously arisen between the two friends owing
to Petöfi's taking it upon himself to disapprove of Jókai's marriage,
and communicating his views on the subject to Jókai's mother, who had
disapproved of it all along. Jókai naturally resented both the criticism
and the interference, and the rupture was unfortunately final, as
Petöfi perished mysteriously at the Battle of Segesvár, twelve months
later, before there had been any reconciliation. For now the Hungarian
revolution tore every true Magyar along with it, and wonderful,
incredible things were the order of the day. On September 24, 1848,
Kossuth received the permission of the Hungarian Parliament to organize
a rising of the population in the _Alföld_, or great Hungarian plain,
and young Jókai was sent down thither as one of his chief agents; but,
as if to illustrate that singular blend of common sense and exaltation
which has always characterized the Magyar in politics, the ardent author
of "Hétköznapok" was accompanied by a sort of bodyguard of soberer
youths, who were to cut him short without ceremony whenever his
eloquence carried him too far. It was on this occasion that Jókai
enlisted the services of the famous robber-chief, Alexander Rózsa,[2]
for the national cause, and obtained his pardon from the Government. On
the outbreak of the Vienna Revolution at the beginning of October,
Kossuth sent Jókai and Csernátonai to promise the Viennese assistance,
but the movement was crushed before any such assistance could be
rendered. In the beginning of December, Jókai accepted the invitation of
the publishers, Landerer and Heckenast, to edit the leading Pest
newspaper, _Pesti Hirlap_, in place of Csengery, who had become a member
of the Government. He announced, as the substance of his programme, the
bringing about of "the unity and independence of the Hungarian State."
After subjugating Vienna, the Austrian army advanced against Pest. On
December 30 the inhabitants threw up earthworks at the foot of the
Gilbert hill, working night and day without distinction of age or sex,
Jókai and his wife amongst them. After the battle of Móor, January 1,
1849, when the Imperialists defeated Perczel and his Honvéds, the Jókais
followed the Hungarian Government to Debreczen. Here also Jókai
supported himself by journalism, and on February 22 started the _Esti
Lapok_ as the organ of the Constitutional Liberals as opposed to the
_Marczius Tizenötödike_, the organ of the extreme Radicals. Yet Jókai
himself was not infrequently carried away by his patriotism, and
actually proclaimed the republic in his newspaper two days before the
Diet unanimously dethroned the Hapsburgs (April 14, 1849). When the
Honvéds recaptured the fortress of Buda, the Government and the Diet
returned to Pest, and Jókai, as editor of both the _Esti Lapok_ and the
_Pesti Hirlap_, powerfully contributed to encourage the nation in its
struggle for independence. In a month's time, however, the Hungarian
Government, now threatened by a combination of the Russians and
Austrians, were obliged to take refuge, first at Szegedin, and finally
at Arad, Jókai accompanying them to both places. He has described this
portion of his life in a few eloquent sentences. "Out into the desolate
world we went, in the depths of a Siberian winter, with everything
crackling with cold, forcing our way along through the snowy desert of
the _Alföld_, with the retreating Honvéd army, passing the night in an
inhospitable hut, where the closed door had frozen to the ground by the
morning, and the roll of drums and the blare of trumpets aroused us to
toil on still further. . . . My wife went everywhere with me. She
quitted a comfortable home, sacrificed a fortune, a brilliant career, to
endure hunger, cold, and hardship with me. And I never heard her utter
one word of complaint. When I was downhearted she comforted me. And,
when all _my_ hopes were stifled, she shared _her_ hopes with me. And
she worked like the wife of a Siberian convict. She did not _play the
part_ of a peasant girl now, she was a serving woman in grim earnest."
[Footnote 1: One often sees the names of Hungarian
celebrities with prefixed "de's" or "von's" in English
newspapers. This is quite inaccurate, the Magyar
language admitting no such honorific particles.]
[Footnote 2: Rózsa's doings are recorded in Jókai's
"Lélekidomar." An English translation of the book was
rejected by an eminent Scotch publisher a few years ago
as too improbable, yet the events there recorded are
literally true.]
After the catastrophe of Világos, when the unconquerable Görgei
voluntarily surrendered the last fragments of his exhausted army to the
Russians so as to baulk the Austrians of a triumph they did not deserve,
Jókai was saved from captivity by the ingenious audacity of János
Rákóczy, Kossuth's secretary, who hired a carriage and horses, disguised
himself as a coachman, and, with the utmost nonchalance, drove right
through the advancing Muscovites. Picking up his wife again at Gyula,
Jókai set off for the remote little hamlet of Tardoná, a place "walled
off from the rest of the world" by dense beech forests, where hundreds
of thousands of pigs were every year fattened for the Servian market.
Here Jókai lived at the house of his friend, the local magistrate, Béni
Csányi, for nearly six months, principally occupied in landscape
painting, while his indefatigable wife hastened back to Pest to resume
her engagement at the National Theatre (they had for the time no other
means of subsistence), and attempt to save him from proscription. From
August to the middle of October Jókai knew absolutely nothing of what
was going on in the world. Tardoná was a corner of the earth whither no
visitor ever came, and where the inhabitants themselves went nowhither.
At last his wife rejoined him, and told him that his hermit-like
seclusion would soon be over. She then took from her bosom a carefully
concealed tiny grey schedule, which was a great treasure in those days.
It was the guarantee of his liberation--a common passport. It should be
explained that when the fortress of Comorn capitulated, months after the
war was over everywhere else, it was on condition that every officer of
the garrison should be provided with a passport guaranteeing his life
and liberty, and dispensing him from enrolment in the Austrian army.
Jókai's wife had contrived to procure for him such a passport in the
simplest way in the world. A friend of hers, Vincent Szathmary, wrote
Jókai's name down on the list of the capitulating officers as a third
lieutenant, and handed the passport bearing his name to his wife. This
had been Madame Jókai's idea from the first, and was the reason why
Jókai had been hidden away so carefully by her among the beech forests
of Tardoná till she had safely carried out her innocent conspiracy.
Jókai's life was now safe, but extreme caution was still by no means
superfluous. It was not till some time later that he ventured to return
to Pest from Miskólcz under the pseudonym of János Kovács,[3] living
most of the time at his wife's lodgings, or at an inn among the hills
of Buda. The military government (Hungary was then under martial law,
with Czechs in all the chief posts of trust) was inclined to be
indulgent to literature, but spies and traitors were about, and to his
eternal shame a Magyar lawyer, Hegyesi by name, hoping to curry favour
with the authorities at Vienna, informed against Jókai and thirty-four
other Hungarian writers, whom he pronounced worthy of death. They were
defended in a long memorial by their countryman, the advocate, János
Kossalko, who demonstrated that the Hungarian literature was not the
cause of the Hungarian revolution, but was only the echo of public
opinion. Not till 1850 was it possible for Jókai to follow a literary
career once more. His first works were written under the name of his dog
"Sajo;" but in 1851 he contributed under his own name to the columns of
the _Magyar Emlék Lapok_ and the _Remény_, two of the new reviews, as
well as to the _Délibáb_, founded by Count Leo Festetics. It was now
that Mrs. Jókai suggested the starting of a popular illustrated weekly,
to be called _Vasárnapi Ujság_. But the difficulty was how to find an
editor for this new venture. Jókai's name was in such bad odour with the
Austrian Government that he himself was out of the question, but at last
a suitable editor was found in Albert Pakh, a popular humorist of great
merit, who had only been prevented from participating in the revolution
by a lingering illness, which had confined him to the hospital during
the whole of 1848-9, so that he escaped being amongst the proscribed.
But if Pakh was the editor, Jókai was the soul of the _Vasárnapi Ujság_,
and it was his pen which quickly gave it vogue and celebrity. In
particular the extremely humorous dramatic criticisms, which he
contributed to the paper every week in the form of letters under the
pseudonym "Kakas Márton,"[4] were the chief delight of the reading
public. Kakas Márton's _obiter dicta_ were everywhere quoted. Kakas
Márton meerschaums and Kakas Márton clays, with bowls in the shape of
cock-headed men, were on sale at every shop in the capital. "_O tempi
passati_," cries Jókai, reviewing that period nearly forty years
afterwards, "what a popular character I was, to be sure! I really _was_
in the mouth of the nation in those days."
[Footnote 3: John Smith.]
[Footnote 4: Martin Cock.]
In 1856 Jókai broke entirely new ground by starting the first Hungarian
illustrated comic paper, under the title of _Nagy Tükör_ (Great Mirror),
but better known by its later title of _Üstökös_ (The Comet), which he
edited for the next fourteen years. Inestimable were the services which
_Üstökös_ rendered to Hungary. It taught the nation to laugh and live in
hope of better times. It was also the training school of the first
Magyar caricaturists and comic artists. Jókai himself contributed to it
with his pencil as well as his pen, and some of the best comic cuts in
the _Üstökös_ were by "Kakas Márton." In course of time all the comic
talent of the nation was attracted to the _Üstökös_, and a whole army of
notable humorists supported its editor. It was in the columns of the
_Üstökös_ that Arany's famous satire, "Poloska," first appeared; it was
the _Üstökös_ which discovered and educated János Jánko, the prince of
Magyar caricaturists; it was the _Üstökös_ which refused to take the
gendarmes or the censorship too seriously, and scourged with its
satiric lash the blunders and absurdities of the Bach _régime_, which
laboured so hard to germanize Hungary.
The _Üstökös_ had a literary supplement to which Jókai contributed
numerous novels. It was here that appeared his masterly little tale "A
debreceni lunatikus" and the great romance "Rab Raby," in which the
utter impossibility of reforming a high-spirited nation against its will
is so dramatically demonstrated. This story is also remarkable for the
best existing characterization of Kaiser Joseph II.
Journalism and caricature indeed represent but a tithe of Jókai's work
during this period. The revolutionary war was no sooner over than he
began to write that series of novels and tales which was to make him
famous throughout Europe. Roughly speaking, these earlier novels fall
into two categories: (1) battle-pieces, descriptions of the vicissitudes
of the late war, recounted with all the vividness of an alert spectator,
who was also a born story-teller; and (2) historical romances of the
long Turkish captivity under which Hungary had groaned from the
beginning of the sixteenth to nearly the end of the eighteenth century.
Among the first set may be mentioned, "Forradalmi és csataképek"
(Revolutionary and Battle-pieces) 1850, and "Egy bujdosó naplója" (Diary
of an Outlaw) 1851; while the latter set includes, "Erdély aranykora"
(The Golden Age of Transylvania) 1852, with its sequel, "Torökvilág
Magyarorszagon" (The Turkish World in Hungary), 1853. These tales of the
Turkish rule in Magyarland, independently of their æsthetic value, were
veritable parables. Every one who read them when they first came out,
knew very well whom he was to understand by "The Turks." Every one knew
that the author had only given the griefs and grievances of the Magyars
an historical setting and an oriental colouring to evade the scrutiny of
the censorship. Every one knew that the author's patriotic allusions and
attacks applied as much to the Austrian tyranny of the nineteenth as to
the Ottoman tyranny of the seventeenth century. Through the woof of
these gorgeously oriental stories could be read the transparent reminder
and encouragement that the kingdom had survived a worse overthrow than
the present one, and that if Magyarland rose again from her grave, it
would not be the first time she had done so. Even the terrible Turkish
deluge had not swept away the Hungarian nation. Light had followed upon
darkness; there was hope in the future because the past had never been
desperate. As historical romances, moreover, both these tales stand very
high, higher even than the romances of Sienkiewicz, because they possess
humour, a quality in which the great Pole is deficient. In both cases,
Jókai based his narrative on the contemporary chronicles of Cserey, who
lived at Prince Michael Apafy's court. He found most of his characters
ready to hand, and where Cserey fails him, Jókai's own historical
imagination fills up the gaps. It is true that in the obviously invented
portions of these stories (_e.g._ the Azraele episodes), the daring
fancy of the author sometimes carries him far beyond the bounds of even
poetic licence. It is equally true that both stories suffer from want of
unity; they are rather loosely connected series of brilliant pictures
than one continuous narrative. But the dramatic force, the fascinating
style, and the inexhaustible inventiveness of the author, carry his
readers breathlessly over every obstacle, and they contain some of the
finest humour, and some of the most splendid descriptions of natural
scenery in modern literature.
The admiration excited by these noble productions rose still higher,
when, in 1853-1854, Jókai published his two great social romances, "A
Magyar Nábob" (The Hungarian Nabob), and its sequel, "Kárpáthy Zoltán"
(Sultan Karpathy), which, in the opinion of some Hungarian critics,
indicate the high-water mark of his authorship. In my opinion the first
of these novels, which paints to the life the old Hungarian aristocracy
of the earlier part of the last century in the person of János Kárpáthy,
is incomparably the best. The sequel, besides the inevitable objection
that it is a sequel, suffers from ultra-sensibility and a moralizing
tendency. The hero of "Kárpáthy Zoltán" can scarce be said to belong to
real life at all, and he is plainly meant to be the model, the ideal of
the rising generation. The story is also far too long. But it contains
many brilliant episodes, amongst them the famous description of the
terrible overflow of the Danube in the thirties, and numerous passages
of almost faultless beauty. On December 11, 1858, Jókai was elected a
member of the Hungarian Academy, and his name was henceforth numbered
among the national classics.
But now a new career, the career of politics, was about to be thrown
open to Jókai. At the beginning of 1860 it was becoming pretty evident
that that monstrously artificial amalgamation, the unified absolute
Austrian Monarchy of 1849, was weakening in every joint, and that no
amount of forcible riveting could keep it together much longer. Warned
by the loss of the Italian provinces, the statesmen of Vienna were now
inclined to follow different political principles, and recognizing that
the depressed and embittered Hungarian nation must be an important
factor in any political reconstruction, they were now prepared to make
certain substantial, if limited, concessions to the Magyars. The October
diploma of 1860 explained his Majesty's views on the subject, and the
Hungarian Estates were summoned in April, 1861, to consider the Imperial
offer of a new constitution, which would have degraded Hungary into a
mere province of the Austrian Empire. The Austrian statesmen imagined
that the spirit of the Hungarian nation had been broken by twelve years
of oppression. They were mistaken. The Magyars would have nothing to say
to the proposed central Reichstag, which was to assemble at Vienna as
the representative of all the lands of the Hapsburg monarchy, Hungary
included. Under the masterly guidance of Francis Deák, the Hungarians
insisted on the legal continuity of the Hungarian State, and would
accept nothing short of full autonomy. Jókai took part in the Diet of
1861 as deputy for Siklos, and a member of the uncompromising party
whose motto was: "All or nothing." On May 24 he delivered his maiden
speech, and was instantly recognized as one of the best debaters in the
House. He was no impassioned orator, as from his writings we might have
been led to suppose he would be; but adopted from the first a quiet,
conversational style, appealing generally to right feeling and common
sense; whilst his unfailing wit and humour invariably charmed his
audience, even when he took the unpopular side, which he sometimes felt
bound to do, for, though a consistent Liberal he was always far above
party prejudice. On the dissolution of the short-lived Diet of 1861,
which was far too independent for the Austrian Government, the
constitutional struggle was carried on in the public press, where Jókai
was one of the foremost champions of Magyar rights. In the most
dangerous times, when the sensitive central Government frequently flung
journalists into prison for a single word, Jókai in the _Üstökös_
worried the authorities with all the darts and arrows of his wit and
humour, and in 1863, when he founded _Hon_ (The Country), as the
political organ of Coloman Tisza and his colleagues, he brought to bear
the heavier ordnance of reason and argument. He had to go to Vienna in
person to solicit permission to bring this journal out, and had first to
promise that he would not attack the Government.
"I promise heartily to _support_ the Vienna Government," answered Jókai,
"if only it will endeavour to do justice to the Hungarian nation, and
fulfil its legitimate wishes." The _Hon_ had only been out a week when a
catastrophe occurred which must be told in Jókai's own words: "I had
founded a political paper. I was its responsible editor and publisher.
My assistants were the matadors of the Liberal party. We soon had a
large public. . . . One day an admirably written article was sent to me,
signed by one of the most illustrious of the Hungarian magnates (Count
Alexander Zichy). Without more ado I published it. It was a loyal,
patriotic article, on purely constitutional lines, showing, in the most
matter-of-fact way, the justice and the necessity of constitutional
government for Hungary. Because of this article the Governor brought
both the Count who wrote it, and the editor who inserted it, before a
court-martial. He signified to the pair of us beforehand that he meant
to make a three months' job of it. The court-martial consisted of a
colonel, a major, a captain, a senior and a junior lieutenant, a
sergeant, a corporal, and a private, the last four of whom were Czechs.
Before this 'areopagus' I delivered a powerful defence in German, to
which they naturally replied: 'March!' The tribunal condemned us to
twelve months' hard labour in irons, on bread and water, with loss of
nobility and a fine of eleven hundred florins. When the sentence was
read out, I said to the President: 'This is very odd, the Governor
promised us only three months.' To this the President replied, with a
smile: 'Yes, three months for the incriminatory article, but nine more
for your high-flying defence.' Our sentence was for no offence against
the press laws. Oh dear no! We were condemned for inciting to a breach
of the peace. Count Zichy and I had been throwing stones at the windows
and breaking the gas-lamps. It was as public brawlers that we were sent
to cool our heels in jail. . . . Nevertheless, the whole of my life in
prison was a mere joke. . . . The Commandant himself, with whom I
lodged, came every day to tell me funny stories, and then took me out
for long country walks. He had my writing-table, my books, my
carpentering and sculptural tools brought into my 'dungeon,' and there
it was that I turned out the bust of my wife. The Commandant, also, was
passionately fond of carpentering, so we worked together at our lathes
as if for a wager. I was also allowed to have _with my bread and water_
the best that money could purchase from the inn. In the afternoon my
friends from the Casino Club looked in to play cards with me. . . . Once
I took my fellow prisoner and my jailor to my villa at Svabhegy, where
my wife had made ready for me a splendid supper. I tapped my new wine,
and we amused ourselves to such a very late hour, that when we returned
to my _dungeon_ it was as much as we could do to make them let us in
again. And then my visitors! In the whole course of my life I never
received so many visitors as during the _month_ that my _year's_
captivity lasted. . . . I was sought out by all sorts of good friends,
who came from far--lords and ladies, countesses and actresses. . . . In
fact, I had too much of a good thing. How could I work when my admirers
were crowding at my lathe all day long? At last, with tears in my eyes,
I had to beg my jailor to sentence me to solitary confinement for a
couple of hours every day, and wrote on my door the hours when I was
free to receive company. 'Wasn't I in prison?' I asked."
After the dissolution of the Diet, the provisional government did all in
its power to cajole the opposition and make the nation accept the
October diploma; but its efforts were frustrated by the tact and the
tenacity of Deák, and, in 1865, his Majesty was again obliged to summon
the Diet in which Jókai once more represented Siklós. Even now the
Austrian statesmen were very reluctant to compose their differences
with Hungary on equal terms; but the disasters of the intervening
Austro-Prussian war made them, at last, more compliant. After Sadowa, a
composition with Hungary became absolutely necessary for the very
existence of the Austrian Empire; the idea of a unified composite state
was definitely abandoned; the Hungarians, following the advice of Deák,
loyally co-operated in bringing about a composition[5] on equal terms
with Austria, and on June 8, 1867, the crown of St. Stephen was placed
upon the head of his Apostolic Majesty. Hungary had once more become
independent.
[Footnote 5: Curiously enough the German word
_Ausgleich_ has generally been used in England to
designate this arrangement. Yet _Ausgleich_ and its
Hungarian equivalent _Kiegyezés_ simply mean
_composition_.]
Independence was secured, but much had to be done in the way of
pacification and reconstruction after all that the nation had suffered.
Jókai contributed powerfully to readjust past differences and unite all
the forces of the nation for the nation's good. This is the chief object
of his romance "Új földesúr" (The New Landlord) published in 1863
(memorable also as the first of his works that was translated into
English[6]), where the antagonisms of the old conservative Magyar
squirearchy, exemplified in Adam Gárómvölgyi, and the interloping German
landlords, as represented by Ankerschmidt, are finally adjusted by a
happy love-match between younger members of the long-clashing families.
In every respect this romance is one of Jókai's best works, and as a
truthful picture of the gloomy transitional period between 1850 and
1863, is of considerable historical importance. A fine symbolism, too,
runs through the story. The "fair Theiss," as purely an Hungarian as the
Volga is a purely Russian river, plays a leading part in the story. We
see her in all her moods, and when, in time of flood, she rises in her
wrath and sweeps away all the fetters laid upon her by the Austrian
surveyors and engineers, the reader guesses, as he was meant to guess,
that the days of such petty tyrants as the comic minor characters,
Mikwesek, Maxenpfutsch, and Strajf are numbered. To the same period
belong a whole dozen of Jókai's most notable stories, _e.g._ "Politikai
divatok" (Political Fashions), dealing with the triumphs and horrors of
the civil war, and containing a glowing eulogy of his heroic,
self-sacrificing wife; "Az arany ember" (A Man of Gold), one of the most
dramatic and stimulating novels ever penned with magnificent
descriptions of Danubian scenery; "Feketegyémántok" (Black Diamonds),
which caught the English fancy more, perhaps, than any of his other
works; and the wondrous "A jövö század regénye" (The Romance of the
Coming Century), as ingenious and suggestive as the happiest of Jules
Verne's or Mr. Wells's semi-scientific romances.
[Footnote 6: By Mr. Patterson in 1868.]
And, at the same time, this indefatigable worker, not content with
throwing off literary masterpieces at the rate of two a year, was taking
a leading part in current politics. The Composition was, after all, but
the starting-point of modern Hungarian politics. It now became evident
that Deák's original programme was not thoroughgoing enough for the
needs of an independent Hungary, and every one looked upon the leader of
the opposition, Coloman Tisza, who first came into prominence as the
formulator of the famous "Bihar points" in 1868, as the coming man. To
this party, the Left Centre, Jókai at once attached himself, and became
its chief publicist, and one of its best speakers. For nine-and-twenty
years (1867-96) he was a member of the Diet; even when (as in 1872) he
was defeated in one constituency he was elected in another, and at the
very beginning of his political career (1869) he had the supreme
satisfaction of worsting a cabinet minister, Stephen Gorove, at the
polls. It was during the earlier years of the long administration
(1875-90) of his friend, Coloman Tisza, that Jókai exercised a constant
and considerable political influence, both as a parliamentary debater
and as editor of the Government organ, _Hon_ (The Country). His usual
seat was on the second ministerial bench, just behind the premier, and
whenever he rose to speak he always commanded the attention of a crowded
and expectant house. More than once his eloquence extricated the
Government from a tight place. Among his more notable speeches may be
mentioned: "What does the Opposition want--revolution or reform?"
delivered in 1869; "The Left Centre the true party of reform," spoken in
1872, and his celebrated speech on the Budget of February 26, 1880. In
those days he was a most ardent politician, ready, if necessary, to
fight as well as talk and write for his opinions. Thrice he has fought
duels, happily bloodless, with political opponents; but it was as the
editor of the _Hon_ (incorporated in 1882 with the _Ellenör_, under the
title of _Nemzet_) that he rendered his party the most essential
service, and in most of the political cartoons of the day he is
generally represented waving the _Hon_ as a banner, or charging with it
as a bayonet. The ultra-Conservative comic paper, _Borszem Janko_, was
particularly fond of caricaturing this consistent and courageous
champion of enlightened Liberalism, and his earnest, gentle face, with
the honest eyes, ample beard and fierce moustache, is conspicuous in
nearly every number from 1868 onwards. Thus in the number for August 23,
1868, the coloured frontispiece represents Jókai as a huge
black-bearded, bald head, furiously editing four newspapers at the same
time, a nimble quill being stuck between each of its diminutive hands
and feet. His increasing baldness is an inexhaustible subject for the
raillery of this exceedingly clever print, especially on the occasion of
his dramatic jubilee (he is the author of numerous successful plays,
which are, however, inferior to his novels) at Klausenburg, in 1871,
when he is depicted in ancient Roman costume, with a Red Indian feather
head-dress, beating a huge drum on a Greek triumphal car. In 1896, Jókai
quitted active politics, and in the following year was made a member of
the House of Magnates.
Jókai's career, on the whole, has been a singularly happy and successful
one. His worst misfortune was the death of his revered wife, on November
20, 1886, when he sought oblivion and consolation in travel, and visited
Italy for the second time.[7] His third visit was paid thirteen years
later, when he spent his honeymoon in Sicily with his second wife, the
comic actress, Bella Nagy, whom he married in September, 1899, when he
was already seventy-four years old. It is strange, considering his
linguistic attainments, manifold interests, and the vast range of his
writings, how seldom Jókai has quitted Hungary. Apart from his brief
Italian tours, a fortnight at Berlin and Prague in 1874, and a couple of
days in Bosnia, in 1886, represent the whole of his foreign touring. Yet
there is scarce a country in Europe which he has not made the scene of
one or other of his romances. He enjoyed the sovereign triumph of his
life in 1894, when the whole nation rendered homage to the nestor of
Magyar Letters by celebrating his golden jubilee as a national festival,
on which occasion he received the ribbon of St. Stephen from the King,
the freedom of every city in Hungary, and a cheque for 100,000 florins
from the Jubilee Committee on account of the profits derived from a
national _edition de luxe_ of his works in a hundred huge volumes,
illustrated by all the leading Hungarian artists. Since 1894, Jókai has
produced at least twenty-five fresh volumes, and their quality
demonstrates that the power and brilliance of the veteran are absolutely
unimpaired. There is no sign of decay or even of deterioration. "A
Tengerszemü Hölgy" won the Academy's prize in 1890, as the best novel of
the year, while "A Sárga Rózsa" (The Yellow Rose), written three years
later, in the author's sixty-eighth year, is pronounced by so severe a
critic as Zoltan Beöthy to be one of the abiding ornaments of the
national literature.
[Footnote 7: His first visit was in 1876, but he only
stayed a fortnight.]
Out of Hungary, Jókai, even now is far less known than might have been
expected, though within the last six years no fewer than fifteen out of
his two hundred romances have been translated into English. But this
apparent neglect is readily to be accounted for. In the first place,
Jókai is so national, so thoroughly Magyar, that much of his finest,
most characteristic work was written entirely for Hungarians, or appeals
to them alone. This especially applies to his journalistic work and to
his satirico-political humoresks, which are excellent, unique even, of
their kind, and yet can have but little interest for foreigners. In the
second place, the fashion of modern fiction has changed since the author
of "A Hungarian Nabob" began to write. Jókai is a _conteur par
excellence_, a _conteur_ of the old school. Most of his novels are
tales, "yarns," if you like, not "documents" or "studies." He has also
all the faults of the romantic school to which he indisputably
belongs--excessive sensibility, fantastic exaggeration, and a penchant
towards melodrama, though in his masterpieces he can be as true to life
and draw character as cunningly as the best of the modern novelists. In
the third place, Jókai writes in a non-Aryan language of extraordinary
difficulty, whose peculiar idioms and constructions must necessarily
baffle the ingenuity of the most practised translator. It is very much
easier, for instance, to give an English reader a tolerably correct idea
of Tolstoi's style than of Jókai's. I speak from experience. Yet the
fact remains that Jókai is, at last, decidedly making way amongst us.
The tale proper, the novel of incident in all its varieties, is again
coming into vogue, and Jókai is one of the greatest tale-tellers of the
century. Moreover, there is a healthy, bracing, optimistic tone about
his romances which appeals irresistibly to normal English taste. He is
never dull, dirty, perverse, or obscure, and more fun (and that, too,
of the very best sort) is to be found in any half-dozen of his works
than in the whole range of modern Slavonic or Scandinavian literature.
R. NISBET BAIN.
Since the above lines were written, the great Magyar writer has passed
away (May 5th), and Hungary can but show her respect to one of the
greatest of her sons by standing bareheaded at his grave. To the very
last his inexhaustible pen was busy. Only at the beginning of this very
year he published his 202nd novel: "Where money is, there God is not;"
and, still later, his name appeared for the last time in a collection of
brief autobiographies of living Hungarian authors. Jókai's sketch of
himself is of the briefest, but it contains two facts which cannot but
interest and touch English readers. He there tells us that he taught
himself the elements of English, without assistance, in order that he
might read Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe" in the original language, and that
"Boy Dickens" (he is not the first foreigner by any means who has taken
"Boy" to be Dickens' Christian name) was the object of his youthful
admiration, and one of his earliest delights was the perusal of "The
Pickwick Papers."
R. NISBET BAIN.
TALES FROM JÓKAI
I
THE CELESTIAL SLINGERS
In the days when Kuczuk was the Pasha of Grosswardein, the good city of
Debreczen had a very bad time of it. This whimsical Turk, whenever some
little trifle had put him out of humour with the citizens of Debreczen,
would threaten to ravage the town from end to end with fire and sword,
cut the men to mincemeat, carry off all the women into captivity, pack
up all the treasures of the town in sacks, and sow with salt the place
where once it had stood.
At first the prudent and pacific magistrates of Debreczen used to soothe
the heavy displeasure of the whimsical Pasha with fair-spoken
entreaties, good words, and precious gifts; but one day Master Stephen
Dobozy was elected governor, and being a short-necked, fiery-tempered
man, it so happened that when, for some cause or other, Kuczuk Pasha
again began to murmur against them, and threatened the Debreczeners that
this time he really _would_ come to them, Dobozy sent back this message:
"Let him come if he likes."
At this Kuczuk Pasha flew into a violent rage, immediately mounted all
his troops, set off that very night, and early next morning stood before
Debreczen. "Here I am!" cried he.
The city had no ramparts, no trench, no drawbridge. Its whole defence
consisted of twelve rugged towers, in which the citizens were wont to
keep a look-out for nomadic freebooters--mouldering brick edifices with
rush roofs, which would have fallen to pieces at the first cannon-shot,
provided outside with crazy wooden ladders terminating in a
circumambient wooden corridor by which you could ascend into the towers,
so that if the ladders were plucked away from the towers nobody would be
able to get out of them again.
Each of these tower-shaped shanties guarded a gate, standing at a
respectful distance therefrom, so as not to stand in the way of any
possible impetuous foe who might perhaps run his foolish head against a
tower and knock it down.
Nothing testifies more clearly to the true nature of these _fortresses_
than the fact that a stork's nest was planted on the summit of each one
of them, where the worthy animals, standing every evening on one leg,
clappered for hours at a time, as if it was they who guarded the city.
Kuczuk had timed his arrival so well that at one and the same moment a
division of his army halted at every gate, and a large round cannon,
which he had taken the precaution to load, was planted opposite each of
the white-brick towers. It was thus that he wished to speak with the
Debreczeners.
Meanwhile there came hastening out of the town a Greek named Panajoti,
a native of Stambul and an old acquaintance of Kuczuk Pasha. Whenever
the magistrates of the town had any particularly ticklish message to
deliver to the Pasha, they always sent Panajoti, well aware that he, at
any rate, would not be impaled straight away.
"Well, what have the magistrates of Debreczen to say for themselves?"
"Gracious, sir, surely this Master Stephen Dobozy is a little cracked,
for no sooner did thy threats reach us than he immediately packed all
the women-folk, girls, and children into waggons, and sent them off to
Tokai; then he proclaimed by roll of drum that whoever had anything of
value was to tear it to pieces, or cut it down and fling it into the
wells, and the moment the enemy attacked the town it was to be set on
fire at all four quarters, especial attention being given to every tower
and church, whereupon every one was to grasp the shaft of his lance, or
sit on his horse if he had one, and say by which gate he meant to
depart. And they were to take care never to show their faces again in
the neighbourhood of Debreczen, and thus Kuczuk Pasha would be afraid
when in the presence of the sublime Sultan they asked him what had
become of the great city of Debreczen, which had so faithfully paid so
much and so much tribute to the Porte, made presents to all the viziers
one after another, supplied the Turkish armies with meal and provender,
let him boast before the Divan that he has burnt it to ashes and sown
the site of it with salt in a fit of pique, simply because his pipe did
not draw, and see what they'll say to him then!"
That was the message which Master Stephen Dobozy sent to the Pasha, and
Panajoti repeated it to him word for word.
"Accursed stiff-necked Calvinist!" exclaimed the Pasha, wrathfully,
"he's quite capable of doing it, too, the rascal! But don't you be
afraid that a city like Debreczen will be extirpated from the face of
the earth simply because he chooses to lose his temper, for Debreczen is
so necessary to this spot that if it did not exist already the Turks
would have to build it. The dog knows very well that I don't want to
devastate the town, else he would not speak so big to me."
Panajoti solemnly assured the Pasha that the inhabitants of Debreczen
were resolved to risk the uttermost, and that the moment the Pasha blew
a trumpet or aimed a gun at them, the whole place would instantly flame
up and be of no further use to anybody. All their treasures had already
been buried, the girls and women were safe away on the other side of the
Theiss, and the men were so furious that they had all laid hold of their
swords and scythes, and would be very difficult to manage, so embittered
were they.
The Pasha perceived that Panajoti was right. For once the Debreczeners
had got the better of him. So he withdrew the squadrons that he had
marshalled before the gates, sent away his guns, and said that he would
be merciful to Debreczen. They might take his word for it that he meant
to hurt no one, and would henceforth deal graciously with them.
Moreover, he warmly praised Master Stephen Dobozy for his courageous and
determined conduct, and assured him that he should never have cause to
repent his behaviour. On the contrary, if ever he should be in trouble
let him have recourse to him, the Pasha; he might always rely on _his_
patronage. And if ever he should come to Grosswardein, he was to make a
point of coming to see him, the Pasha; Master Dobozy might always be
quite sure that he would be made to feel perfectly at home.
And with that he returned to Grosswardein, with his guns and his army in
the same order in which he had come.
The Debreczeners breathed a great sigh of relief, and every one praised
and exalted his Honour the Sheriff for so valiantly showing all his
claws. The Turk evidently perceived that he was a man who would stand no
nonsense.
Kuczuk Pasha had no sooner arrived at Grosswardein than he sent for
Badrul Beg, the vizier of the Moorish cavalry, and entrusted him with a
special mission.
"This evening," said he, "before dusk, take five hundred horsemen and
set off in the direction of Diószeg. Inquire of every person you meet
coming or going: 'Does this road lead to Nagy-Kálló?' and then let them
go again. This do before nightfall, and then turn suddenly away from the
Diószeg road and wade about among the marshy meadows on the left-hand
side to obliterate your traces, and when you get out into the fields on
the other side you will find the shepherds who look after the sheep and
oxen, and take them off with you to Létá. When you perceive the towers
of Létá, cut down your guides, and, cautiously approaching the place,
turn off into the great forest there. In this forest you will come upon
a lime-burner, or a herdsman, who will lead you through the forest to
where it comes to an end at Hadház. There again trample your guides
beneath your feet, and remain in ambush. On the morrow, or the day after
that, or perhaps in a week's time--and till then you will stick to the
forest--you will perceive four or five hundred waggons going towards
Tokai. These waggons will be packed full with select girls and women,
and with lots of money and knickknacks, you may be sure. Seize every
blessed one of them. If there are any men with them, cut the men down.
What money you find with them distribute among your soldiers. The
women-folk, on the other hand, bring hither to me. You understand what I
say? Remember that you carry your head in your hands, so keep an eye
upon it."
Badrul Beg understood the command and withdrew. The Moorish vizier was
just the man to execute the charge committed to him, for he was capable
of traversing the whole realm from end to end, through forest and
morass, till he came to his appointed place without once dismounting,
and there he would contentedly lounge about in ambush, with an empty
belly for weeks together, till he had done what he was told to the very
last iota.
But Kuczuk Pasha thus apostrophized the good Debreczeners: "So you would
smile at me, you would laugh at me? You would rejoice over me, eh? Very
well, laugh your fill now while you can, for the day is at hand when it
will be your turn to weep."
* * * * *
On the broad highway leading to Tokai a long series of waggons was
approaching Hadház; it was the caravan of the Debreczen women.
Five hundred waggons toiling one after another, filled with nothing but
women and children, not a single man among them--no, not so much as a
man's finger to raise a whip, for the women themselves even drove the
horses. Those among the fugitives whom God Himself had created of the
masculine gender had their hands nicely folded away under
swathing-bands, and were called--babies.
Nothing but a pack of women and girls. Imagine the good humour, the
racket which accompanied them on the way! They were telling each other
how his Honour the Sheriff had driven the Turks from the town, how
frightened they had been, and all the rest of it; they had enough to
talk about for weeks to come. Rich indeed is the fancy of souls saved
from a great peril.
At the head of every waggon as coachman sat a young woman driving the
horses on, and singing one of those melancholy old songs which were then
usually sung from the Theiss to Moldavia, perhaps this one, which
began--
"The little duck is bathing in the lake so black,
My mother in Poland gets ready the cooking-jack;"
or perhaps this--
"If they ask thee for me, say
I'm a slave far, far away,
Hands and feet in irons bound;"
which last was greatly in fashion then, God knows, and many a poor
Magyar sang it from his heart.
And then a whole row of waggon-women would take up the song and make the
whole canopy of heaven ring with it; the poor little larks soaring up
there were quite vanquished in this singing contest.
Towards evening the whole caravan halted by a green mound standing out
upon the level plain. Who knows who raised it? or whether our bones or
others were in it? Our bones certainly, for the whole plain around was a
blank desert.
Not a village, not a town anywhere near; only a solitary hut surrounded
with ricks or stacks might be seen here and there, far apart from each
other; not a trace of arable land; the whole district is nothing but
pasturage for flocks and herds.
From time to time the Fata Morgana exhibits her juggleries, but we are
accustomed to it now, and nobody is deceived thereby. She inundates the
distant landscape with an undulous sea, but nobody wishes to bathe in
it. She shows us umbrageous woods, but nobody hastens to refresh himself
there. She conjures up cities and palaces which nobody takes the trouble
to admire. We, the sober children of men, have discovered the meaning of
all these enchantments, and don't care a rap what sort of marvel this
faded old fairy lays before us.
But on this particular day the Fata Morgana was in a peculiarly good
humour. Very rarely does the sun burn so fiercely as it did then. The
earth regularly cracked beneath it, and the beds of waterpools became
dried clayey hummocks. It was just the day for the Fata Morgana's elfin
extravagances. A pack of young girls, the dreamiest spectators
imaginable, were ascending a green hill to gaze down upon the marvels
of atmospheric phenomena.
All round about surges the boundless sea full of swiftly advancing
waves; from time to time figures rise out of it silhouetted against the
sky. There are swimming blue islands, which grow up and swell out as the
women gaze at them, green forests overspread their shores, the shadows
of the trees are visible in the water; and then, suddenly, the island
sinks lower, the waves of the sea rise, and clash together over its
highest point. And now on the other side arise vast aërial palaces with
transparent towers and hazy blue temples, and these also are tossed up
and down by that elfin wag as if they were swimming upon it, and when
she has tired of them she makes endless havoc of them, and towers and
cities tumble together into a heap of ruins; and then the sea also
disappears, and the eye sees nothing but a flock of migratory cranes
coming slowly along.
The girls on the hill begin explaining the phenomenon to each other.
"Look! that building over there was just like the church at Debreczen
with the two towers. And that other one that has just fallen to pieces
is like the watch-tower at the gates of Grosswardein--it is just as
crazy looking."
"Girls, girls!" scolded a young bride, who was suckling her plump little
baby at the foot of the hill, "one ought not to joke about such things.
It is not right to recognize any place in the Fata Morgana. Woe will
befall the town which she shows. Have done with such profane
prattling!"
"Look!" suddenly cried they all, and the word died away on their lips;
every one looked, with eyes petrified by wonder and terror.
What was it that had suddenly come to light in the sky?
Towards Hadház, high above the aërial road, the misty shape of a
horseman was suddenly sketched out against the pallid sky--a real
warrior on horseback, with a quiver on his shoulder, a peaked turban on
his head, and his hand on his hip. The whole shape was magnified against
the distant horizon into gigantic proportions, which made one's heart
beat to look at it; the feet of the horse did not touch the ground, and
below and through them one could see the sky. The whole thing looked
like the bright-blue shape of an armed phantom cast upon the pale,
yellow sky.
"O Lord, forsake us not!" murmured the terrified and helpless crowd at
the sight of this strange apparition, which natural philosophers have
seen so often and in so many places, and have since explained, though
they know neither the why nor the wherefore of it.
The shapes of men far away swam forth into the sky, magnified into
gigantic spirits of the mist. Every moment fresh and fresh shapes
emerged from the aërial billows, all of them armed giants. Some only
emerged from the surface of the delusive sea as far as the bodies of
their horses; of others one could only see the heads and shoulders; some
had their shadows joined on to their bodies, others showed double
shadows glued together at different ends with heads, arms, and weapons
turned upwards and downwards, and suddenly the whole thing slowly
dissolved, and nought remained behind in the sky but two broad
wheel-like spokes, two bright-blue ribbons of light on a misty,
yellowish background, shining upwards from the earth.
"Alas, alas! the Turks and Tartars are lying in wait for us," exclaimed
the women, confused, terrified, without friend or counsellor, in the
midst of the wilderness.
The mothers clasped their children to their breasts, the girls scattered
about their precious kerchiefs and ornaments, that while the robbers
were picking them up they themselves might have time to escape. Every
one believed that the danger was at their very heels.
"Let's be off! Let's be off! By the Böszörmény road! Let us fly through
the pasture lands! Hasten! hasten!"
The mob of poor desperate creatures turned aside from the road; the
waggons, greatly to the damage of the horses, plunged along over the
fields where there was no sign of a track. Nobody sang any more now,
whether songs or hymns, but a pious soul here and there sighed in secret
as she looked behind her, first into the formidable distance, and then
up into the familiar sky. "Thou, O Almighty," they whispered, "Thou who
in Thy heaven hath marvellously revealed to us the lying-in-wait of our
evil foes, defend us, Thy poor weak servants, from our evil pursuers,
who have none to trust in save Thee alone, O God of heaven!"
And, indeed, the Lord was to work yet other marvels that day.
As the flying women were still looking timorously behind them, the
sportive phenomena suddenly disappeared from earth and sky; on the
break-up of the Fata Morgana the horizon became sharply visible again,
and the birch forests of Hadház loomed forth faintly blue in the
distance. Clouds with sharply defined silver linings arose in the sky
from that direction as if the tempest were puffing gigantic frothy
bubbles before it; gradually the horizon grew darker and darker,
dark-blue clouds came crowding up one on the top of another; it was as
though a deep voice in the distance were roaring: "Fly, fly!"
And the waggons went jingling and clattering along towards the confines
of Szörmeny.
* * * * *
Badrul Beg had now been lying in ambush in the forest of Hadház for two
days. He had performed everything which Kuczuk Pasha had commanded him
in his own way. Every one from whom he had inquired the way he had cut
down immediately after he had done him that service, so that he should
not betray him. Every one of his band was forced to remain on the spot
where he stood, nobody was allowed to quit the forest, and every
inhabitant of the environs who happened to stray thither accidentally
died before he could betray what he had seen. They were all shot down by
arrows, arrows which utter no sound, and never brag of their heroic
deeds as the big-mouthed guns do.
Nobody should betray them, nobody should carry tidings concerning them
to the women and girls of Debreczen. And God?--Ah! He sees these women
thus hastening to destruction, He looks at them through the mirror of
the Fata Morgana, and hides from them the crafty snare laid for them in
the very nick of time. Blessed be the name of the Lord!
On the evening of the third day the sentinels stationed on the border of
the forest informed Badrul Beg that far off in the _puszta_ a long line
of dust could be seen, as if hundreds and hundreds of waggons were
coming along one after another.
"It is they!"
Badrul Beg mounted to the top of a hillock, that he might see for
himself--perchance he was the enormous giant whose misty form had first
appeared in the sky, with the quiver on his shoulder and the peaked
turban on his head.
"It is they! Only let them come nearer! Nobody can warn them of their
danger--nobody!"
But suddenly the approaching line of dust stops, remains stationary for
some moments, and then suddenly begins to start off sideways, and, so
far from slowly creeping on nearer, darts aside among the hedges with
dart-like rapidity.
Badrul Beg looked furiously around him. "Which of you can have betrayed
us to them?" he cried.
As if suddenly answering his question, the whole forest fell a-soughing.
The tall, slim birch trees began to rustle and shiver; a frightful
hurricane had arisen over the plain, howling and roaring, and enveloping
the whole firmament with clouds of yellow dust.
Badrul was not used to fear the tempest--Kuczuk Pasha did not allow him
to.
"Forward with your lances!" he cried to his horsemen. "Split the tempest
with the points of them! After those fugitives! Out upon the open
plain!"
Hah! but out on the plain there it was another Master who commanded now.
In the midst of the open country, midway between pursuers and pursued,
came scudding along the bride of the tempest, the wild whirlwind, that
slim fairy who dances so majestically right over the smooth plain with
her comet-like head among the clouds, as if her scattered locks were
floating there, while her legs, like spindles, were twirling in the
dust. She sways to the left, curtseying with her slim body, and throwing
back her defiant head ever higher and higher. Woe to all frail and
perishable creatures who come in her way, for she will tear them to
pieces and scatter them abroad. The roofs of houses, haystacks,
prominent trees, if once they are caught in the savage sweep of her
garment, she hurls up to the sky, and then dashes to the earth again
with furious caprice. After her, murmuring and growling, comes her angry
bridegroom--the thunderstorm--who pursues his defiant bride with a fiery
whip in his hand; with his whip he will scourge her if he catches her.
Ah! the love of the elemental spirits is terrible.
The whirlwind in an instant enveloped the band of Badrul Beg in such a
cloud of dust that nobody knew from thenceforth whether he were going
backwards or forwards. The air was darkened. One horseman could not see
his next fellow for the whirling dust, in whose murkiness he could not
even distinguish the lightning flashes, he could only hear the
approaching thunder as it rolled along the sky, shook the earth, and
silenced the savage howl of the tempest.
Badrul Beg's charger reared beneath him, the wind took the turban from
his head and tore the pennant from his lance.
"Ah, thou god--thou God of the Magyars!" thundered the Moor, shaking his
fist at the sky. "Thou hast taken the part of Thine own people, but for
all that Thou shalt not save them from me!"
At the very moment when the presumptuous wretch uttered this blasphemy,
a stony substance smote his shoulder, so that his arm hung down benumbed
at his side.
What was that?
Nothing but a large piece of ice, coming before the rest by way of
warning. Immediately afterwards heaven discharged, as from slings, its
rattling, clattering stones, jagged lumps of ice came plunging down from
the sky. Some of them were like birds' eggs, others like transparent
nuts, others like the heads of spiked clubs, ten little pieces all glued
together, with a murderous lump in the middle of a pound's weight. The
lightning flashed incessantly, sending its messages from one quarter of
the heavens to the other, the ice-flogged earth in the distant plain
gave forth a sound as if it were about to collapse beneath the falling
sky.
"Allah Kerim! Allah Akbar!" exclaimed the freebooters, vainly flying
from the pursuant hailstones, which smote them down from every side with
frightful velocity. The neighing of the tortured and terrified horses
made the din still more terrible, and the boldest were dismayed by the
sweeping lightning flashes which plunged down among them with fiery
heads, illuminating the dense body of hail which seemed to have
dissolved into millions of diamonds and silver bullets in its descent
from above.
"There is no deliverance save with the 'Lord God!'" howled the Turks.
And off they plunged whithersoever their horses took them, some in the
direction of the forest they had just quitted, where the wind-shattered
trees received them, others galloped on still further, and plunged into
a stream which the water-spout within an hour had swollen into a raging
river. Others again, flying before the hurricane, fell right within its
path, were struck down and scattered about miles away. When the tempest
had passed over, Badrul Beg could only find fifty horsemen. Of these
about twenty lay dead on the ground, scattered far and wide, with
frightful wounds on their foreheads, twisted limbs and broken legs; in
some cases horse and rider had been struck dead together, others had
been so buried by the ice that only their hands appeared above the
frozen mass. The whole plain presented the spectacle of a desert strewn
over with stones and pebbles of different sizes, but all equally white
and cold.
The sons of the Ethiopian palm desert had never seen ice before.
"Lo! what wonders befall in this earth!" said Badrul Beg, in his dismay.
"Who can fight against Heaven? The God of the Magyars works miracles on
their behalf! Allah defend us from the wrath of this strange god!"
Nevertheless, he was not quite certain whether Kuczuk Pasha would be
inclined to believe him if he were to return with a shattered host after
letting the women go. How _could_ he believe from mere hearsay a marvel
the like of which no true believer had ever heard? But he could have no
surer witness than these iron trunks, which he had brought with him to
hold the jewels of the captured women, if he filled them with the cold
white stones slung by the celestial slings; when he saw those the Pasha
must give credence even to a story bordering upon the marvellous.
So he nicely filled four large trunks right up to the brim with ice, and
binding them on the backs of two horses, himself trotted after them. For
the sake of greater security, he kept the keys of all the boxes himself,
and sealed up their locks with sealing-wax.
It took him a couple of days to get back to Grosswardein, for he went a
bit out of his way to collect together his scattered soldiers; and a
sorry lot they were, with their broken limbs, battered heads, and black
and blue bodies. All the time a burning sun shone down upon them from
morn to eve, and the water was dripping from under the iron trunks, and
exhaling in vapour from above them at the same time. On reaching
Grosswardein, he appeared before Kuczuk Pasha with a broken arm and a
downcast face, and told him the whole story, the very telling of which
made him tremble.
Kuczuk Pasha's face grew very wrath at this fairy tale, and not a word
of it would he believe. Then Badrul Beg had the iron trunks brought
forward to corroborate him, that he might see with his own eyes the
stones of the celestial slingers.
And lo! when the seals were broken and the locks were opened, there was
nothing at all in the trunks. There was not a trace of the celestial
stones.
Badrul Beg rent his clothes.
"Merciful Allah!" he cried, "lo! the God of the Magyars has caused to
disappear from the locked boxes the stones with which he stoned my
warriors to death!"
"Miserable coward!" thundered Kuczuk Pasha, who did not believe a single
word of it all. "I suppose the meaning of it is that those valiant
amazons have given you a good drubbing?"
Whereupon they led Badrul Beg forth from his presence, and hung him up
in front of the gate, and there he hung till evening. As for the Moors
who were with him, they were first decimated, and then the rest had
their ears cut off and were sent to Belgrade.
But the women of Debreczen at the very same time returned unharmed to
the arms of their dear ones. To the very end of his life Kuczuk Pasha
firmly believed that it was they who had drubbed Badrul Beg so roundly,
and from henceforth he held them in the greatest respect.
* * * * *
This story is recorded in the archives of the noble city of Debreczen,
and ye who read thereof reflect that God still exists, and that He is
always able to defend His chosen from His high heaven, and now also His
arm is not shortened.
II
THE COMPULSORY DIVERSION--AN OLD BARON'S YARN
I wonder, my dear fellows, if any of you know the Countess Stephen
Repey, the younger one I mean, not the old lady, that little Creole
princess--my little black-eyed cobold, as I call her? Mine indeed, pish!
I don't mean that, of course. That is only a _façon de parler_. All of
us, my dear fellows, as you very well know, have sighed after her
enough, at some time or other, but none of you have had, like me, the
luck to travel at night with her in the same coach. Well, naturally, her
maid was there too. Still it was a great bit of luck all the same. But
no more of such luck for me, thank you.
One day, at her castle of Kérekvár, it suddenly occurred to the
Countess, quite late in the evening, that the Casino ball at Arad[8] was
coming off on the morrow, and she must be there at all hazards. No
sooner said than done. The horses were put to at once, and as there was
nobody with her but me, she said: "I pray you, my dear Baron, be so good
as to escort me to Arad."
[Footnote 8: The Cheltenham of Hungary.]
Well, when it came to "dear Baron," what on earth could I say?
"Countess! _ma déesse_, it is very dark; we shall only get upset and
break our legs, and how can we dance with broken legs? We shall have to
cross the three Körös rivers, the bridge over one of them is sure to be
crazy as usual, and in we shall plump. Then at Szalenta we shall have to
pass through the deuce of a wood, full of robbers, and I shall never be
able to defend you single-handed against the whole lot of them. And
besides, what need is there to hurry? Early to-morrow morning, after a
nice cup of tea, you have only to step into your carriage, your four bay
horses will fly with us to Arad, and by the evening you will be quite
ready with your toilet."
That's what I said, but you know how it always is, try and persuade a
woman not to do a thing, and she'll insist on doing it all the more. She
didn't want to drive her horses to death, she said, and whoever heard of
wanting to rest after a short journey like that. Besides, she loved so
to travel by night. What with the stars and the frogs, it was so
beautiful, so romantic, and much more such stuff. But bless you, that
was a mere pretext. The fact was, she had suddenly got the idea into her
darling little noddle, and nothing in heaven or earth could turn her
from her purpose.
_Enfin_, I was between two stools. I had either to go with her or remain
alone in the castle. Of course I chose the former alternative,
especially after she gave me permission to sit opposite to her in the
coach.
I enjoyed myself splendidly, I can tell you. The Countess, by degrees,
absolutely loaded me with her favours. First of all she put her handbag
in my lap, to which she presently added a muff; next she hung a
reticule upon my arm; finally she entrusted to me a couple of
band-boxes, after that she fell asleep. I could have asked anything I
liked of her, especially when the coach stumbled and she awoke in terror
and began asking for all her belongings one after another, dozing off
again when she was quite sure they were all there. Later on, the
lady's-maid began to groan: "O Lord! how my head aches!"--whereupon I
also pretended to fall asleep.
Suddenly we all started up in alarm, the coach had suddenly moved
sideways, and then come to a dead stop as if it had fallen into a ditch.
My Countess also awoke and asked, stupidly, what was the matter.
The lackey leaped from the box and came to the carriage window.
"Your ladyship, I am afraid we have lost our way."
"Well, what of that?" said the Countess; "we can't stop here; there's a
road in front of us, I suppose, and we are bound to arrive somewhere if
we only follow it."
"Yes, but----"
"Yes, but--what do you mean? The road must lead somewhere, I suppose?"
"Saving your ladyship's presence, we are in the Szalenta wood."
"Well, the Szalenta wood is no trackless wilderness. We shall get to the
end of it in a couple of hours."
"Yes, your ladyship, but the coachman is afraid."
"The coachman! What business has he to be afraid? there's nothing about
that in his contract, is there?"
"He's afraid of some mischief befalling your ladyship."
"What has the coachman to do with me, I should like to know?"
Here I thought it my duty to intervene.
"Countess, _ma déesse_, this is no joke. This comes, you see, of
nocturnal excursions. Here we are camping out in the middle of a forest,
and the robbers who abound in this forest will come and take our horses,
our money, and our lives. I only wish I had a revolver."
But the little demon only laughed, and, before I could prevent it, she
had opened the coach door and leaped out.
"Oh! what a splendid night. How fragrant the forest is; how the
glow-worms sparkle in the grass. Have you no eyes, Baron?"
Eyes, indeed! when I couldn't see three paces before me for the
darkness.
"But surely I see something shining through the trees over there," she
continued.
My blood grew cold within me. We were approaching some robbers' den
evidently.
The coachman answered the question from his box with the voice of a man
who is already being throttled.
"That, your ladyship, is the pot-house which the country people call the
'guest-detaining _csárdá_.'"[9]
[Footnote 9: Inn.]
"Guest detaining! Bravo! The very thing for us. Let's hasten thither."
I was desperate. "For God's sake, Countess, what would you do? Why, that
_csárdá_ is a notorious resort of thieves, where they would kill the
whole lot of us; a regular murder-hole, whose landlord is hand in glove
with all the ruffians of the district, and where numbers and numbers of
people have come to an evil end."
The naughty girl only laughed at me. She told me I had read all these
horrors in the story-books, and there was not a word of truth in any of
them. She admitted, indeed, that if there had been another inn she would
have gone to that in preference, but as this was the only one we had no
choice. She then ordered the coachman to drive the horses along very
gingerly, while she went before on foot to show him the way.
Every lamentation and objection was useless, we had to stumble along in
the direction of that cursed _csárdá_, for she threatened to go alone if
we were afraid to come too.
It is a fact that that naughty little fairy was afraid of nothing.
When we drew nearer to the _csárdá_, a merry hullabooing sort of music
suddenly struck upon our ears, though all the windows were closed by
shutters.
"_Mon Dieu!_ it is absolutely _full_ of robbers."
"You see how it is," remarked the Countess, mischievously; "we started
to go to a ball, and at a ball we have arrived. _No_ one, you see, can
avoid his fate"--and thereupon, with appalling foolhardiness, she
marched straight towards the door.
For a moment I really thought I should have turned tail, left her there,
and made a bolt of it. But, _noblesse oblige_. And besides, I couldn't,
for Mademoiselle Cesarine, the lady's-maid, had gripped my arm so
tightly that I was powerless to release myself. The poor creature was
more than half dead with fright; at any rate, she was only half alive
when we followed the Countess together.
Even outside the door we could hear quite distinctly the wild
dance-music and the merry uproar proceeding from a parcel of men inside;
but my Countess was not a bit put out by it. Boldly she opened the door
and stepped into the _csárdá_.
It was a large, long, dirty, whitewashed room, where in my first terror
I could see about fifty men dancing about. Subsequently, when I was able
to count them, there turned out to be only nine of them, including the
landlord, who did not dance, and three gipsies who provided the music.
But it seemed to me that five stalwart ruffians were quite enough to
deal with our little party.
They were all tall fellows, who could easily hit the girders of the roof
with their clenched fists, and strapping fellows too, with big, broad
shoulders; their five muskets were piled up together in a corner.
Well, we were in a pretty tight place, it seemed to me. The rascals when
they saw us instantly left off dancing, and seemed to be amazed at our
audacity. But my Countess said to them, with a charming smile--
"Forgive me, my friends, for interrupting your pastime. We have lost our
way, and as we couldn't go any further in the dark, we have come here
for shelter, if you will give it to us."
At these words one of the fellows, sprucer and slimmer a good deal than
the others, gave his spiral moustache an extra twirl, took off his
vagabond's hat, clapped his heels together, and made my Countess a
profound bow. He assured her she was not inconveniencing them in the
least; on the contrary, they would be very glad of her society. "I am
the master here," he added, "Józsi Fekete" (the famous robber, by the
way), "at your ladyship's service. But who, then, is your ladyship?"
Before I could pull the Countess's mantilla to prevent her from blurting
out who she was, she had already replied: "I am the Countess Repey, from
Kérekvár."
"Then I am indeed fortunate," said the rascal. "I knew the old Count. He
fired after me with a double musket on one occasion, though he did not
hit me. Pray sit down, Countess."
A pleasant introduction, I must say.
The Countess sat down on a bench, the fellow beside her; me they didn't
ask to take a seat at all.
"And where did your ladyship think of going on such a night?"
(I winked at her: "Don't tell him.")
"We were going to Arad, to the Casino ball."
("Adieu all our jewels," I thought.)
"Oh, then you have come here just at the nick of time. Your ladyship
need not go a step further, for we are giving a ball here, if you do not
despise our invitation. We have very good gipsy musicians--the Szalenta
band, you know. They can play splendid _csárdáses_."
The rascal didn't stand on ceremony in the least, but no sooner did
they begin dashing off the _csárdás_, than he threw his buttoned dolman
half over his shoulder, and seizing the Countess round the waist,
twirled her off amidst the lot of them.
Another fellow immediately hastened up to Mademoiselle Cesarine, and
ravished her away in a half-fainting condition; but she had no need to
think of herself, for she was passed from one hand to another so that
her feet never touched the ground.
As for my Countess, she excelled herself. She danced with as much fire
and vivacity as if she were sweeping over the waxed floor of the
assembly rooms at Arad. Never have I seen her so amiable, so charming,
as she was at that moment. I have seen Hungarian dances at other times,
and have always been struck by their quaintness, but nobody ever showed
me how much there was really in them as that good-for-nothing rascal
showed me then.
First of all he paced majestically round with his partner, as if this
were the proudest moment of his life, gazing haughtily down upon her
from over his shoulder; then he would shout down the music when at its
loudest--and it was pretty loud too--and emerge from the midst of the
throng after his partner, she all the time swaying modestly backwards
and forwards before him, like a butterfly which touches every flower but
lights on none; and, indeed, I am only speaking the truth when I say
that her feet never seemed to touch the earth. The fellow, foppishly
enough, would keep bending towards her as if he were about to embrace
her on the spot, and then would stop short, stamping with one foot and
flinging back his head haughtily, alluring the enchanting little fairy
hither and thither after him. Sometimes he would rush right up to her as
if about to cast himself upon her bosom, and then, with a sudden twirl,
would be far away from her again, and only the glances of their eyes
showed that they were partners. Presently, as if in high dudgeon, he
would turn away from his partner, plant himself right in front of the
gipsy musicians, and prance furiously up and down before them, and after
thus dancing away his anger, suddenly patter back to the Countess, and
seize and whirl her round and round as if he were a hurricane and she a
leaping flame.
During this spacious pastime I was constantly agonized by the thought
that perhaps this mad rogue in his excitement might permit himself some
unbecoming demonstration towards the Countess. The temptation you know
was great. The Countess was entirely in his power, the fellow was a
gallows-bird, with the noose half round his neck already; an extra
misdeed or two, more or less, could do him no further harm. I was firmly
resolved that if he insulted the Countess by the least familiarity, I
would make a rush for the piled-up muskets, seize one of them, and shoot
the villainous trifler dead. I affirm on my honour that this I was
firmly resolved to do.
But there was no necessity for it. The dancers finished the three
dances, the robber-chief politely conducted his partner back to her
place, and respectfully kissed her hand, after thanking her heartily for
her kindness; and with that he approached me, and amicably tapping me on
the shoulder, inquired--
"Well, old chap, can't _you_ dance?"
Fancy calling me old chap.
"Thank you," I said, "I cannot."
"More's the pity;" and back he went to the Countess.
"I beg your ladyship's pardon," he began, "for not being sufficiently
prepared for the reception of such distinguished guests, but I hope you
will indulgently accept what we have to offer you; it is not much, but
it is good."
So he meant to give us not only the ball, but the supper after it.
And a splendid banquet it was, I must say. A large caldron full of
stewed calf's flesh was produced, put upon the long table, and we all
took our places round it. Of plates and dishes there was no trace. Every
one used his own claws, by which I mean to say that, with a hunk of
bread in one hand, and a clasp-knife in the other, we fished up our
marrow-bones from the caldron itself.
As for my Countess, she fell to as if she had been starving for three
days. The robber-chief fished up for her, with his brass-studded
clasp-knife, the reddest morsels of flesh (they literally swam in
pepper), and piled them up on her white roll. It was something splendid,
I can tell you.
Suddenly it occurred to the rascal that _I_ was not eating.
"Fall to, old chap," said he. "Stolen goods make the fattest dishes, you
know."
Nice company, eh?
"Thank you, I can't eat it; it is too much peppered," I said.
"All right; so much the more for us."
The wine, naturally, was sent round _in the flask_; not a glass was to
be seen. Józsi Fekete, as is the way with boors, first drank from the
flask himself, and then, having wiped the mouth of it with his wide
shirt-sleeve, presented it to the Countess. And, bless my heart, she
took it, and drank out of it. An amazing woman, really!
Then the flippant rogue turned to me, and offered me a drink.
"Come, drink away, old chap," he said (why always harp upon my grey
hairs), "for of course you are going to make a night of it."
"Thank you, I cannot drink. I'm a teetotaler," I said.
I was now thoroughly convinced that they were going to drink themselves
mad drunk preparatory to knocking our brains out. And, indeed, they did
drink a cask of wine between the five of them, yet when they rose from
the table not one of them so much as staggered.
While they were treating the gipsies, the robber-chief approached me
again.
"Well, old chap" (devil take him with his old chap!), "so you neither
eat, nor drink, nor dance, eh? How, then, do you amuse yourself? Do you
play cards?"
And with that he produced a pack from his pocket. So he wanted to find
out how much money I had in my pocket, eh?
"I know no game at cards."
"Well, I'll pretty soon teach you one. It is quite easy. Look, now! I
put one card here and another card there. You lay upon this, and I lay
upon that, and whichever of us draws a court card of the corresponding
suit takes the stake."
The rascal was actually teaching _me_ _Landsknecht_, and I was obliged
to pretend to learn from him.
What could I do? I was obliged to sit down and play with him. I had in
my pocket a lot of coppers. I thought I might as well risk them, so I
put them on the table.
"What! We don't play for browns here! We are not bumpkins. Here's the
bank!" and with that he flung upon the table a whole heap of silver
florins and gold ducats.
I also had a few small silver coins in my purse, and, with much fear and
trembling, I placed one of them on the first card. He dealt out, and I
won the stake. The rascal paid up. Not for the world would I have taken
up the money, I left it where it was. A second and a third time I won.
Again I did not gather my stakes. The fourth, fifth, sixth time, every
time, in fact, fortune smiled on me. I began to perspire. It is a
frightful situation when a man plays cards with a scoundrel and wins his
money continually. The seventh stake also was mine. By this time a whole
army of silver coins stood before me. A cold sweat began to trickle down
my temples. Why couldn't I be as lucky as this at Presburg, at the club,
during the session of the Diet? Again I staked the whole lot, inwardly
praying that I might lose it all. In vain, for the eighth time I won. I
was a doomed man, there could be no doubt about it. The rascal smiled,
and said: "Well, old chap, you cannot very well be in love with the
pretty Countess, for you win at cards so shamefully." The rascal even
dared to chaff me. I trembled in every limb when the ninth deal began.
Yes, sure enough, again it fell to my share. The robber struck the table
with his fist, and laughed aloud. "Well, old chap," he cried, "if you go
on winning like this I shall lose the whole county of Bihar in an hour's
time," and with that he pocketed what money remained and rose from the
table. I took my courage in both hands and ventured to offer him the
money I had won. The fellow looked me up and down as haughtily as a
Hidalgo. "What do you take me for?" said he; "pick up your winnings at
once or I'll pitch you and them out of doors." Good heavens! what was I
to do with all this money? money enough to be murdered for, and I had no
doubt they _would_ beat me to death for it presently. I took it all and
gave it to the gipsy musicians. And only after I had done it did I
reflect what a foolish thing it was to do. For how could I more clearly
have betrayed the fact that I was indeed a man of unlimited means?
The silly gipsies thereupon gathered round me and insisted upon playing
me an air. What was my favourite air, they asked? I got out of it by
referring them to the Countess. I told them to play _her_ favourite air,
and she would accompany it with her voice.
The Countess certainly did not require much pressing. She began to sing
with her delightful siren voice--
"Summer and winter, the _puszta_[10] is my dwelling,"
[Footnote 10: The Hungarian heath.]
and so sweetly, so enchantingly did she sing, that I quite forgot my
surroundings and fancied I was in a private box at the Budapest casino.
I actually began to applaud.
The robber-chief also applauded. And now he said he would teach the
Countess _his_ favourite song. And then the madcap rascal roared out
some rustic melody which certainly _I_ had never heard before.
"Well, old chap," he said, when he had finished, "it is now your turn to
sing us something."
I was in a terrible pother. _I_ sing? I _sing_ in that hour of mortal
anguish? I, who didn't know a single note except "Home, Sweet Home."
"I can't sing at all," I said. And that wicked, frivolous woman began
laughing at me frightfully, as involuntarily I fell a-humming an air
from some opera. I may mention I have a horrible hoarse sort of voice,
not unlike a peacock's.
"If you won't sing," she said to me in French, "we shall all be
insulted, see if we don't."
What could I do? With the dart of terror in my heart, and the pressure
of mortal fear in my throat, I piped forth my "Home, Sweet Home." I felt
all along I was making a woeful mess of it. Up to the middle of the song
the Countess behaved with great decorum; but just as I was working my
way up to the most pathetic part, and brought out a most cruel flourish,
she burst out laughing, and the whole band of robbers began to laugh
with her, till at last I also was obliged to smile, though, oddly
enough, there was no joke in it at all, as far as I could see.
Then they fell to dancing again. The Countess was indefatigable. And so
it went on till broad daylight. When the sun shone through the windows
she said to the robber how obliged she was for the entertainment, but
enough was as good as a feast, and would he, therefore, put to the
horses and let us be off?
Well, now at last we shall all be knocked on the head straightway, I
thought.
The robber went out, hunted up the coachman and the lackey, gave the
necessary orders, and came back to say the carriage was awaiting us.
No doubt they meant to shoot us down on the road.
I got into the carriage far more alarmed than I was when I got out of
it. It was a suspicious circumstance that he did not separate me from my
companion. Evidently they intended to make sure of us and murder us all
together.
The rascal himself took horse, galloped along by the side of our
carriage, and conducted us to the turnpike-road, so as to put us on our
way. Then he raised his cap, wished us a merry evening, and galloped
back again.
Only when we came to Zerind did I venture to believe that I was alive.
Only then did I begin to reproach the Countess for involving us in an
adventure which might have ended miserably enough. Suppose, I said,
these rascals had not been afraid of me? Why, then they might have
practised all sorts of _sottises_ upon her. And then to dance with
vagabonds in a _csárdá_ till dawn of day! Unpardonable!
All the way to Arad I was indulging myself with the hope that if I was
very civil to the Countess she would not give me away by revealing the
secret of this disreputable adventure. At six o'clock we reached Arad,
and as we dismounted at the door of the reception-room, she told three
of my acquaintances what had befallen us. Of course every one speedily
knew of our misadventure. So I was not even able to tell the story my
own way.
And, again, she was the loveliest woman at the ball. And she knew it,
and that was one of the chief reasons why she came. It is true she did
not dance a step. She excused herself by saying she was tired to death.
I can well believe it. From midnight to dawn she had danced nineteen
_csárdáses_. Why, I, who hadn't danced at all, could hardly stand on my
legs.
As for me, I hastened to the card-room. Now that fortune has embraced
you, hug her tight, I thought to myself. At one table they were playing
_Landsknecht_. "Now's your time--make a plunge," I said to myself. But I
had the most cursed luck. I lost a thousand florins straight off.
Fortune evidently only pursues you when she sees that you are afraid of
her.
Six months later I came across a newspaper in which was an account of
the summary conviction and execution, by hanging, of the famous
robber-chief, Józsi.
I took the newspaper to the Countess Stephen Repey, and showed it to
her.
"Fancy," she said, when she had read the case through, "and such a good
dancer as he was, too."
III
THE SHERIFF OF CASCHAU--A FRAGMENT OF AN OLD CHRONICLE[11]
[Footnote 11: The idea of this story was subsequently
expanded into the novel "Pretty Michal."]
It happened the same year that, in the place of old Tobias Kesmarki, the
hundred electors of the city of Caschau, to wit, forty-five Hungarians,
forty Germans, and fifteen Wends, after due deliberation and by common
consent, elected as Sheriff his Honour Michael Dóronczius, as being a
man of understanding and blameless life, and respected by all men.
The hundred burgesses, having so done, went forth in solemn procession,
headed by their Honours the Fürmenders[12] and the Conrector, to the
burial-ground outside the gates, where the whole ground was thickly
strewn with straw, it being Water Cross Day,[13] when it is sore cold,
and the feet of men grow numb in the very council chamber.
[Footnote 12: Guardians of the orphans and poor.]
[Footnote 13: The Feast of the Epiphany.]
But it was the custom that the newly elected Sheriff should always be
dug into his office in the churchyard, where humanity is least of all
disturbed by official cares, nay, where, rather, the bulging tombs all
around bid him remember that righteousness and good deeds alone abide
upon the earth, while all else turns to dust.
Wherefore, with no accompaniment of music, the Sheriff elect and the
retiring Sheriff, accompanied by the town councillors, proceed to the
churchyard to perform this ceremony, standing within the gate of the
churchyard, there to await the masters of the City Guilds coming with
their salutations.
All of them came in procession to meet the Sheriff elect, with the
badges of their respective Guilds. One by one they salute the new
Sheriff, but none of them give him gifts; they do but show them to him,
and then take them back again, to signify that he hath first to deserve
these same gifts before he receive them.
First of all the millers approach him and exhibit to him a fine white
loaf of well-winnowed wheat, and say--
"We will nourish thee with fine white loaves after this sort, if thou
wilt be a faithful Sheriff unto us."
Then the vintners, who in those days were a rich and goodly Guild,
address him in like manner, and exhibit to him a cask of red wine.
In like manner the weavers, the furriers, and the cobblers all allured
the new Sheriff with the hope of receiving of their masterpieces, to
wit, beautiful white pieces of cloth, rich cambric, shaggy furs, and
bravely embroidered shoes, if so be he remain faithful to their city to
the end of his term.
Last of all come the carpenters, who exhibit to the new Sheriff a
brand-new waggon, to which horses are harnessed, filled with smoothly
planed boards.
And when the master of the Guild of Carpenters stands before the
Sheriff, he thus addresses him--
"Behold, now, we have piled up this brave heap of hornbeams that we may
burn thee therewith if thou do betray us."
It was usual to say this on the occasion of the election of a Sheriff in
the city of Caschau, and nobody was offended thereby. For in those sad
times we were often forced to defend our cities with fire and steel
against foes of three different nations, whilst as a fourth enemy we
reckoned the numerous freebooters, who had turned Turks after once being
Christians, and prowled in the environs of the city at night, to snap up
any women and children who might fall in their way and sell them to the
Turks. And our fifth enemy were the malefactors lurking in the town
itself; and our sixth enemy was the terrible pestilence which so often
visited our gates; while our seventh and most ancient adversary was the
infernal Evil One himself, from whom Heaven in its mercy defend us. Thus
in those days the Sheriff had to defend the city against seven divers
sorts of enemies, and see to it that they were all kept well outside the
gates, wherefore he had to sustain many sieges, guard the walls day and
night, cudgel in fist, persecute evildoers, or threaten them with the
terrible _hárum palzarum_,[14] fumigate or steep in lye all goods
brought into the city by foreign chapmen, avert religious strife,
frustrate the wiles of Satan, always endeavouring to judge righteous
judgments, neither for the sake of lucre nor because of any interior
impulse pronouncing any sentence which might call to Heaven for
vengeance or make Hell applaud.
[Footnote 14: Gradually compressing the skull between
three sharp stakes till it burst.]
None feared lest his Honour Master Dóronczius should not prove just such
a Sheriff as the town desired, for he was a man with no visible flaw,
and known to be a righteous, God-fearing man, of whom nobody could say
an ill word.
Wherefore, after performing the usual time-honoured ceremony in the
churchyard, with great rejoicing and in solemn procession they brought
back his Honour into the council chamber of the town hall, where, having
set him down in a large velvet easy-chair, four aldermen, seizing the
four legs of the said easy-chair, raised it aloft, to the triumphant
musical accompaniment of the town trumpeters and the militia drums,
while the people present shouted a threefold hurrah. Whereupon the whole
town council went in solemn procession to the churches, both Protestant
and Roman Catholic, and everywhere sang a _Te Deum_ with great
enthusiasm, and after listening to a sermon in Hungarian and a sermon in
German, returned to the Sheriff's house to sit down to a great banquet,
during which the united choirs, conducted by the precentor, sang all
manner of delightful melodies, and towards evening platters of pitch
were ignited on the angles of the bastions, and the howitzers also were
fired off.
And the city of Caschau felt fully justified on the day of the election
of its Sheriff in drinking so many barrels of wine and ditto beer with
great rejoicing, because his Honour, Master Dóronczius, was quite
capable of so ordering every manner of business and difficulty that
nobody had the least cause for anxiety.
Nevertheless, it so happened, late in the evening of the festival of St.
Peter and St. Paul (next evening), that a couple of watchmen,
Wurmdrucker and Kebluska by name, to whom had been assigned the
patrolling of the streets, while strolling round the large building
known as the Turkish lock-up house, perceived a figure enwrapped in a
black cloak come hastily out of a house, which figure, on perceiving
them, suddenly crouched down under the gate as if with the intent of
hiding from them.
Now, as they had had strict orders to arrest and lock up for the night
in the nearest ward-house every living soul, good or bad, who should be
found in the streets without a lamp after the hour for closing the
gates, which was proclaimed by a blast of horns from the top of the
great tower--every such soul, if a gentleman, to be fined a thaler next
morning, or if a poor man, then half a thaler, or if he had nothing,
then to be well trounced--the two watchmen determined to seize and stop
the night wanderer thus confronting them. Wurmdrucker having a lamp made
of some paper-like, compressible membrane, thereupon held it in front of
him that he might see the face of the unknown person, while Kebluska
stretched his halberd out against him, and cried with a loud voice,
"Who's there?" in Hungarian, German, and Slavonic, that he might be able
to answer in one at least of the three languages of the town.
But the person so addressed replied in no language at all, but, having a
long stick in his hand, knocked the paper lamp out of Wurmdrucker's
hand, so that it collapsed altogether, and would have run off then and
there had not Kebluska so thrust at him with his halberd that the point
thereof went right through his cloak, pinning to the door of the house
the would-be fugitive, whom the two watchmen then seized, and tying his
hands behind his back, urged him on before them to the ward-house hard
by the Turkish prison, and there locked him up in the dark room, where
they were wont to keep the ashes.
The imprisoned vagabond would not tell his name, and the watchmen, not
having a lamp, could not see his face, but all along he begged and
prayed them to let him go free; he would give them ever so much money
for his freedom, he said.
At this the watchmen were even more afraid. They fancied they had got
hold of some evil spy, and not for any amount of treasure would they
have let him out of their hands till morning, hoping to get a still
greater reward when they handed him over to the Sheriff. When he
promised them a hundred ducats they felt sure that the Sheriff would
reward them with two hundred, so in the morning they let out the
prisoner in order to take him to the Sheriff, and lo! the prisoner
was--the Sheriff himself.
So much for their two hundred ducats. The two watchmen were speechless
with terror, they did not know what to say in their sudden amazement.
Master Dóronczius said nothing to them, but hastened home, and the same
day, under some plausible pretext or other, perchance on a trumped-up
charge of brawling or blaspheming, seized and thrust both of them into
the prison called after Pontius Pilate, where so long as Master
Dóronczius remained Sheriff they might be quite certain they would
remain.
Nobody, therefore, at that time knew anything of their secret, for they
might just as well have been buried alive as imprisoned in the dungeon
of Pontius Pilate.
In those days there lived in the city of Caschau a rich master-butcher,
whom they called Stephen Sándor, who had two houses, one in the high
town and the other next door to the apothecary's, which had no common
thatch, but instead of a roof a cupola made of pointed tiles, like an
Egyptian pyramid. In those days the whole of the principal square was
built of such houses, with pointed cupolas, the quadrangular stones with
which they were built being welded together with lead and iron clasps.
This rich butcher had an only son, Joseph by name, who had also been
brought up to be a master-butcher, and had just given proof of his
mastery, and manfully too, for he had felled his bullock at the first
stroke, and thus escaped the fine of a ducat per extra stroke imposed on
bunglers.
Joseph was indeed a stout, well-set-up fellow, yielding to none of his
fellows in mettle; at pike-tilting he always kept in his saddle, and
never failed to carry off the Shrove Tuesday goose in triumph. Withal he
was an honest, diligent youth, and a regular church-goer; and when it
came to psalm singing, he out-bawled the whole congregation. Moreover,
every man loved and respected him, and never could it be said that he
gave half an ounce less in the pound than he ought to have done.
On the day when this Joseph achieved his master-stroke, his father said
to him: "Be off, my son; it is high time. Look about the town a bit,
and search for a befitting consort. Look not for property or wealth, but
rather for a good heart and a pure spirit. These two things every man
should bring home; God will give the rest."
Then Joseph confessed to his father that he had already chosen for
himself a worthy and beautiful maiden, an orphan from Eperies, Catharine
by name, whose father and mother were dead, and who had put up at the
house of an elder sister in the town. He would shorten the days of her
orphanhood, he said.
Old Stephen Sándor also knew personally the girl, as well as her
guardian elder sister; both of them were good and gentle souls;
Catharine, in particular, was such a mild and modest creature that one
had but to look at her to feel towards her an impulse of human
tenderness.
Her only fault was her great pallor. But this trouble every foreign girl
was exposed to who came to dwell at Caschau from the surrounding country
or from other places, for there was something in the atmosphere of the
town or its drinking water from which the fair faces of foreigners
derived this pallid hue, which went by the name of the "Caschau
complexion." And there was no escape from it save by quitting Caschau
and going to other places, or else by taking to themselves a husband.
So the "Caschau complexion" was no great defect in Catharine's face,
after all, so soon as Joseph's father had agreed that his son should
take her to wife. After the marriage festivities it would vanish of its
own accord, and the new wife would grow as rosy as the other pretty
girls of Caschau.
So Joseph immediately sent his witnesses to the house of Catharine's
elder sister, and not long afterwards rings of espousal were exchanged
between them, and the wedding-day was fixed for the market-day before
the festival of St. Vincent.
The wedding-day arrived, and the marriage took place with full
ceremonials. The bride was fetched from her sister's house, and conveyed
to the House of God in a carriage drawn by four horses, with plumes and
coloured kerchiefs on the horses' heads, and thence to the house of the
bridegroom through all the chief streets of the town, to the
accompaniment of merry music; and every young man who saw the bride
sitting in the beribboned carriage smiled and said to himself, "What a
Caschau complexion she has got."
On that day Catharine was paler than usual. In the church itself her
sadness, her anguish, were observed generally. Once, when her bridegroom
took her hand, she burst into tears, and shrank timidly away from him.
Her pallor, her timidity, her weeping, were, all of them, not unbecoming
to a bride, so nobody was much struck thereby at the time.
After the dancing came the ceremonial of conducting the bride and the
bridegroom to the marriage bed, when the bridesman seized Catharine's
hand, while two sword-girt youths went before them, two bridesmaids
following after with the bridegroom, and the musicians began to play a
gentle, dreamy melody, to the music of which the two torch-bearing
youths and the two bridesmaids danced round the bridegroom and the
bride, as if thereby the better to enlace them together, till they came
to the bedroom, and there also they danced round them once more, each
man taking his and each girl her fellow's hands, and then all together
they scampered out of the door, which they banged to behind them,
leaving the young couple alone; but the music droned on outside ever
more softly, ever more gently, at last scarce audibly, as if it would
imitate the whispering of the happy pair inside.
But no sooner were the bride and the bridegroom alone in the bridal
chamber than Catharine quickly plucked the bridal wreath from her head,
tore it desperately to pieces, and then, opening the window looking on
to the courtyard, leaped out of it.
The astonished bridegroom, in the first moment of his surprise, did not
know what to do, but looking out after the girl, and perceiving that she
was making straight for the well at the top of her speed, he quickly
rushed after her, and caught the wench at the very moment when she was
about to plunge down the well and kill herself outright.
Joseph pressed the lass tightly in his strong arms so that she could do
herself no harm, and asked her anxiously what was the matter, and why
she wanted to run away from him. At first the girl only sobbed, and
begged him to let her die; but inasmuch as the bridegroom would by no
means consent thereto, the girl confessed something to him which made
the hairs of his head rise to heaven with horror; indeed, by the time
the girl had told him everything, the bridegroom also had fainted, and
lay there at her feet.
And within there, in the house of dancing, they were playing the dreamy
melody which imitates the lisping of happy lovers, and stately maids and
stalwart lads were dancing together and singing:--
"Dance, dance, the stately dance,
Wave, wave the rosy chain,
To knit together bride and groom."
The marriage came to nought. Catharine, half dead, was carried back to
her sister's house, the bridal guests scattered in dismay. Nevertheless,
Joseph said not a word of what Catharine had told him to any one, but
mounted his horse, took a cudgel in one hand and a lance with a streamer
to it in the other, and trotted off to the Sheriff's house. There,
without leaving the saddle, he rattled at the gate with the point of the
lance, and cried aloud in the hearing of all the people--
"Hearken, Michael Dóronczius! Here am I, Joseph Sándor, sitting on
horseback, with lance and cudgel in my hands. Mount thy horse also, if
thou be a man; take thy lance and thy cudgel and come out with me in the
open, there to fight together; thou knowest wherefore, but tell it to
none. Let God judge betwixt us."
It was an unheard-of audacity for a simple burgess to challenge the town
Sheriff himself to a tilting duel with cudgels and lances. The people
listened in amazement, but still more amazed were they when Master
Dóronczius not only did not prosecute the audacious youth, but told the
watchmen to let him go in peace, as he must certainly be out of his
wits.
But Joseph Sándor, when Dóronczius would not come out of his house to
fight with him in God's name, took a bladder lantern, hung it on the
point of his lance, hung beside it a ragged sheep-skin jacket and a
pair of hose, and throwing the lance over his shoulder, galloped through
the town, exclaiming at every street corner--
"Hearken ye! old and young. Which of you hath seen this Michael
Dóronczius, whom I am seeking with a lantern? Tell me, who hath seen
him? What hath become of him?"
And in every crowd there is never any lack of merry roysterers ready to
give mocking answers to such scornful questions.
"I have seen him. He is hiding just now in a mouse-hole, only his spur
is visible."
"I have seen him. He is dressed up in his wife's clothes; he is selling
bacon in the market-place among the huckster wenches."
"Never mind, Joe," cried another, "he is sitting behind the stove. He
would freeze up if he came out."
"Nay, he would like to come," cried the fourth, "only his mother won't
let him. She wants him to skein her thread for her."
"He'll come immediately," said a fifth, "only he's looking for his
lance; the fowls are sitting on it, and he durst not drive them away for
fear the cock might peck him."
"Let him alone," cried a sixth, "he's lying sick; a gnat bit him
yesterday."
And thus the heckling went from street to street, being the usual mode,
after the custom of those times, of shaming a backward combatant into
action. And, indeed, it was surprising that Michael Dóronczius did not
come forward to fight with the youth who jeered at him so, nor even
sent to arrest him, inasmuch as he was quite able to do both, being both
a strong muscular man and, at the same time, chief magistrate of the
city. But, instead of doing either the one or the other, he said that
they were to let young Sándor depart in peace wherever he liked to go.
Nevertheless, later on, when the first intoxication of rage had
evaporated from the head of Joseph, he bethought him that, after so much
heckling on his part, it was not perhaps very advisable for him to
remain in the near neighbourhood of so powerful an enemy, and
accordingly one night he privily escaped from the town, and not even his
father knew whither he had gone.
* * * * *
Meanwhile time went on, and Catharine grew paler and paler, and no
medicine had power to help her. And suddenly the whole miserable mystery
was revealed.
On the night before Ascension Day, just after the blowing of the
two-o'clock horn, a watchman perceived a woman's shape, wrapped in a
long cloak, hastening stealthily along the walls in the direction of the
city trench. The watchman followed in the traces of this figure, and saw
how this servant-wench--for such he judged her to be--on reaching the
trenches, placed on the ground something wrapped up in a bundle, and
then produced a spade and began to dig.
When she had scooped out a good deep hole, she knelt down beside the
wrapped-up object, and, covering her face with her hands, began to weep
bitterly. Then she suddenly left off weeping, and looked timidly round
to see if any one was near.
Then the night watchman went up to her and seized her hand, and bawled
loudly in her ear, "What art thou doing there?"
The girl immediately fell back and fainted without answering him, but
the object lying open there before him plainly told him what was being
done. It was a little new-born baby, a pretty little chubby-faced child;
but dead and stiff.
There was no wound upon it, but only a little pin-prick just over the
region of the heart, nor was there any blood on its little white shift,
save only a single drop, but that had been enough to make the innocent
creature die.
At the cry of the night watchman, many people came running up, and they
were horrified to recognize in the murderess and mother of the child,
Catharine, the former bride of Joseph Sándor, who must certainly have
run away from her bridegroom's house on the night of the marriage
because she would not practise a vile deception on that worthy man.
They immediately tied the girl's hands behind her, and fastening the
baby to her neck, put her in the lock-up, and there the inquiry began
early the next morning.
The girl denied nothing. She _had_ killed her child and would have
buried it to conceal her shame. She made no excuses, she did not even
weep or beg for mercy. The one thing they could not get out of her was:
who was the child's father? On this point she remained doggedly silent,
and was ready to suffer threefold torture rather than speak.
The Sheriff, Michael Dóronczius, was the presiding judge who pronounced
sentence upon the criminal. For her great sin against God, he said, she
was to endure the punishment prescribed for such offences in the
statute-book of the town, without any mitigation.
Within living memory no such crime had been committed in our town, so
that not even the people themselves knew what form the execution would
take, therefore an enormous multitude assembled on the appointed day at
the place of execution to see what manner of death she who had murdered
her child was to die.
I also was there, and I shall never forget the spectacle, but I would
not go to such a sight again if they were to promise me the best part of
the town of Caschau for it.
Beneath the scaffold a long trench had been dug about four feet in
depth, and beside it stood the executioner's two apprentices.
In this trench Catharine was laid backwards, so that her head alone
emerged above it; it was just as if she were lying comfortably in bed.
Then they bound her hands and feet tightly to stout pegs at the bottom
of the trench, and the executioner placed the point of a large stake
just above Catharine's heart, and held it there while the executioner's
assistants filled the whole trench with earth, so that at last only the
girl's head was visible above it.
And when nothing more was to be seen but her head, with its pale face,
the chaplain approached her, and, kneeling down beside her, urged her
for the sake of the salvation of her soul and for the remission of her
sins to confess herself truly to him and tell him everything which might
relieve her heart of its heavy burden--for had she not two feet in the
grave already.
The head visible above the earth looked sorrowfully around it in every
direction twice or thrice, as if it were waiting for some one, as if it
believed that at that consummate moment some one would appear to save
it, and when, after all, it saw no deliverer approaching, two heavy
tears dropped from its eyes and, trickling down its pale face, fell upon
the earth which now reached to its very chin. Then she, who was thus
buried before she was dead, whispered that she would confess everything,
and not in secret, but so that the whole world should hear it.
And she began by saying that the father of the child whose young life
she had so mercilessly extinguished was none other than Michael
Dóronczius, the Sheriff.
It was he who had deceived the heart of the innocent girl by his
devilish artifices, so that when she heard and saw him she forgot
everything else. 'Twas he who, protected by the Prince of Darkness, came
to Catharine's house at night, who corrupted her with devilish potions,
and utterly turned her head. Once, too, he had been caught there by the
watchmen, Wurmdrucker and Kebluska, whom Dóronczius, in order that they
might not say anything against him, had thrown into the Pontius Pilate
dungeon, where they were still languishing. For this cause Catharine had
escaped by night from her bridegroom, Joseph Sándor, and after that had
oftentimes implored Michael Dóronczius not to drive her to despair, but
as he had made her unhappy, at least to take her to wife, especially as
up to that time she had always loved him greatly. But Dóronczius always
made excuses; and when it was no longer possible to conceal her shame,
he had counselled Catharine, with devilish insinuations, to kill and
bury her child as soon as it was born. And when they had caught the girl
in the deed her destroyer had assured her that, if only she would not
betray him, he would save her at the very last moment. And now the very
last moment had come, but Dóronczius was hugging himself at home with
the thought that the only witness of his evil deed was about to be put
to silence for ever. So now, therefore, his offence was revealed, and
let God judge him and let God judge her also, poor sinful girl that she
was.
Every one heard these words with horror, and there was not one who did
not weep for the poor downtrodden girl and curse the man who had ruined
her.
And then the clergyman gave her spiritual consolation, and, having
commended her poor oppressed soul to the infinite mercy of God, he
covered her head with a handkerchief so that she might not see the
things which were to happen next.
For the headsman now drew forth the stake, which indicated the exact
place of the buried girl's heart through the intervening earth, and
taking a long, red-hot iron peg from a brazier of burning coals, let it
down through the place where the wooden stake had been. Then one of the
executioner's assistants seized a sledge-hammer with both hands and
drove the red-hot iron peg home, while the other quickly covered the
girl's head with a heap of earth. But even through the earth could be
heard a heart-rending scream, and the whole earthy tomb heaved up twice
or thrice in a manner horrible to behold, till the other apprentices of
the executioner had cast a great mound of earth over it and stamped it
well down with their feet, after which the grave remained quiet, not a
sound now came from it, and the earth ceased to move.
Thereupon the crowd, loudly cursing, set off for the house of Michael
Dóronczius, whom they would no doubt have torn to pieces on the spot had
not the Fürmenders taken him under their protection.
Meanwhile it became the duty of the Syndics to bring an action against
him for fraud, sorcery, and murder. At first Dóronczius obstinately
denied everything, but when Wurmdrucker and Kebluska, who were released
from their dungeon, testified against him, and said they had seized him
on the night when he had quitted Catharine's house, he began to perceive
that things were going badly with him, and, by way of saving his own
skin, devised an evil plan and sent a secret message to the Walloon
captain encamped at Eperies, that if he would come to Caschau by night
hard by the gate of the Green Springs, he might perchance find it open
and so obtain possession of the whole town.
But the Almighty put to nought this vile device, inasmuch as Joseph
Sándor, who had quitted the town because of the Sheriff, and entered the
army of Prince John Sigismund, and there worked his way up to the rank
of captain, having heard through spies of the intentions of the Walloon
captain, galloped at breakneck pace all the way from Tokai to Caschau
with five hundred heydukes, and arrived just as the Walloons were
pressing through the gate into the town.
A fierce and desperate fight thereupon ensued between the Walloons and
the Hungarians. The former had brought a cannon with them, and
entrenching themselves close to the Green Springs behind waggons, fired
mercilessly at the town, and into the ranks of the Hungarian warriors,
one ball even penetrating the principal entrance of the cathedral.
Nevertheless, Joseph Sándor, still further encouraging his warriors,
broke at last the ranks of the enemy, and, capturing their cannon
besides, flung them out of the town with great profusion of blood.
Indeed, if it had not been so dark, and the terrified inhabitants had
had time, after the treachery of the Sheriff, to set things in order and
succour Joseph, certainly not one of the Walloons would have escaped.
As for Michael Dóronczius, he was seized while attempting stealthily to
fly, and the whole treason was brought home to him.
And it was exactly a year that day since they had elected him as Sheriff
and installed him in office in the churchyard. Wherefore the carpenters,
with the waggon drawn by six horses and laden with a heap of fine
hornbeams, again drew up in front of the churchyard, and there they made
a pile of the wood and burnt Michael Dóronczius upon it, as they told
him they would beforehand.
But, by way of a memorial of the sad treachery, they walled up the gate
of the Green Springs, and drew a couple of trenches in front of it, with
deep moats guarding them, so that none might get in that way again.
After this event Joseph Sándor settled again in the city of Caschau,
and lived there for a long time till he became an old man, but he never
married.
This also they said, at a later day, that one night Catharine's body was
dug up from its grave beneath the gibbet and buried in a more godly
place, which none wots of save he who buried it there.
Whether it were true or not, nobody could say for certain, for that
which is under the earth is the secret of the dark earth known only to
the Almighty, and may His gracious protection rest over our poor town
and over our hundred-fold more unfortunate country!
IV
THE JUSTICE OF SOLIMAN--A TURKISH STORY
In the days of Sultan Soliman the Magnificent there lived at Stambul a
rich merchant whose name was Muhzin, who traded in jewels and precious
stones. This man had a dear consort--Eminha--whom he loved better than
all his precious stones, whose red lips he prized beyond the brightness
of his rubies, the sparkle of whose eyes excelled the brilliance of his
diamonds, and the speech of whose lips was like a silver bell. He would
not have bartered those eyes and those lips for all the treasures of the
world.
But, alas! those sparkling eyes, those sweet lips were but corruptible
treasures. The breath of a breeze from the Morea, which brought the
pestilence along with it, robbed Muhzin of his treasure, and cast a
cloud over those star-bright eyes, a dumbness upon those speaking lips.
What Muhzin would not have given away for all this world's goods he gave
to Death for nothing, and they buried his treasure in the ungrateful
Earth, which gives back nothing, not even thanks for what you give her.
Worthy Muhzin wept sore because of this loss; he would neither eat nor
drink, and sleep forsook him. Night after night he went on to the roof
of his house, and wept and wept till dawn.
Vainly did his friends and kinsfolk try to console him. They could do
nothing with him. He could not reconcile himself to the thought that
those lovely eyes would never smile upon him again, that that dear mouth
would never speak to him more.
One night, when Muhzin was lying back gloomily on his sleepless couch,
suddenly, through the open door, a wondrous vision stood before him--a
grey-haired old man, whose beard and turban shone like bright white
flames.
And the vision spoke to him thus, in a gentle, consolatory voice--
"Muhzin, I have compassion on thy bitter affliction and upon thy grief.
I see that thou art worthy of superhuman succour, because thou dost love
after a superhuman sort. Thy wife hath not died, for she was not a
mortal maid, but a peri. Eminha still lives, for she possesses the power
of the peris to die whensoever she desires so to do, and awake in
another realm, there to begin a new life, till she choose to die again,
and so pursue her metamorphoses. Therefore gird up thy loins and set out
forthwith on a pilgrimage to Mecca, and there sit down at the gate of
the burial-place, hard by the well of Zemzem, and wait there. Wait there
till a funeral procession comes thither, carrying a blue-painted coffin
covered by a pall of yellow silk, which pall will be embroidered with
blue letters and silver arabesques. Then thou shalt rush out, stop the
funeral procession, uncover the face of the dead, and thou shalt find
Eminha. The mourners will not believe that it is thy wife; but thou must
then take from thy girdle this little box, which contains a salve, and
touch the eyebrows and the lips of thy dead wife with thy anointed
finger-tips, and then her eyes will open and her lips will mutter,
'Muhzin!' and no one will doubt any longer that it is indeed thy wife,
and thou wilt bring her back to Stambul, and she will no longer desire
to leave thee. But in order that thy treasures may not be stolen during
the time of thy pilgrimage, take them not with thee, lest evildoers rob
thee of them by the way, but commit them to the keeping of thy faithful
friend, the honourable Ali Hojia, who is learned in the law, and an
interpreter of the Koran, so that thou mayest find them all safe when
thou returnest."
And with these words the grey-bearded old man vanished from before the
eyes of Muhzin.
The merchant awoke full of amazement. He rubbed his eyes with both hands
to see whether he was not still dreaming, lit a rushlight, and his
amazement increased when he found on his table the little box which the
old man from the other world had brought him; it was beautifully wrought
of ivory, richly set with turquoises and perforated with gold. Such a
masterpiece came from no human hand.
The next day he told the matter to Ali Hojia, to whom the enigmatical
old man had referred him. The lawyer shook his head over it, as if he
did not like the business at all, made objections, and tried to persuade
Muhzin that he had dreamed it all, or imagined it with his eyes wide
open, and finally appealed to his doubts by reminding him that the body
of Eminha was now lying in the tomb where Muhzin had buried it--let him
break open the tomb and see for himself, quoth Ali.
Muhzin hastened to perform the request of his friend, and behold--the
dead body of Eminha was _not_ in the desecrated tomb.
And now no power in the world was capable of keeping Muhzin back from
following the voice of the heavenly vision. He put in his pouch whatever
of ready money he had by him, and confided his whole store of gems to
Ali Hojia, who was his nearest friend, and a worthy, honourable man to
boot, till he himself should return from Mecca. And Ali took the charge
upon him for friendship's sake.
Muhzin, after many vicissitudes, reached Mecca. On the road robbers
attacked him, and robbed him of all his money, but, fortunately, the
little box with the magic unguent escaped; it was concealed within his
turban, and therefore they did not discover it. A beggar he entered the
holy city, and lived from hand to mouth on the alms of compassionate
pilgrims.
Every day he could be seen at the gate of the cemetery near the well of
Zemzem, watching the funeral processions which passed before him day
after day, for Mecca is a populous place.
A year had passed, and he was still waiting in vain--a coffin such as
that described by the nocturnal apparition had not yet passed before
him. Either the coffin was blue but the pall was not yellow, or the pall
lacked the necessary blue letters, or if it had the blue letters the
arabesques were not of silver, or if every requisite mark of
identification was there, the corpse was not the corpse of a woman, but
of a man, or a manchild of twelve years.
Muhzin was slowly approaching that state of mind which we call madness,
when one day he heard from the other beggars that there was going to be
a splendid funeral that day--the wife of the Kadilesker, the beautiful
Eminha, had died.
Eminha!
That name put heart into Muhzin once more. All day long he did not
depart from the gate of the cemetery, and the beating of his heart
almost stifled him when he heard approaching him the funeral music which
always heads the funeral procession.
Muhzin had no thought for the splendour of the funeral, no thought for
the dancing dervishes, nor for the wailing women-mourners, nor for the
_siligdars_ who scattered small silver coins among the mob of
mendicants. All he could do was to gaze upon the bier.
Even from a distance he could see that the coffin was blue and the pall
a bright yellow. When they came nearer he could even distinguish the
blue letters on the pall, and when they came level with him he could see
the silver embroidery of arabesques quite well.
Muhzin, wild with joy, violently pushed aside those standing in front of
him, forced his way through the procession right up to the coffin, and
cried--
"Stop! Stop! This is Eminha. This is my wife!"
The attendants, the great men, the Kadilesker himself--the dead woman's
husband--looked with amazement upon this raving figure who had dared to
disturb the order of the funeral; but Muhzin regarded them not, but
stripped the pall from off the face of the dead woman.
The young woman who lay there really resembled his Eminha. Death is a
great artist. With one cold breath she knows how to make all human faces
singularly alike.
"She is not dead!" cried Muhzin to the dumfoundered crowd. "I can make
her arise, and then you will see that she will call me her husband. I
have been waiting for her here a whole year. Hence, all of you! for I
would kill and slay and scatter curses around me! Ye shall not bury the
living!"
The people were alarmed at the sight of mad Muhzin, and still more by
his savage words. Moreover, the mourning Kadilesker dearly loved his
dead wife, and when Muhzin said that he would raise her up again, he
also was glad, and made place for him by the coffin that he might
perform this miracle.
With the fervour of devotion, Muhzin drew from his girdle the little box
and opened it; a yellow-coloured ointment was inside it, speckled with
little green-gold points, of whose magical efficacy Muhzin himself was
quickly convinced when he dipped into it the index finger of his right
hand, for it burnt him as severely as if he had plunged it into boiling
oil. But this extraordinary quality of the ointment was only a greater
testimony to its marvellous origin, so that Muhzin did not hesitate to
thoroughly rub the eyebrows and the lips of the corpse with his anointed
finger-tip.
Everybody was intently watching to see whether the breath of life would
return beneath the influence of the wondrous unguent, but nobody was so
devout a believer in it as Muhzin himself.
But lo! instead of the eyes and lips of the dead woman opening, as was
expected of them, the places which Muhzin had anointed turned black, the
skin began to crackle and blister, and the face of the dead woman became
quite hideous.
Horror seized upon Muhzin. This was not the effect he had anticipated.
The people around him murmured aloud, the Kadilesker rushed furiously
upon him, and, seizing him by the throat, cast him to the ground.
"Accursed magician!" he cried, "so shamelessly to distort the face of my
dead wife, and make her, now that she is dead, just such an one as thou
thyself art while still alive!"
"To the stake with him!" thundered the mob all around; they were furious
with Muhzin. "To the fiery pit with him--reserved for the
idol-worshippers and sorcerers--the wretch who would desecrate the
bodies of the dead!"
And worthy Muhzin would have been burnt on the spot had not the Governor
of Damascus happened to be there, who, perceiving that they had to do
with a lunatic rather than an idolater, ordered his chiauses to seize
Muhzin, tie him to a pillar, give him two hundred strokes with a
camel-driver's whip, and then bring the man before him, that he might
confess what mad idea it was that had induced him to deform the features
of the dead wife of the Kadilesker.
Muhzin told the Governor about the marvellous apparition which had sent
him thither.
"My poor Muhzin," said the Governor, when he understood the whole
affair, "what a confounded fool thou art to allow thyself to be imposed
upon by such a lot of rubbish! Some one has been making a butt of thee.
Why, that Eminha who was the wife of the Kadilesker was born and lived
here from her childhood until now; how, then, could she be thy wife a
year ago? Moreover, that unguent of thine is a fraud. It is no magic
thing, but a corrosive poison with which they are wont to blister the
bodies of the poor in the times of pestilence. Every dervish knows of
it. Come to thy senses, man! Make an end of thy pilgrimage, return home
to Stambul, and follow thy trade. I hope that no greater trouble
awaiteth thee when thou gettest home."
Muhzin kissed the hand of the humane Pasha, who gave him some dinars to
help him on his way, and turned back towards Stambul forthwith, with
ragged garments, a scarred body, a broken heart, and a half-crazy mind.
Poor, and tormented by grief, he reached Stambul after many weeks,
picked up by one caravan in the place where a former one had dropped
him, bringing home with him a wound on the temples from the lance of a
Bedouin freebooter, the impression in his thigh of four teeth of a
panther, from which he had contrived to escape half alive, and a
terrible emptiness in his heart, in which all hope and faith had died.
When he got back to Stambul he thought within himself that, after having
escaped from so many dangers, God would, at least, visit him with no
more affliction, but, content with what had already befallen him, would
suffer him to attend to his business in peace for the small remainder of
his days.
Wherefore he at once sought out worthy Ali Hojia, his one faithful
friend, to whom he had confided the keeping of his treasures.
Ali received him kindly. "Well, and so thou hast just come, Muhzin,"
said he; "of a truth, I had given thee up for lost. Every evening have I
prayed that thou mightest return."
And then Muhzin told him how ill he had fared, and what a fool the
vision had made of him, and said that henceforth, he would believe no
more in visions, even if their beards were made of moonbeams.
"And that will be wise of thee, Muhzin," said Ali Hojia. "Did I not tell
thee not to go? If thou hadst remained at home here thou wouldst not
have been robbed and made a fool of. And now thou hast made of thyself a
laughing-stock and a beggar. Yet grieve not. For a week a table shall be
spread in my house for thee, and then other merciful Mussulmans will
care for thee to the end of thy days."
"I thank thee for thy goodness, Ali," said Muhzin; "but I will not be a
beggar. Produce my hidden treasures, and I will trade with them as
before. I will live honourably."
"Then, where are these treasures of thine?" asked Ali, exceedingly
amazed.
"Why, with thee, of course," replied Muhzin.
Ali Hojia shook his head. "Muhzin, my friend, thy misfortunes have
robbed thee of thy wits, so that thou knowest not what thou sayest. Thou
hast just told me that thou wert robbed on thy journey, and now thou
sayest I have treasures of thine which I have never seen. I tell thee
what--go now and have a little sleep and clear thy mind somewhat. After
that I will gladly see thee again."
And with that worthy Hojia very gently pushed Muhzin from his door, and
shut it in his face.
The unfortunate merchant now fell into absolute despair. He himself
began to doubt whether he was in his senses, or whether he had indeed
turned crazy, and the hidden treasure was a dream, a phantom, like the
rest.
In his despair he flew to the Grand Vizier, cast himself at his feet,
and told him the whole story.
"Hast thou a witness who saw thee give thy treasures to Hojia?" inquired
the Grand Vizier.
"Allah alone, none other. Truly we were such good friends, one body and
one soul."
"Then keep still till I have spoken to the Sultan."
When the Grand Vizier had spoken to the Sultan about the matter, Soliman
commanded him to proclaim at every corner of every street, through the
public criers, that a certain merchant, Muhzin by name, recently
returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca, had drowned himself at night in the
Bosphorus. His dead body had been found by the fishermen; if, therefore,
the dead man had any friends or relations who wished to bury him with
due respect, they were to come for him, otherwise the corpse would be
buried in the common cemetery reserved for the poor.
Naturally Ali Hojia was the last person to come forward to bury Muhzin;
on the contrary, he did not show himself at all, but several days
afterwards he secretly visited the cemetery of the poor, and there
discovered the flat tomb on which two rough stones had been rolled, and
on one of these stones the name of Muhzin had been coarsely smeared.
But Muhzin was cast by the Sultan into the prison of the Seven Towers,
so that he might not be able to show himself, even if he had a mind to.
There, however, he was well treated and lacked nothing.
Soliman, moreover, got from the merchant an exact description of his
deposited treasures, piece by piece, with all their distinguishing
marks, and made an inventory of them. Then he commanded the Grand Vizier
to make friends with Hojia under some pretext or other.
The Grand Vizier went very cautiously to work, and having frequently had
occasion to observe the wisdom of the learned lawyer, promised to
present him to the Sultan.
The Sultan condescended to enter into conversation with the lawyer, and
expressed himself delighted at his dialectical skill. Presently he got
into the habit of asking his opinion concerning various ticklish points
of law in cases about which even the members of the Divan had different
opinions, and always he gave great weight to the words of Ali. At last
he so far extended his favour towards him as to appoint him Chief
Almoner, and raise him high among the dignitaries of the Seraglio.
So much favour absolutely blinded Hojia, it was now six months since the
death of Muhzin had been proclaimed, and no doubt he thought no more
about it.
One day the Sultan perceived in the girdle of Hojia a rosary just like
one which was mentioned in the inventory of the merchant's stolen
treasures. It was made of coral beads of the size of filberts, engraved
all round with sacred texts, and the larger beads were encrusted with
diamonds.
The Sultan admired the string of beads. "What a splendid bead-string
thou hast," said he. "In the whole of my treasury I have not the like of
it. The coral is extraordinarily beautiful, and the workmanship
priceless."
Ali was transported with joy, and made haste to offer to the Sultan the
jewel which was so fortunate as to have won the favour of the Grand
Signior.
The Sultan graciously condescended to accept the present, and gave Hojia
instead of it three purses of gold, far more indeed than the jewel was
worth, and invited him the next day to the Dzsirid Square, where a
splendid entertainment was to be held.
Hojia was even more delighted by this distinction than by the Sultan's
gift; he would be able to appear on the Dzsirid in the suite of the
Sultan.
The Dzsirid was the one open space in the Seraglio where the Turkish
magnates diverted themselves with pike-casting, dart-throwing, and other
manly sports. The Sultan himself often took part in these pastimes. The
best of shooting grounds also formed part of the Dzsirid.
On this occasion the Sultan also took part in the shooting; and very
badly he shot, not once did he hit the mark. Wherefore he began to grow
angry, and, as is the way with marksmen under such circumstances, he
blamed the mark, the bowstring, the quiver, and the burning sun for his
bad shooting, and at last burst forth against the ring on his finger as
the cause of all his wide shooting. For it was the custom of the archer
to wear on his finger a serpent-shaped spiral ring, so as to gain a
firmer hold of the bow-string, and be able to make the bow twang to its
full extent at the proper time.
The Sultan kept on grumbling at his ring, saying that it was badly made
and caught in the bow-string every time, so that he could not let it go
quickly enough, and with that he snatched it off, and cried, "Give me
another ring!"
His attendants hastened to offer their own rings to the Grand Signior.
The Sultan tried them all one after another.
"That won't do, that won't do! Ah! nobody makes such good archery-rings
as the goldsmith Sulassan used to make, and he is dead now. But is there
none here who has a ring made by Sulassan?"
At this question, Ali Hojia eagerly rushed up to the Sultan, and
signified that he possessed a ring which was a production of the dead
master. Would the Padishah deign to accept it from him?
Soliman did deign to accept it. This was the choicest jewel which the
merchant had described to him. He accepted it from Hojia, put it on his
finger, and thenceforth shot so skilfully at the mark that every one
applauded him, and none more so than Ali Hojia.
After the sports in the Dzsirid, the Sultan sent for Muhzin. In his hand
was the string of beads, and on his finger was the ring, and he was
praying with the Koran before him.
Astonishment overcame the merchant when he saw his lost jewels in the
possession of Soliman. He cast himself at the Sultan's feet, and,
catching hold of the hem of his garment, exclaimed: "Oh, my lord, the
ring and the string of beads which thou holdest in thy hand are mine."
The Sultan asked him what was written on each one of the beads and how
many stones were in the ring, and the merchant answered each question
exactly, whereupon the Sultan sent him back to the Seven Towers.
On the following day he sent for Hojia.
He discoursed with him on all manner of juridical questions which had
come before the Divan, and took the opinion of the learned lawyer upon
them all. Amongst other cases, he suddenly put this one to him: a
certain man had grossly abused the confidence of a friend, who had
confided his property to his care while he was on his travels, and
robbed him of everything; what did such a man deserve for such a
monstrous act of treachery?
Now, it is notorious that the greatest sinners are the most rigorous
judges of offences similar to their own in others, and it is even
possible that it never occurred to Hojia that he himself had been guilty
of a like offence. Besides, his sin was buried deeply away in the tomb
of Muhzin, and nobody knew anything about it.
So the jurist replied to the Sultan that such an extraordinary offence
demanded an extraordinary punishment, and the sinner deserved nothing
less than pounding to death in a mortar.
"Thou hast pronounced thine own condemnation," cried the Sultan. Then
he clapped his hands, and four Izoglans came running in and bound Hojia
hand and foot, took from him his keys, searched his dwelling thoroughly,
and found in it the whole of the treasure which had been confided to him
by his friend the merchant.
The confounded Hojia, who fancied he was bathing in the sunlight of the
highest favour, and never reflected that in the sunlight everything
becomes transparent, in his terror confessed everything, and also said
that he was the apparition who, after fastening on a beard smeared over
with a phosphorescent unguent, had come to the room of the sorrowing
Muhzin and practised on the unfortunate mourner the accursed trick which
had well-nigh robbed him of life and reason. It was he, too, who had
stolen the body of Eminha from its tomb.
The Sultan immediately summoned a meeting of the Divan, laid the case
before the Viziers, and told them of the punishment which the Hojia
himself had said that a crime like his deserved.
The Viziers answered that Hojia's opinion was just. The crime was indeed
of a new sort, and it was right, therefore, that he should be the first
to taste the proper punishment for it.
By the Sultan's command, therefore, a huge mortar was cut out of marble,
a huge pounding pole with four handles thereto being at the same time
made to match the mortar.
Ali Hojia, meanwhile, was attired in a purple robe, with a golden turban
on his head, and a bespangled girdle round his body, and so they cast
him into the mortar. Then four Bostanjis seized the pounding beetle,
and raising it by its four handles, rammed it with all their might into
the mortar at a sign from the Aga of the Bostanjis. A frightful yell
arose from the mortar, tapering off into an unspeakable, indescribable
whistling shriek. The Bostanjis raised the pounding beetle a second
time, and a second time they rammed it home. But now only a muffled
groan responded to the impact. The third stroke was followed by a
ghastly whimper, and after the fourth stroke there was no response but
the crunching of bones.
And so they went pounding away with their pestle till they were tired
out, and by that time all that remained in the mortar was a shapeless
mash of blood and bones and silk and gold filigree.
Thus did Sultan Soliman punish the deceiver.
* * * * *
Eighty years ago the French traveller Tavernier saw this very mortar, so
terrible a memorial of Ottoman justice, standing in the door of the Hall
of the Divan.
V
LOVE AND THE LITTLE DOG
What can there be in common between love and a little dog? Well, listen!
and I'll tell you.
My dear friend Toni was head over ears in love with a pretty little girl
whom I did not love at all. This was not because I prefer falling in
love with ugly little girls, or because I consider it superfluous to
love a girl who is already loved by another fellow, but simply because
one eye of this particular girl was black and the other blue.
"Toni," I said, "look out for yourself! This double sort of eye bodes no
good. With one of them she'll ogle you, and with the other some one
else. The blue eye may be faithful to you, the black one may deceive."
Toni replied I was quite wrong. In his opinion these two eyes harmonized
admirably; they reminded him, he said, of bright dawn and starry night.
Indeed, properly speaking, he alone would be the faithless one, as he
would now be loving a blue eye and a black one at the same time.
Still, I did not like the business at all, and as I felt sure that Toni
would be considerably the loser by it, I was determined to save him if I
could.
"It will be the worse for you if you take her," I said. "For one thing,
you will not be able even to call her your better _half_. With those
contradictory eyes she will, at the very utmost, only be your better
_two quarters_. Depend upon it, she must have been formed from the ribs
of two different men. Have nothing to do with her, Toni, my boy!"
Whereupon Toni became abusive, and told me never to regard him as a
friend again.
"Who are you to talk to me like that?" he cried. "You are not my father,
or my mother, or my elder brother, or my married sister, or even my
godfather, are you? Who are you to ride roughshod over my happiness? I
don't care a rap what you say, and stand out of my way, or I'll punch
your head. I mean to have her in any case now."
So, as I certainly could not say that I was his father, or even his
godfather, I had to stand aside and let him go galloping headlong
downhill towards the Vale of Matrimony without the brake on. If he were
particularly fortunate, he might, perhaps, plump into a ditch when
halfway down, and so come off cheaply with a broken arm; if, however, he
were doomed to be unlucky, he would plunge to the bottom of the valley
and break his neck.
Nevertheless, he was lucky, and fell off his high horse when he was only
halfway down.
One evening he came to me full of a great resolution.
"Well, old chap, I'm not going to marry Nelly after all."
"She has jilted you, I suppose?"
"No. Something happened when I was with her last, that's all."
"Indeed! What was it?"
"Well, we had been strolling in the garden for an hour or more, mooning
and spooning, and I had also been reciting verses to her, and she had
laughed at them, and it seemed to me that only the angels could laugh
like that, when suddenly there came bouncing towards us a little pet
puppy, a tiny beast about five weeks old, just able to patter along the
ground with his little paws, who wagged his little tail and fawned upon
Nelly in the most comical manner when he got up to her, at the same time
sticking up one little ear high in the air, and holding the other little
ear down. Why he should do so I didn't know; perhaps he had been taught
it, I thought. Nelly thereupon stooped down towards the little dog, and,
seizing the point of its little erected ear with two of her pretty
snow-white fingers, raised it into the air. The little puppy wriggled
and whined, but Nelly, smiling all the time, threatened it with the
index finger of the other hand. 'Come! stop it, stop it! no whining!
It's not pretty,' she said, till the poor little creature gradually grew
quiet, and remained suspended in the air by its ear. Then Nelly put it
on the ground again, and the little puppy, softly whimpering, tripped
off again, while Nelly never ceased smiling at it. Well, after that I
scarce waited to get into my overcoat and wish her good-bye. I think
that's all the leave-taking she deserves, and don't suppose I shall ever
meet her again. No, my friend, _my_ ears could never stand such
manoeuvres."
Thus it was that the little puppy-dog saved my friend Toni from a
life-long danger.
VI
THE RED STAROSTA
CHAPTER I
THE JUDAS-MONEY
Have you ever heard of the Bialystok Dominion? There lie the huge Sylvan
wildernesses of Lithuania, the native home of the Ure-ox, the ancestor
of horned cattle, the king of all oxen; in every other part of Europe it
has been exterminated. They are now the quarry of the Russian Tsar, and
only the Romanovs and their guests possess the privilege of hunting them
down.
But Bialystok is still more famous for its wondrously beautiful Palace,
which worthily bears the name of "the Polish Versailles." Built in the
Italian renaissance style, embellished within and without by the
sculptures and the paintings, the bronzes and the mosaics of the most
eminent masters, surrounded by the most lovely ornamental gardens in the
world, in which the exotic trees in winter time have whole wooden houses
built around them, so that pomegranate and citron trees bloom in the
open air during the spring, and Bruin comes from the depths of the
surrounding forests to pluck the citrons from the trees and roar over
his unaccustomed food--the Palace of Bialystok is one of the most
wonderful places in the world.
And this famous Palace is connected with no one family name. At every
fresh human generation it carries a different family name on its
forehead. It has belonged successively to the Moskowskis, the Potoccy,
the Branickis, and the Czernuskis. And popular tradition says that
before it belonged to them it was the possession of the "Red Starosta."
But whether purchased or won by confiscation it never descended from
father to son, for there was this odd thing about it, that its
proprietor never had male issue, and consequently it always passed
through his daughter to his son-in-law. To explain this condition of
things, popular tradition tells the following story:--
In the days of the Red Starosta, the Jews had great influence in the
Grodno district; indeed, it would be difficult to imagine Poland without
them. Bialystok was their head-quarters, and there they had their
synagogue. The Starostas allowed them to multiply and get rich, just as
a highly practical agriculturist allows the bees to collect their stores
throughout the summer, and when the autumn winds begin to blow does not
treat them after the manner of ungrateful and unreasonable bee-keepers,
who smoke out the industrious insects with sulphur, no, but in the most
approved modern fashion he subtracts the honey, leaves the bees just
enough to live upon, and then puts back the empty cells into the hive
that the bees may fill them full again.
The bees themselves regard this method as perfectly normal, for
otherwise they would leave the hive and go into the forest and fill the
stumps of trees with honey. But then the bears would eat them and it, so
that, after all, it is very much better for the bees to have to do with
the bee-keepers.
On one occasion the Red Starosta (he was just about to marry for the
third time, and wanted a lot of money rather badly for the wedding
feast) hit upon a new method of obtaining a voluntary contribution by
attacking the Jews in their synagogue on one of their holy days. Every
one of them was compelled to pay liberally. There were a good many
treasures concealed in the synagogue, and these also they had to hand
over. The Jews lamented and paid up; they had not even courage enough to
curse.
But in the strong-box of the sanctuary there was a secret drawer, and in
this secret drawer there was a single piece of silver. Now, when this
secret drawer was opened by the Starosta, the Rabbi, Jitzchak Ben
Menachim, quickly seized the coin and thrust it into his mouth. They
could only get it out again by breaking his teeth, while a heyduke
squeezed his throat tightly the whole time so that he should not swallow
it.
What merit could there be in suffering so much for the sake of a single
piece of silver? The whole thing was no bigger than a Mary-dollar, which
is only worth 5 polturas.[15] On one side of it was a fig-tree with the
inscription: "Jerusalem the Holy," in Hebrew letters, with a burning
altar beneath the fig-tree with the words: "Shekel: Israel." On the
obverse side was a crowned head with the inscription: "Melach Herodes."
[Footnote 15: Worth about 6d.]
When this silver piece had been taken from the Rabbi, the whole
congregation began to rend their garments and cast ashes on their heads.
Then they abased themselves before the Starosta and implored him to give
them back their one piece of silver. They promised to give him for it
twice as much, eight times as much as he had already extorted from them,
thereby betraying the secret that this piece of money was of great value
to them.
"Why is this silver coin so precious to you?" inquired the Starosta.
At this question every Jew present closed his mouth so tightly that not
even a sigh escaped from it.
"Very well," said the Red Starosta, "you won't tell me, eh? Then I'll
find a way of making your Rabbi tell me."
So the Red Starosta flung the Rabbi into a dungeon, and for a whole week
he experimented upon him with the latest and most approved instruments
of torture. But Rabbi Jitzchak Ben Menachim remained steadfast. Neither
fire, nor water, nor the Spanish boot could extract from him the secret
of the piece of silver.
Now the Rabbi had a grown-up son, Jaikef by name. On the eighth day he
could endure no longer the spectacle of his father tortured there before
his eyes, so he went to the Starosta and said to him--
"Let my father go free, and I will tell you the secret of the silver
coin."
And thus Jaikef told the story whose preliminaries are well known to us
all.
There was once a Jew named Judas Iscariot, who sold to the Priests of
Jerusalem "The Son of Man," the "King of Nazareth," above whose head on
the cross was nailed the inscription "I.N.R.I." The price paid to him
for this was thirty pieces of silver. But when they crucified "the
Master" on Golgotha, he repented him of what he had done and brought
back the thirty pieces of silver to the Priests. They would not accept
them. Then he flung down the money in the Temple, and went and hanged
himself on a maple-tree. But the Priests resolved with the rejected
money to buy a portion of land from the Potters. The Priests entrusted
the business of the purchase to Kramoi-Chita Anselm, and this
enterprising man beat down the price to nine and twenty pieces of
silver, the thirtieth piece he kept for himself. His son Nathan
inherited it from him. Solomon, the son of Nathan, inherited it in his
turn, till at last, in the period of the exodus of the Jews from
Palestine, it fell into the possession of Joisef Zedek, who brought it
away with him. This one remaining piece of Judas-money puts power and
riches into the hands of the Jews. This is their living hope, their
talismanic treasure--and now Jaikef gave the secret away.
"Then it is a very good thing that I have got it," said the Red
Starosta, and, as promised, he set free the Rabbi, at the same time
telling him that as he now knew the secret of the piece of silver, he
would not give it back to the Jews for all the treasures in the world.
The Rabbi Jitzchak Ben Menachim thereupon, first of all, cursed his own
son:
"As thou couldst not close thy mouth, henceforth thou shalt open it in
vain."
And the curse was accomplished. From that time forth poor Jaikef was
expelled from every Jewish threshold, not a single Jew would thenceforth
give him meat and drink, whilst the law of the Talmud forbade him to eat
food prepared by Christians. So he starved to death.
But upon the Red Starosta the Rabbi Jitzchak Ben Menachim pronounced
this curse--
"A manchild shall never be borne in thy family!"
And this curse also took root and abided.
Henceforth the mortars on the terrace in front of the Palace of
Bialystok never thundered forth in honour of the birth of an heir male.
Of girls there were plenty and to spare, but what's the good of a girl
to an ancient Lithuanian ancestral house? Up to her twelfth year she is
allowed to trot about like other little kids, and then they clap her
into a convent, where she is taught gold and silver embroidery till she
reaches a marriageable age, when they bring her home again. What else
can _she_ talk about except saints and angels!
How different with the male children. A boy is taught by his papa all
manner of sensible things. You can take him off with you to hunt bears
and wild boars and elks. He'll not learn much about the book of martyrs
from his chums, perhaps, but all the more knowing will he be in the
folklore of the chase, in the mythology of the ancient Lithuanian
deities. He will know all about Bagán, the protector of the brute
creation, who makes the cattle fruitful; about the White God, Belim, who
gives rich increase to the earth; about the goddess Vastrulia, who gives
luck in love; while in the day of battle and the hour of danger he must
call upon Father Dedka! At great banquets, too, Holyada will defend him
from the disgrace of being the first to fall down drunk, while Lado will
send him good dreams.
A girl would not understand this--it is part of the lore of the
ancients.
And besides that, a girl does not pass the name of her father on to her
children, so that if the grandson hears the name of his grandsire, he
will ask--who is that?
So the curse of the Rabbi Jitzchak Ben Menachim was accomplished in the
families of the Castellans of Bialystok. At every great funeral, when
they carried forth the head of the family, they hung up his ancestral
shield on the corner of his tomb as a sign that the family history had
run out. And thus it went on through half a century, during which time
the lords of the Castle never let the Judas-money out of their hands.
The rich Jews of Grodno offered them a million for it, but in vain. They
would not give up the talisman even for that.
The last magnate proprietor was Prince Moskowski. When his wife was in
good hopes of offspring he made a vow that if she bare him a son he
would give the Judas-money as a donation to the Blessed Virgin. And sure
enough a son _was_ born.
The Prince, faithful to his vow, bestowed the Judas-money upon the
Monastery of Supraseli which was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.
And then the Rabbi of Bialystok, the descendant of Jitzchak Ben
Menachim, on the original curse thus becoming void, imposed a fresh
curse on the head of Prince Moskowski: "Thy son and thy son's son,"
said he, "shall become the lowliest serfs in the Russian Empire!"
And to a Lithuanian noble family this was an even more terrible curse
than the former one.
CHAPTER II
VACCINATIO SPIRITUALIS
The Starosta Prince Moskowski believed in the operation of a curse; it
was the only weapon of a homeless people.
He had no other son but this one, and he himself remained a widower.
If he had had five or six sons he would have snapped his fingers at the
whole thing as an old wife's story, for the curse could not have taken
effect on the whole lot of them. But as he only had one, Destiny might
very easily get the better of him. This one lord would inherit the vast
Bialystok estates, the splendid castle and its treasures, yet what if
all this would not save him and his descendants from becoming serfs in
the end.
The Starosta guarded this son of his so jealously from his very cradle
that he never so much as cast eyes on a peasant. He did not even know
whether such a thing even existed. His servants were all chosen from the
Szlachta, or gentry. A Szlachzic, even in a menial livery, is still a
gentleman.
But even then the father could not rid him of his fear.
He went to take counsel of the Bishop.
The Bishop told him to bring up his son for the priesthood, then he
could not possibly become a serf. But this solution did not please the
Starosta, although it would have been the very best way to break the
force of the curse. It is true that if his only son became a bishop he
could have no sons, and then of course no grandson of the Starosta could
become a serf, because he would have no grandsons at all. But he wanted
the branches of the Moskowski family tree to go on growing.
So he consulted yet another dignitary, the High Treasurer of Cracow.
What was he to do, he asked, to stay the operation of the curse and
prevent his son and his grandsons from becoming the lowliest serfs in
the Russian Empire?
The High Treasurer advised him to open a deposit account in the name of
his son to the amount of a million thalers at the Bank of England, where
no power on earth could get at it. He would thereby provide against
every eventuality. To whatever extremities his son and his grandsons
might be reduced, they would never be obliged to do the labour of serfs
so long as they had a million to their credit at the Bank of England.
But the Starosta did not like that expedient either. He could produce
the million easily enough, but he had no confidence in the Bank of
England. Not very long before there had been a conspiracy to rob the
Bank of England, and it had been within a hair's breadth of succeeding.
Moreover it was a fact within living memory that on the occasion of the
invasion of the Stuart Pretender there had been such a run on the Bank
of England that it had been obliged to pay its customers over the
counter in shillings and sixpences. Why, at that rate, if any one
clean-shaved himself and went to the Bank to draw out the million, and
they were obliged to pay him down on the nail in Polish small change, he
might be able comfortably to tuck his beard within his girdle by the
time he was able to get home.
Now, there happened to be a Protestant clergyman in the domains of the
Starosta who dwelt in the county town, the Rev. Gottlieb Klausner by
name. He was the pastor of the Lutheran community. His flock mostly
consisted of handicraftsmen and mechanics who had emigrated to Lithuania
from Brandenburg.
The only thing the Starosta knew about the Lutheran clergyman was that
he never bothered him with inconvenient demands. He and his flock alike
were quiet, inoffensive persons. They never advertised their profession
of faith by anything in their outward dress and bearing; they never
prayed publicly in the streets; they never rang bells, for their
meeting-places had no belfries.
Nevertheless, one day the pastor visited the Starosta in his splendid
princely palace.
The Starosta received the reverend gentleman cordially.
Gottlieb Klausner first of all apologized for the inconvenience he was
causing, and then craved permission to acquaint his Excellency with the
great errand which had emboldened him to appear before him.
He was such a long time coming to the point that the Starosta fancied he
was going to beg for a church-tower full of bells at the very least. Yet
all that he wanted, after all, was permission to send his son abroad to
complete his studies. He had brought the deed of permission with him in
his pocket, written in the fairest caligraphy, it only needed the
hieroglyphics of the magnate at the bottom of it and the impression of
his seal.
This was very quickly done, but to-day the great man was curious and
wanted to know all about it.
"What is your son's Christian name, your Reverence?"
"Henry."
"How old is he?"
"Sixteen."
"Just as old as my lad. Then, how old may your Reverence be."
"Forty-seven, by the favour of God."
"Just my age. Perhaps we were born on the same day."
"I came into the world on the festival of St. John Chrysostom."
"So did I. That's very right. And why, then, do you want to send your
son abroad? And so far too? It is to the Sorbonne at Paris, isn't it?"
"In order that he may perfect himself in the sciences."
"And why need he perfect himself in the sciences?"
"In order that he may not become a serf."
At these words the heart of the Starosta began to beat fiercely.
"Then he cannot be a serf if he becomes a scholar, eh?"
"No. At all times and everywhere a scholar is a gentleman."
"Your Reverence has no doubt heard of the curse with which a Rabbi
threatened me?"
"Every one knows of it."
"And do you suppose that it can be fulfilled?"
"Everything is possible in this world."
"But, according to your reasoning, a scholar can never become a serf."
"And I maintain my contention. Great estates may be called in again by
those who bestowed them; brilliant escutcheons may be torn to pieces by
the hand which embellished them; but the knowledge which dwells in our
heads and our hearts neither king nor emperor can take away, and if we
leave knowledge to our sons as an inheritance, no power on earth can
make our sons serfs. Pardon me for elevating my words into such a bold
discourse."
"You elevate me at the same time, my brother in the Lord! But come! you
have kindled a bright idea in my brain. I will educate _my_ son as a
scholar likewise. He has both the mind and the will for it. I have kept
him from poring over books hitherto, but now let us send him abroad with
your son. Let your Henry be his guardian and comrade. I shall know then
that he is in good hands. And I'll pay the expenses of the pair of them.
They shall live in the same room and eat off the same dish. My son and
your son shall be treated exactly alike. Let them fare as youths
studying abroad must fare, and let the best scholar be the best
gentleman. Is it agreed, brother?"
Gottlieb Klausner gratefully stretched out his hand towards the
Starosta, who hastily drew back his own, fancying that the pastor was
about to kiss it. He might have spared himself the trouble. A Lutheran
pastor never kisses the hand of one of his own sex. The Starosta,
however, immediately afterwards embraced the pastor.
"Good, my brother! We are agreed then. But I do this under one
condition. I ask a service of your Henry. I'll take care that there
shall be a regular postal service hither from France and Germany twice a
week, and your Henry must write to you every post about himself and my
son, and let us know how they are and what progress they are making."
"My son will certainly not neglect to do so."
"Bring your son hither that I may make his acquaintance."
"This very day I will bring him."
"And now, hearken, my brother. You and I are both old fellows, and
hitherto each of us has celebrated his birthday alone with his son.
Henceforth we shall be quite alone. Let us henceforth keep our birthday
in each other's company."
But the two old men did not only keep their common birthday together,
but when their two sons had departed on the common path of learning, the
homely pastor went up to the Castle twice a week with the letter he had
received from his son, that he might read it aloud to the Starosta. And
the Starosta always compelled him to remain to dinner. And though he
might have a brilliant host of guests staying with him, the Rev.
Gottlieb Klausner, in his simple black cassock, always sat at the
Starosta's right hand. The only change took place when a priest of the
Starosta's own religion happened to be his guest. Then Klausner sat at
the left hand of the Starosta, but there also he was treated with great
distinction. And just before the bumpers began to go round, the latest
letter received from Henry was always read to the general delectation.
And Henry's letters certainly were amusing. There was no frothy
effusiveness, no cheap claptrap in them as is generally the way with
students' productions, and for that very reason they were all the more
genuinely interesting. They were full, indeed, of the comical
adventures, without which a student's life is inconceivable, and no
mystery was made of the scrapes and exploits which fell to his lot, but
at the same time the distinctions which the two youths gained at the
Sorbonne were duly enumerated.
It occurred to none of the guests to ask the reverend gentleman why he
had sent his son to the Sorbonne instead of to Heidelberg, where
Lutherans generally go to college.
But once when these scholastic testimonials were passing from hand to
hand among the army of guests, an inquisitive guest remarked that in
young Moskowski's testimonial he was described as "eminent" in such
sciences as "mathematics," "geometry," "chemistry," and "mineralogy."
What need, he added, had a Moskowski to grub about amongst such things
as these. He was not going to be a miner, was he? Whereupon the reverend
pastor, with philosophical composure and prophetic inspiration,
replied: "A man never knows what sciences may be useful to him one day."
This was the _vaccinatio spiritualis_, the inoculation of the
mind--against the infection of the serf distemper.
CHAPTER III
FACE TO FACE
The two youths spent two years in the foreign University. They studied
together and they caroused together. They fought for each other, and
they wrote each other's dissertations. When they spent all their money
they wrote verses, and whichever of them was able to borrow a livre or
two, always shared it with the other. And whenever the Philistines were
too much for them they bolted into the next town.
Heinrich's last letter to his father was written from Utrecht. There
both of them gained their _promotio_. Casimir became a baccalaureat of
philosophy, Heinrich a doctor of medicine.
The Rev. Mr. Klausner told the Starosta that his little Heinrich had
appropriated the new science, according to which doctors were no longer
to plague their unfortunate patients with bitter draughts at the rate of
a pint a dose; but went about with little white pillules, the size of
millet seeds, in their pockets, and wrought marvellous cures on the
principle of _similia similibus_.
"Very well," said the Starosta, "as your son Heinrich has become a
doctor, I will make him my family physician, with a salary of 2000
thalers, on condition that he bleeds me in the first quarter of every
month, and gives me some of his drugs. For I invented homoeopathy before
Herr Hahnemann, inasmuch as whenever wine gets into my head I drink
still more to get it out again. That's my view of _similia similibus_.
Tell your son what I say."
Gottlieb Klausner thereupon took up his pen and informed his son what a
brilliant opening had thus come in his way at the very beginning of his
career. He would be sure of a post as soon as ever he got home, with a
nice salary of 2000 thalers. Moreover, he would ride in a carriage, and
give his orders to the cook, for he would have to taste of every dish
before it was presented to the Starosta, according to the wont of
princes, lest they be poisoned in their meat or drink. How many a man
would envy him such an office!
And now the two accomplished young men were summoned back to Lithuania.
All the way to the boundary hillock of the Bialystok domain they
travelled in a peasant's cart; but there a noble cavalcade awaited them,
with the Major Domo of the Starosta at their head.
The great gilded carriage of the Starosta, which was only used on the
greatest occasions of State, was sent to meet the young men, and to it
the four most reliable nags from the Starosta's stables were harnessed,
which went at a slow, dignified, parade step. On the box sat a coachman
in the national costume, and a couple of heydukes clung on to the straps
behind.
The Major Domo ought to have pronounced a solemn greeting; but he never
had the opportunity, for no sooner had the two youths leaped from the
cart, than a rush was made upon them by the mounted _Szlachta_, who took
possession of them uproariously, every one who could pressing up to,
embracing, and kissing them. Besides the youths, there leaped from the
cart a huge mastiff, the indispensable attribute of University students,
who seemed to be greatly attracted by the Major Domo, and kept taking
vigorous leaps at him. The gentleman in question was wearing a bear-skin
kaczagány, which the noble beast had evidently determined to tear from
his shoulder by hook or by crook, and in the mean time the fine oration
the poor Major Domo had prepared for the occasion escaped him
altogether.
The new arrivals were really two very nice young fellows--both of them
heroic-looking figures, though entirely different from each other.
Casimir was dark, with fiery-black eyes. His head was entirely covered
with curly hair, he had a luxuriant forelock hanging over his forehead,
and such a thick, luxuriant crop of hair that it would have blunted the
edge of a descending sword. His thick eyebrows drew near to each other
like bushy-headed serpents--perhaps, also, they would have seized each
other had they not been separated by the powerful authoritative nose,
which was the characteristic feature of the Moskowski family. Such an
aquiline nose you would not have met with in the whole Sarmatian race,
and it was fitly accompanied by the protuberant red mouth and the
pronounced double chin, which were also hereditary peculiarities. He was
his father's own son, though of a somewhat higher type.
Heinrich, on the other hand, was an excellent specimen of the type of
masculine beauty peculiar to the German race. His thick, leonine,
dark-red hair rolled over his shoulders in luxuriant masses. His face
was ruddy, his forehead white, he had a small and delicate nose, with
sensitive nostrils, large bright-blue eyes, above which the thin
straight eyebrows seemed to have been added by a painter's brush. His
mouth was large, but his lips were finely chiselled, and a large brown
mole at the corner of the lips gave a peculiar expression to the mouth.
There was no fear of mistaking one of them for the other.
And the dog, too, was a fine dog. He belonged to that race of mastiffs
which in the Hungarian Corpus Juris bears the name of "sinkorán," the
keeping of which is forbidden in Hungary by a special paragraph of the
code.
When the fêted gentlemen had been released from the embraces of the
young cavaliers, and the Major Domo from the jaws of the sinkorán, the
next thing was for them to take their places in the State carriage. The
noble youths carried Casimir on their shoulders to the carriage, and set
him down on the back seat. Heinrich also was carried on men's shoulders
to the carriage--only in his case it was not the cavaliers, but the
heydukes who performed that office, and they placed him in the front
seat face to face with Casimir.
"Why may I not sit by my friend's side?" asked Heinrich.
"What an odd question!" said the Major Domo. "Here you have been to half
a dozen colleges, and learnt so much, and yet you don't know that! A
subject _cannot_ sit down by the side of his Prince; and when they ride
together in the same carriage his proper place is the front seat."
Of course, it was the regular thing.
Moreover, as the place beside Casimir on the back seat remained empty,
the big mastiff leaped into the carriage, and occupied the place of
honour by his master's side.
"Then is a dog allowed to sit down by a nobleman?" inquired Heinrich,
indignantly.
"Certainly, for the sinkorán is also a noble animal."
And then the procession, amidst the crack of pistol-shots, proceeded
towards the castle.
In the castle gate a triumphal arch awaited the new arrivals, and the
notabilities of the place were grouped around the entrance, the damsels
arrayed in white and the peasantry in gala costumes.
When they reached the gate of the castle, it was not Heinrich's face
that was red, but his forehead, and his eyes seemed rather to be green
than blue.
He saw his father among the deputation. He could easily make him
out--one black cassock was very prominent amidst the dazzling-bright
Polish parade costumes.
He did not wait for the carriage to stop, but leaped from it, and rushed
up to the old man, embracing him again and again with great ostentation,
and kissing him in the sight of every one. The clergyman did not betray
the least emotion.
When the congratulatory addresses came to an end, the Major Domo shouted
to Heinrich--
"Come, doctor! Get in!"
"I am going with my father."
"But I am going on foot," said the clergyman.
"Then, I'll go on foot with you."
They did not press him further. Every one's head was full of something
else. The ladies praised the young squire. What a fine fellow he was,
they said. The girls flung flowers into the carriage, which went so
slowly that the foot-passengers could easily keep up with it.
Father and son trudged on together among the ranks of the pedestrians.
Presently the old man began speaking to his son in the Latin tongue, so
that the people might not understand him.
"My dear son, you well remember, no doubt, that I have always looked
upon lying and deception as the greatest of sins; and from your childish
years upwards you have always had a great inclination thereto. You know
how many hazel twigs I have worn out upon you in endeavouring to
eradicate that evil tendency. But I see that even now you are not cured
of it. Look, now! the moment you beheld your poor father amidst a group
of gentlemen, you immediately leaped from the gilded carriage, ran up to
me, embraced me, called me _carissime pater_, pinned yourself on to my
cassock, and accompanied me on foot. You thought you would deceive me by
all this hypocrisy. Yet all this ostentation of filial piety was only
because you were obliged to sit in the State carriage opposite to your
comrade, instead of by his side, and your pride was wounded in
consequence. That was why your heart suddenly conceived such a fondness
for your father. Look me straight in the face, and tell me if it was not
so."
"Yes, it was."
"Exactly; it was your pride that suffered. I do not count pride among
the more deadly sins, although I know that Petrus Lombardus elevated
this opinion into the rank of a dogma. We Protestants are content with
the definition of John the Evangelist, who saith that every falsehood is
a deadly sin. Yet pride is not falsehood, but the true image of every
man. It is the very eye of his soul. Moreover, as a philosopher, you
must know very well that whoever attaches himself to a master must make
submission his business. A colonel is a big man; but when the general
speaks it is for the colonel to listen; and if the general says to him,
'Go through fire,' or, 'Go through water,' he must submit and obey. If a
man who has been born poor would drink and make merry, he must first
renounce his pride. When you wanted to choose a career, I left you a
fine choice. You had only to please yourself. You might have become a
clergyman, like myself, in the usual way. True, we cook with water and
do not throw away our crusts, and when we wear out our clothes we turn
them, and so wear them again; but, on the other hand, the clergyman
always sits in the front seat, and gives place to no son of man, unless
it be the Son of God. But this haughty poverty seemingly is not to your
liking. You say to yourself, '_Dat Galerius opes, dat Justinianus
honores._' Well, you have got what you sought. Wealth, a life of comfort
is in your hands. Galerius has given them to you. He who wants to wear a
bedizened hat must be prepared to doff it right and left--to high and
low. _I_ need take off my _capillum_ to no man. Why do you oscillate
like a pendulum? A man must make his own position. If you don't like
subjection, turn back, go to Göttingen, go through a whole course of
theology--then come here, be my curate, and then perhaps in ten years'
time you may get a living somewhere. But if you want to live in
splendour and comfort, go back to the carriage, and sit on the back seat
face to face with your lord and master, for that is your proper place."
Heinrich, very red in the face, went back to the slowly lumbering
carriage, and again took his place in it opposite his youthful comrade.
And thus they went to the town together, and right into the castle.
CHAPTER IV
THE CDT-TABLE AND THE CHALLENGING GLOVES
The coming home of young Squire Casimir was celebrated with great
solemnity at the palace of the Starosta. The thunder of the mortars, the
roll of the drums, the blare of the trumpets, announced to the thronging
crowd the moment when the parade carriage rolled over the drawbridge. In
front of the gate stood a guard of honour of the assembled heydukes,
under the command of the Castellan. The Starosta himself had come as far
as the hall door to welcome his son.
Casimir, according to ancient custom, received his father's greeting on
bended knee, and kissed his uplifted hand, whereupon the old man,
thrusting his powerful palm into his son's well-thatched poll, lugged
him to his feet by his hair, and, slapping his face gently at the same
time, said: "Come, come, you have put on a mighty fine fleece since last
I saw you." But immediately afterwards he kissed him on both cheeks, and
the kiss obliterated the slap.
Heinrich got neither kisses nor slaps, he simply didn't count at all.
A hundred guests were in the large hall, all of them prominent noblemen
and priests, and all of them embraced the young gentleman in turn, while
Heinrich they only patted on the shoulder, and while every one said:
"_Vitam pana!_"[16] to the nobleman's son, they only greeted the son of
the pastor with: "_Badz zdrow!_"[17]
[Footnote 16: "Long live your honour!"]
[Footnote 17: "Good health to you!"]
Immediately after the first interchange of greetings the court tailor
took the two youths beneath his protection. It was his duty to give them
new clothes corresponding to their rank, they had ceased to belong to
the category of students. Heinrich got a brand-new black velvet jacket
with puff sleeves, a starched ruff, black atlas knee-breeches, with
stockings, and shoes with silver buckles--the whole get-up was completed
by a sword-belt, a broad silver chain wound round the breast with a
large medallion hanging to it, and a black flowered taffety mantle
fastened to the shoulder and reaching to the heels. When he had taken a
good all-round look at himself in the mirror, he was quite proud of his
costume. He fancied that it was a great distinction.
But it was not a distinction, but only a difference.
When he entered the great hall, its pomp and grandeur almost blinded
him. The walls of the room were embellished by the portraits of the
Lords of Bialystok. There were armorial shields everywhere, and in the
corners stood the figures of men in armour. The lofty pointed windows
perpetuated, in masterpieces of coloured glass, all manner of ancient
Polish legends. The long table was crowded with artistic plate and
drinking vessels of chased gold and silver, with confect-holders
mimicing the figures of giraffes and elephants. In the midst was a large
fountain, at the foot of which enamelled dolphins cast lavender-water
high up in the air; and the enchanting spectacle was but enhanced by the
costumes of a whole army of guests and the splendour of their weapons.
Heinrich hardly recognized his dear friend Casimir. He was resplendent
in such splendid raiment as the Polish magnates are only in the habit of
wearing at coronations or similar ceremonies. In the midst of so much
fur and velvet, Heinrich, in his simple black medical suit, felt almost
like the inhabitant of another and much humbler planet. While the army
of guests crowded round Casimir, so that every one might have a chance
of embracing him at least once, Heinrich was simply thrust aside by an
elbow or trodden on by one foot after another, and nobody even troubled
to say: "_Wymow mie Pán!_"[18]
[Footnote 18: "Your pardon, sir!"]
Great was the crushing and pushing to get into the banqueting-hall,
where every guest immediately sought out his proper place. This was
quite an easy matter. Every guest who had ever dined at the Palace of
Bialystok had his own beaker on which his name was engraved. As often as
he returned thither so often was his particular beaker produced from the
plate-chest. As for the spoons, knives, and forks, every guest brought
his own with him. Aristocratic pride laid down this rule: "From the
beaker out of which I drink none else may drink; the knife, fork, and
spoon which touches my mouth none else may swallow--neither may I serve
others so."
Heinrich would also have very much liked to know where he was to sit.
As a poor man he naturally began to look for his seat at the lowest end
of the table.
At the head of the table a large armchair, carved with armorial
bearings, had been placed, this was obviously the seat of the Starosta.
On each side of it stood two smaller armchairs. All the other chairs
were armless. The arm of a chair is rather in the way when a man has to
drain his beaker to the very dregs. At the head of the opposite end of
the long table was the seat of "the little master." _His_ beaker was a
christening gift, a crystal goblet upon a golden base.
Heinrich fancied that he would find his seat by the side of his
comrade's. But there he found a beaker with another name upon it.
He had to seek higher. He went searching from chair to chair for a
silver beaker marked with his name. On the right-hand side of the table
there was no trace of it. Perhaps it was on the left-hand side? Of
course, it must be there.
Again he began from the bottom and worked his way up, but he could find
no trace of his name.
By this time he had got to the topmost armchair. Merely out of curiosity
he glanced at the silver beaker placed beside the plate. He couldn't
believe his eyes, and his heart began to beat violently, for on that
beaker he read the name--Klausner. But his wonder only lasted for a
moment. The Christian name was not Heinrich, but Gottlieb. This place of
honour by the side of the Starosta belonged to the Lutheran clergyman,
on the opposite side to him was the Catholic bishop.
Thus did they exalt the simple curer of souls, while his son, the
doctor, was not even included among the guests.
Much hurt he turned to the Major Domo.
"Then am _I_ not invited to the banquet?" he asked.
"Invited, doctorkin! What a question! Of course you are. Why, you are
the most important person here. Why, the banquet couldn't begin without
you."
"But where am I to sit, then?"
"I'll show you immediately. But you must first let all the other guests
take their places. All their honours are now assembled. We are only
waiting for his reverence, your dear father."
"But he arrived along with us."
"True for you. But their honours come in their coaches or on horseback,
so that they may not make their green or yellow boots muddy on the road,
while your dear father came all the way on foot, so that he has to have
his shoes polished before he can come in."
This was honour indeed. First of all, however, the pastor had to go and
pay his respects to the Starosta, and he appeared along with him in the
banqueting-chamber when the heydukes threw open the folding-doors. It
was such a large door that three men could enter it abreast; and three
men _did_ enter now, the master of the house in the centre, with the
bishop on his right and the pastor on his left.
At the appearance of the Starosta the trumpets blew a flourish, and
every guest took his proper place at the table.
Then the bishop pronounced a long grace in Latin, every one present
murmuring the Doxology after him, except the Rev. Master Klausner, who
belonged to another confession, and who, after the Latin prayer was
over, pronounced a blessing in his own language:--
"_Der Herr segne euch und sättige euch!_"[19]
[Footnote 19: "The Lord bless you and satisfy you!"]
Then followed the creaking of chairs drawn forward, and every one
settled comfortably into his place.
Heinrich wondered what was going to happen to _him_.
He had not to wait long. A couple of bustling heydukes brought forward a
little three-legged table, covered with a fine linen cloth, and placed
it behind the armchair of the Starosta. They also placed a chair by the
side of this little table, and put upon it a silver trencher, a beaker,
and the usual dining apparatus. His knife, spoon, and fork were much
more costly than the knives, spoons, and forks of the other guests. The
Major Domo, with his ivory wand, indicated to the doctor that that was
his place. The body-physician always sits behind the Starosta. It is his
office to exercise a dietetical and gastronomical superintendence at
the magnate's table.
And that he might have a board-fellow, the big mastiff Caro now came up,
and Heinrich being his best-known acquaintance, he put his head on the
table--he was a big dog, so he could just reach it. He was determined
that Heinrich should have a _vis-à-vis_, anyhow.
Heinrich tried to perform the duties of his queer office with due
dignity.
Every dish was put on his table first, and he had to taste each one of
them first of all.
That of itself was a great dignity, surely! Every great man ought to
order his table after a similar fashion. He ought to have a
house-physician standing beside him at every dish, to say: "You are free
to fill your distinguished stomach with that; but this, on the other
hand, you are not so much as to look at."
Monsieur Heinrich was a disciple of Hahnemann, so he began to raise
difficulties as early as the soup.
"Don't touch it, your Excellency!" said he. "It is poison. As the verse
says: 'Ginger and saffron, nutmegs, cloves, and pepper only thicken the
blood and clog the stomach.'"
The whole company laughed heartily, but they shovelled down their soup
all the same.
The next dish was wild-boar's head stuffed with celery and truffles, and
flanked with cold jelly.
Against this dish Heinrich was able to intone a whole litany when the
master who invented it presented him with a small slice of it on a
silver platter.
"The head of every beast is forbidden food," he said; "and as for the
wild boar, no part of him is good, from hoof to scull. As for the
truffle, it grows under ground, and brings those who eat it under
ground; while celery inflames the blood, and gelatine neutralizes the
gastric juices; it is no fit food for men."
At this the Starosta laughed more than ever.
"But you must take me at my word, gentlemen," insisted Heinrich. "I eat
according to the principles of the immortal Hahnemann. That dish is
poison to you, I say."
"It is a very slow poison. For the last fifty years I've been killing
myself with it, and yet here I am," cried the Starosta.
"Yes; but it is the cause of the gout in your knees, the colic in your
stomach, the spasms in your side. You may also thank it for your
sleepless nights and the humming in your ears, as well as for heartburn,
erysipelas, and St. Vitus's dance. I, your house-doctor, certify that
you partook of this poisonous dish at your own table, and indigestion
and apoplexy are only a prayer apart."
But Casimir spoilt everything by his intervention. From the other end of
the table he bawled to his comrade--
"Come, come, old chap! Surely you don't want to play the part of Doctor
Pedro Recio de Tiertafuera at the banquet given by Sancho Panza, in his
official capacity of Governor! All these gentlemen have read 'Don
Quixote,' you know."
And with these words he regularly flung his comrade out of his doctorial
chair. The whole company laughed heartily at him, and even the Rev.
Pastor himself apostrophized his son with the facetious citation:--
"_Descende Philippe, non sunt hic ollae!_"
"Then why have I been put here?" inquired Heinrich, in great wrath, of
the Major Domo.
"Why? Why, to taste of every dish, to see that there is no deadly poison
in it which might make a man suddenly ill."
"Then the dog Caro here could perform my office equally well."
And henceforth Heinrich flung the cut-off portion of every dish
presented to him to taste into the jaws of the mastiff, who snapped them
up in an instant, and was highly delighted with his new duties.
Thus the doctor himself absolutely starved during the sumptuous banquet,
for not a single dish was ever brought back to him, the remains being
sent into a side room, where, at a table without a table-cloth, sat the
lower order of guests, such as the begging friars, the clerks who acted
as secretaries, and the court poets. The latter usually went by the name
of "court fools" when they had more than common genius, but not every
poet merited this higher title, for there were bores among them too, and
these remained poets, and nothing but poets.
The favourite amongst them all was the house-fool, Lupko, who had also
been invited into the gentlemen's dining-hall, and was there practising
every sort of tomfoolery, letting off literary squibs, imitating feline
and canine concerts, and the squeaking of stuck pigs, turning his hat
into twenty different shapes, tootling in a bottle, and drumming in the
hollow of his hand, and drinking glasses of wine at the same time that
he was imitating the scream of a peacock.
Naturally, in these things Heinrich could by no means compete with him.
All the guests treated Lupko with wine; but none of them said to the
doctor, "What will you drink? Fetch wine for the doctor."
Casimir also joked familiarly with the jester--nay, he almost openly
urged him to go along and try conclusions with the doctor.
Students love to heckle each other, especially if one of them has had a
full skin at table.
So the fool skipped away to the doctor.
"_Servus humillimus collega!_ For colleagues we really are. Yes,
_doctores ambo_! The only difference is that on your head is a college
cap, and on mine a cap with pointed hare's-ears. _Evoe Bacche!_"
And with that he clapped Heinrich on the shoulder.
At this Heinrich was very angry, but still angrier was the mastiff to
see his master hit on the shoulder by a hunch-backed rascal, so he
rushed at him incontinently, placed his paws on his neck, and snatched
from his head the fur cap adorned with the two projecting hare's-ears.
The fool tried to recover his cap, but the dog would not give it up, so
a great debate began between the dog and the fool. The doctor's little
table was overthrown in the midst of the scrimmage, and finally the cap
was torn in two, half of it remaining in the hands of the fool, and the
other half in the jaws of the mastiff.
"Silence, you God-forsaken rascals!" cried the Starosta; "don't you hear
that his reverence is trying to say grace?" And with that he seized the
Spanish cane which was standing beside his chair, and belaboured with it
the dog's back and the jester's body at the same time, and so restored
peace between them.
And now the reverend gentleman stood up in his place, and, raising his
beaker unctuously aloft, pronounced a Latin grace full of graceful turns
of expression, invoking blessings on the heads of the Starosta, his son,
and their remotest posterity. The blessing was followed by a great
clinking of glasses, and every guest drained his goblet to the very
dregs.
When the din of the vivats and the blast of the trumpets had subsided,
the Starosta spoke from his place at the head of the table.
"Deo Gratias, my thanks for all these pretty wishes. And look now, to
show in what great respect my reverend neighbour here is held in heaven
above, I may mention that his kind wish that my family might flourish in
the days to come had scarce died away when an answer to his petition
that instant arrived. For I have just received, from the glorious city
of Vienna, a letter from my dear friend, Prince Maximilian Sonnenburg,
in which he informs me that the dearest wish of his Excellency, and of
his Excellency's consort, the Princess Ludmilla Rattenburg of Tannenfels
and Bunteviéz, corresponds with mine, to wit, that their only daughter,
the Princess Ingola Sonnenburg and Rattenburg should be betrothed to my
son Casimir."
This famous piece of news was instantly greeted with a vivat which made
the very rafters ring. Every guest hastened to congratulate Casimir.
But he, from the other end of the table, bawled to his father--
"But is the lady beautiful?"
"I have her portrait here. They sent it with the letter."
And he drew from his side-pocket a little miniature in a jewelled frame.
Naturally every one wished to look at it.
But the Starosta would not let it go out of his hand.
"Ho, ho! Softly, softly! It is only the bridegroom who has the right to
look at it."
Then he turned round, knowing that Heinrich was behind him. "Look ye, my
son," said he to the doctor, "take this portrait to Casimir, but show it
only to him and to none other. You may look at it, too, because you are
a doctor. Do you understand physiognomies? Can you say, from looking at
this portrait, whether the little Princess is phlegmatic, or choleric,
or, which God forbid, of a melancholy temperament?"
Well, this was a great distinction for Heinrich. He took the portrait to
Casimir, and showed the portrait to him first of all.
The bride in the portrait was of mythological loveliness. She was
painted as Sappho, in a Greek chlamys, with her golden tresses flowing
down her shoulders, and her arms bare to the shoulder. The portrait,
painted on ivory, was a masterpiece of water-colouring.
Casimir was unable to conceal his enthusiasm at the beauty of his bride.
"She is a veritable goddess!" he cried.
"Worthy indeed of adorations!" cried Heinrich, with still greater
emphasis.
Nobody else was allowed to look; only they two were so privileged.
But the jester burrowed his way out from beneath the table, and thrust
his head between them that he might cast a glance at the portrait.
Heinrich gave him a box on the ears, and hid the picture from him.
"Would you?" said he; "this is no spectacle for fools."
Now a fool, even in those days, drew the line at a box on the ear, and
did not take it kindly; on the contrary, it was apt to make him angry.
So, instead of his torn and tattered pointed cap, he drew forth his
protean hat and placed it on his head, after forming it into the exact
shape of the biretta worn by the Rev. Master Klausner. Then he wound
round his neck a bed-curtain, making it take the guise of the reverend
gentleman's well-creased cassock. And in this guise he planted himself
beside the table and raised his glass.
The guests made a clatter with their glasses by way of indicating that
Lupko was about to speak. At last there was silence, and the jester was
able to begin.
In his voice and delivery he managed to throw an audacious imitation of
the pastor. He dismissed his words through his nose with the same
unctuous solemnity, and amplified the ends of his periods just as the
reverend gentleman was wont to do.
"My worthy gentlemen," he began, "I also have to disemburden myself of a
joyful piece of intelligence which has just reached me through the
dog-post from Siberia, from the illustrious capital of mighty Siberia,
Irkutsk. I have got the letter written in Tungusian hieroglyphics on
reindeer parchment, and this letter informs me that the mighty Prince of
the Samoyeds, Pan Subagalleros, on behalf of himself and his consort,
her Highness Pana Csoroszlya, has this day betrothed his only daughter,
Panicza Kaczamajka, to my only son Heinrich."
The army of guests burst into a loud ho, ho! at this farcical parody,
the trumpets blew a frightfully loud flourish, every one roared with
laughter, and even the worthy pastor himself smiled gently at the
fooling.
For, after all, it was but fooling. Perhaps Heinrich would have laughed
at it likewise if he had been drinking all through the banquet with the
rest of the merry company. But remember that he had remained hungry and
thirsty throughout, and a sober man in a society that has well drunken
is a danger to mirth.
Casimir also had guffawed at the words of the fool. It was a rough jest,
no doubt, but who would take the folly of a fool seriously?
Only Heinrich remained pale and silent, and pressed his lips together
till the blood came.
"Come, comrade, why so dumfoundered? Surely you are not angry?" bawled
Casimir.
But Heinrich continued moody and sulky.
* * * * *
The grand banquet was not terminated, but interrupted by a ball. The
Starosta himself gave the signal by lighting his big meerschaum pipe,
whereupon the other gentlemen followed his example, and began their
beloved fumigation by the side of their black coffee. The musicians
thereupon quitted the dining-room, and a short time elapsed, during
which they also took a snack, and then the music began again over the
heads of the guests, in the upper story of the palace, which could be
reached from the dining-room by means of a spiral staircase.
As soon as the inspiring notes of a mazurka burst forth from above, the
fiery youths spurned their chairs away, and without waiting for a
special invitation, hastened up the spiral staircase into the
dancing-room. Those of the elderly gentlemen whose feet were capable
(after dinner) of grappling with the tortuous stairs, followed them.
On the upper floor was the dancing-room, brilliantly illuminated with
wax candles, where were now assembled the flower of the belles and the
pick of the stately matrons of the Lithuanian capital--a goodly company
who reached the ballroom by the opposite staircase.
Heinrich, swallowing his wrath, and oblivious of the pangs of hunger,
also hastened up to the dancing-room, which was now quite full of
ladies.
The girls were standing, the more mature women were sitting, according
to custom.
Heinrich also found the idol of his heart among the girls. Six years
before she was a growing little lassie, now she was a damsel in full
bloom. In those days they had dearly loved each other, and had sworn
that they would belong to none else. There stood the beautiful and
charming Tatiana in front of her mamma. She was wearing the Russian
national costume, with an apron embroidered with pearls and a coif
adorned with precious stones. She was the daughter of a Russian
_chinovnik_[20] whose father had been sent from St. Petersburg to keep
the Poles in order.
[Footnote 20: Official.]
The beautiful girl had grown in a marvellous manner during these six
years, she was the tallest among the damsels present, and her lofty
Russian coif made her appear even taller than she was.
Just then a good many couples were dancing a mazurka.
Heinrich made his way up to his former ideal, and, bowing first of all
before her dear mamma, with a chivalrous flourish demanded the hand of
her daughter for a dance. It was six years since last he had seen her.
The stately damsel proceeded deliberately to draw off her long,
embroidered gauntlet.
Heinrich was amazed. What an odd custom for a lady to draw off her glove
when invited to dance!
The young lady extended her hand towards Heinrich, her smile was
somewhat peculiar.
"Miss Tatiana?" stammered Heinrich.
"Well, doctor! I thought you wanted to feel my pulse!"
Heinrich was crushed. They were making game of him. He was no cavalier,
but only a doctor, apparently. He rather wondered the lady did not
protrude her tongue as well, to make the consultation quite complete. It
only needed that.
He seemed to have lost the use of his limbs, and stood there like a
stone idol. But some one speedily came to his assistance by shoving him
out of the way. It was Casimir. He signified that he desired a dance
with the lady by simply stamping the ground with his foot, as became a
cavalier, and she immediately gave herself up to him, and Casimir passed
his arm around her slim waist and flew with her among the maze of
dancers.
Heinrich gazed after them in stupefaction. So that was his former
sweetheart, and this his former comrade! How the girl's eyes sparkled
when she gazed at the face of her partner! They seemed to hold one
another fast by the eyes. The mazurka has its charm, certainly. The
cavalier stands in the midst with his arms folded, after dismissing his
partner, who moves gracefully round him in a circle. Yet the damsel
gazes continually into the eyes of her cavalier, and the magic of his
eyes draws her back to him again. And then it is as though they were
whispering to each other.
When the dance was over, Casimir led his partner to the credenz-table
and offered her refreshments. Thither also strolled Tatiana's papa,
worthy Nicholas Eskimov. The girl embraced her father, kissed him on the
cheek, and whispered something in his ear. Then she flew back into the
_colonne_ on the arm of her partner. There are many figures in the
mazurka, Heinrich had every opportunity of studying them to the end from
a window recess.
When the dance was over, Casimir returned his partner to her mamma, and
after a good deal of genuflecting and hand-kissing, took his leave of
her. Heinrich at once hastened to his comrade and began to reproach
him.
"Why did you take my sweetheart from me?" he asked.
Casimir first of all regarded him with amazement, and then laughed in
his face.
"What a foolish chap you are! Why, it was only natural that I should
have the first dance with the fair Tatiana in our own house. That is the
custom all the world over."
"Why is it the custom all the world over?"
"Why? It seems to me that you do not realize that during the six years
when you and I have been walking up and down the earth, not only the
little girl has grown something bigger, but her papa also. The
chinovnik, whom six years ago you helped to copy legal documents, is
nowadays Governor of Grodno. His Excellency now lives in the town, and
orders about even my father, the Starosta. And I am only my father's
little son. Little Tatiana has grown big while you weren't looking at
her, if you want her you must grow bigger yourself. Only don't make such
an ecce homo face; go, rather, and pay your respects to his Excellency,
the Governor. He is a very big wig now, I can tell you!"
CHAPTER V
EVERY ROAD LEADS TO ST. PETERSBURG--BUT WHITHER DOES ST. PETERSBURG
LEAD?
And now it suddenly dawned upon Heinrich why Tatiana's papa, Nicholas
Eskimov, was placed next to the Bishop. Truly he was a great potentate!
A far-seeing idea popped into Heinrich's brain. He went to the
credenz-table, where refreshments were being distributed, and where also
the Governor was delighting his eyes with the spectacle of the pretty
girls dancing, and at the same time sipping a glass of iced sherbet.
He bowed deeply before him, and saluted him in Russian--
"Zdorovuyte!"[21] he said.
[Footnote 21: "Your health!"]
The Governor tapped the doctor on the shoulder.
"So you have come home! And got an appointment too, I hear?" said he.
"But I don't want to keep it."
"Then what _do_ you want?" asked Eskimov, regarding the youth through
his glass.
"A wider career. Here at Bialystok there is no scope for a doctor,
especially if he be a homoeopathist. Here, if anybody is ill he wants the
doctor to drink the medicine with him in whacking tumblers, and won't
accept a recipe unless it covers a whole sheet of foolscap. True there
will be no end of bleedings and cataplasms, but the whole of modern
medical science is absolutely thrown away upon them. There is no getting
on here. The Pole lives in his traditions. I want to go to St.
Petersburg. There there is a fine open career for an enterprising
doctor. St. Petersburg is the new Rome. Every road leads to it. I beg
your Excellency to give me letters of introduction to your acquaintances
in the Tsar's capital, that beneath their protection I may go on to
prosper."
"Well, I should like to pack you off myself and I'll give you the
letters of introduction at once. When do you want to go? To-morrow!
Immediately! So much the better. But hold! my son! We never give
anything gratis in our part of the world, we always like something in
exchange. Apparently you are the good comrade of young Squire Casimir,
eh?"
"That depends."
"But I noticed just now that when Squire Casimir finished dancing with
my daughter just now you had a private chat with him. At least answer me
this question: if a Pole gives his word to any one, does he keep it?"
"Well, I can tell your Excellency so much: if a Pole gives his word to a
comrade, he will go through fire and water for him; if he gives his word
to an enemy, he will return to his prison; if he gives his word to a
tyrant, he will bear that tyrant's yoke;--but if he gives his word to a
pretty girl he will forget it as soon as he turns upon his heel."
"It is not only the Poles who do the last thing. But just one more
question, and accordingly as you answer it truthfully I shall know what
to think of you. You heard the congratulations made to the Starosta when
he announced the betrothal of his son to a Viennese Princess; you saw
her portrait, for the Starosta let you have it. Tell me truly, on your
honour, which is the lovelier of the two, my Tatiana or the Viennese
Princess?"
"Your Excellency! Paris never had so much difficulty in pronouncing
judgment when called upon to award the golden apple to one of three
goddesses, as I should have to decide which of the two girls is the
lovelier in my eyes. But one thing I _can_ tell you. In the background
of that portrait are painted two splendid castles. Those castles, with
all the appurtenances thereof, will be part of the bride's dowry. And
those two castles are very fine castles."
"Good. I know everything. To-morrow, after dinner, come to me at the
fortress for your letters of introduction."
After that Heinrich vanished from the dancing-room, he returned to his
own room to devise artful plans for the future.
Every evil inclination was now aroused in his bosom: envy, shame, anger,
and slighted love--those four monsters who never close an eye and are
alert even when they are asleep.
At dawn of day he was summoned by the Starosta. The old fellow was
sitting in an armchair with a mottled purple face and breathing heavily.
"What ails your Excellency?"
"I am waiting for a stroke or for a surgeon to open a vein, and the
question is which will be the quicker," replied the Starosta,
pleasantly.
"Well, I've come first, you see."
And then he performed the little surgical operation on the Starosta
which his constitution demanded after every banquet.
"Well done, my son. You understand your business, I see. What a pity you
can't remain at my court here."
"What does your Excellency mean?"
"The Governor has been talking to me. He says you want to go to St.
Petersburg. You are right. But he also advised me to send my own Casimir
to the Russian court. There's a great career open there for such youths
as he who can read and even philosophize a bit. The Muscovites love
philosophy. Well, with us a little of it goes a long way. _We_ always do
what the warmth of our hearts suggests to our brains, and don't waste
much time in deliberation. Well, go together. I'll send after you the
salary I promised you for your official services here, and in return I
will only ask you to keep watch over my son, lest any evil befall him."
Heinrich pressed the hand of his benefactor. He understood the allusion.
It was the usual pretext: to advance a person in order to remove him.
The Governor had observed that Casimir had brought the girl back to her
mother _by her left hand_. Let the young squire go to St. Petersburg!
After dinner, Heinrich went to town, to the Governor's. He gave him the
promised letters of introduction and two passports, one for himself and
one for Casimir.
"So Squire Casimir goes with you? Well, my son, I lay it upon your soul
to let me know everything that he does or intends to do during his stay
at St. Petersburg. Do you understand me?"
"Perfectly, your Excellency."
Scarce a year had passed since the two young men had departed for St.
Petersburg, when one night they returned home together to the Castle of
Bialystok.
It was a dark night when they arrived, and they came to the gate of the
park, which they opened with the assistance of their keys and got into
the Castle without the knowledge of the family. They sought the
Starosta.
The old man was sitting all alone in his bedroom, in a large armchair.
He was betwixt three tables, one in front of and one on each side of
him. On the table in front of him was a large book printed on vellum,
containing the history of Lithuania (each chapter beginning with
beautiful big illuminated letters), from the days of the first pagan
Grand Duke. On the other two tables were placed flasks of all shapes and
sizes, and of a religious character, coming as they did from Chartreuse
or Benedictine monasteries, not to mention other similar elixirs worthy
of equal praise. He was astonished when he saw the two young men enter.
"Has the magic bird griffin brought you hither?" he cried.
"Yes, the bird griffin has indeed brought us hither," said Casimir to
the Count. "I mean that griffin who clutches hold of the mightinesses of
this world and carries them to the mountains of Kaf."
And then he told his father how a world-illuminating idea had come to
birth in the capital of the great Russian empire, which aimed at nothing
less than freeing all the nations of the earth from tyranny. A powerful
league had arisen, with the Grand Duke Constantine at its head, for the
annihilation of tyrants. The members of this league were all the nations
of the Russian Empire, and the fifth of these nations was Poland. The
sixth and seventh, who did not yet belong to the Russian world-empire,
were the Wallachians and the Magyars; but these also were going to join
on. Every member of this holy league carried by way of a symbol a
copper ring, whose sevenfold monogram contained the initial letters of
the seven nations.
Old Moskowski welcomed the idea with great delight.
Everything was ripe for a rupture. The army had been won over to the
cause of the Revolution. In the various provinces, administrative
details had already been arranged, and to every one his part had been
distributed. To Casimir Moskowski was assigned the insurrectionary
province of Volhynia. The signal was awaited from St. Petersburg. As
soon as the Revolution had broken out and gained ground there, the
signal would be given to all the other chief towns, to the South
Russians in Kiev, to the Tartars at Kazan, to the Crimean peoples in
Bogchiserai, to the Finns in Helsingfors, to the Poles at Warsaw--the
Revolution would raise its head simultaneously in all these places. And
before long the concerted outbreak would spread from Bialystok to Perm,
Odessa, and even to distant Tobolsk.
The Starosta was ravished at the prospect.
"But how about the Governor?" he said.
"Nicholas Eskimov will be seized in the citadel, together with the
garrison."
"And then he shall sweep the courtyard of the Palace of Bialystok,"
cried the Starosta, "and that stuck-up little daughter of his, Tatiana,
shall wash the crockery in my scullery."
"But all this must be kept secret till the signal arrives from St.
Petersburg for a general rising."
There was only one thing which nettled the old Starosta. As the Holy
League had included Volhynia among its provinces, why did they not
confide the leadership of the insurrection to the man best entitled to
it; in other words, to himself, the father? Why give it to his son?
"Well, you know, you are very old, and drink a great deal."
At last the old man accommodated himself to the new order of things.
After all, if his son became the chief man in Volhynia, the glory of it
could not fail to rebound upon him.
From that day forth the two young men remained hidden in the Castle;
none knew of their whereabouts.
They were to receive the stipulated signal from St. Petersburg by
pigeon-post.
And one day the post-pigeon really did arrive at the Castle.
They found among its tail feathers a thin membrous letter, to whose
cipher Heinrich possessed the key.
Heinrich took the letter and unhusked its contents. "Bad news--the very
worst," he cried; "the Revolution broke out at St. Petersburg, but was
instantly suppressed. All the leaders of the league have been seized.
_Sauve qui peut!_"
"There you are," said the Starosta. "I'm old, and drink too much, eh?
But if I want to do anything, nobody shall stand in my way but myself.
You are young and wise; that is why you can talk so much and do
nothing."
"Our sole safety is now in flight," said Heinrich. "The pigeon-post has
just brought us the bad news, but as yet the Governor knows nothing
about it. He will only be informed of it officially to-morrow
afternoon. We have the start of him by two days. We ought to take
refuge at once."
"Where?" inquired the Starosta.
"Our way is plain. Austria is quite close to us. Vienna will not deliver
up political refugees. There, too, is Casimir's future father-in-law,
and he is a man of great political influence. We must take shelter under
his wings. Only let the first fury pass away over our heads; the rest
will be a matter of high diplomacy."
So the two young men resolved to fly towards the Austrian frontier. The
Russian Government would know nothing of their flight thither and their
stay there.
A week later the Starosta received a letter written by Heinrich, in
which he was informed that the two young men had safely crossed the
border and arrived in the Austrian capital, proceeding at once to the
Prince's family mansion, where they had been very heartily welcomed.
There was no danger. They had simply denied any participation in the
revolution. The ambassadors would make all the rest easy.
Moskowski hastened to communicate this joyful intelligence to the Rev.
Mr. Klausner, who, in the mean time, had again become the daily guest of
the Starosta's.
Still greater satisfaction did it afford Moskowski when he read all
about the St. Petersburg rising in the newspapers and those implicated
therein; and at the same time he frequently met Governor Eskimov, who
continued to treat him most affably, and never once inquired about his
son or ever alluded to the conspiracy at St. Petersburg, treating it as
an affair which did not concern either of them the least bit in the
world. Naturally, Moskowski himself took good care to let the matter
alone.
After a very short delay a letter arrived for the Starosta from the
Prince von Sonnenburg, in which he informed his dear friend that his
only daughter Ingola had that very day before the altar been united by
the insoluble bonds of holy matrimony to Squire Casimir, the Starosta's
son. Simultaneously, Heinrich sent a letter to his father,
circumstantially describing the pomp and splendour of the wedding, after
which the happy pair had retired to the ancestral Castle of Sonnenburg.
Thence they were to proceed to Italy for the honeymoon, and they
proposed to take him, as doctor, along with them.
On hearing this joyful intelligence, old Moskowski attended a plain Mass
from mere thankfulness.
Another year had elapsed, when Squire Casimir himself informed his
father by letter of a joyful family event. A little son had been born to
him, and both mother and child were doing excellently well. He was to be
named Maximilian, after his maternal grandfather.
"There you are," cried old Moskowski in triumph to the Rev. Mr.
Klausner, "a grandson with the name of Maximilian, a grandson of an
Austrian prince! _He_ never _can_ become a boor. Was there ever a
Maximilian in the world who came down to that? Never! A fig for all your
Jewish prophesies!"
After that there arrived frequent letters from the bride, letters
written in a fine, elegant hand, with a soft flowing pen. And in these
letters the highly cultured _grand dame_ drew, without end, idyllic
pictures of the bliss she shared with her Casimir.
Presently there came an agreeable communication subscribed by the
Chancellor of the Imperial Court officially informing the Starosta that
his son Casimir had been promoted to the rank of major in the First
Imperial Uhlan regiment.
A year later a second joyful family event was announced. "A second, eh?"
His name was Stanislaus. To him, at any rate, they gave a good old
Polish name.
"Ah, how I should like to see them all!" sighed the old Starosta.
But his old bones did not like the idea of a long carriage journey. The
City of Vienna is, alas! a terrible distance from Bialystok.
Never mind, what one cannot see face to face can be presented fairly
well in a picture; and the loving daughter-in-law painted the two little
descendants in the act of embracing each other, with their two little
curly polls all mixed up together. The tears regularly flowed from the
eyes of the old Starosta as he gazed upon this pretty picture.
"These never can become serfs; no, never!"
And fresh presents arrived.
They sent from Vienna the twofold family tree of the Moskowskis and the
Sonnenburgs, blended together in a harmonious whole. It was wrought in
copper-plate with masterly engravings. Not a fault could be found in it.
Then the old Starosta wrote a letter with his own hand to his children,
to his son and daughter-in-law. He called them "my children" expressly
in this letter. He assured them he was longing for the time when he
should see them all in the ancient Castle of Bialystok. The Tsar would
certainly grant an amnesty to those who had been compromised in the
rising of 1824, and had taken refuge abroad. He trusted the Almighty
would permit him to see that time. He also thanked Heinrich for cleaving
so faithfully to Casimir. He was a worthy young man, who deserved all
respect.
And a worthy young man he was indeed. He wrote his father a letter every
week, and every now and then he sent a little money home, although his
earnings were very small.
And once more the Starosta received an official letter from Vienna, in
which the Lord High Steward informed him, in the most obliging manner,
that his Majesty, the Emperor and King, had advanced Casimir Moskowski
to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and at the same time decorated him
with the golden key of a Kammerherr.
"What, my son a lieutenant-colonel!--in the mighty Imperial army! Ah,
how I should like to see him in his fur-bedizened red uniform! And I
wonder where he'll hang his Kammerherr key--on his breast or in his
girdle? If only I could see his face! My dear pastor, do write once more
to Heinrich, and urge him to say to my son, 'Have your portrait painted
for your father's sake, at full length, life size, sitting on horseback,
commanding your regiment, and send it on to him. It would be the very
best Christmas gift you could give him.'"
So the Rev. Gottlieb Klausner wrote to his son, declaring the wish of
the affectionate father, and duly got an answer from him.
But this answer greatly angered the two old gentlemen.
"Casimir will not let himself be painted; he is tormented by the
suspicion that those who are painted in their youth will die young."
"Did ever any one hear such rubbish?" growled the Starosta. "_My_ son
superstitious! And a superstition, too, the like of which I never heard
of! What was the good, then, of his learning philosophy, metaphysics,
and chemistry? _I_ never took my degree at Utrecht, yet even I don't
believe such nonsense. That comes of settling down in Vienna, you see.
He's got mumpish and stupid."
"I'll soon find a remedy for all that," said Gottlieb Klausner. "I know
a famous painter at Vienna who has a peculiar talent. If once he has had
a good look at any one, he can go home and paint that person's portrait
to the life without the person so painted knowing anything about it. I
can certainly trust him with this commission."
"Do it for me, by all means. I'll send him a thousand dollars in advance
on account, and if when the picture arrives I recognize my son, I'll
give the painter whatever he likes to ask for it."
A few months afterwards Klausner got his answer from the painter. The
picture was already on its way, well packed up, frame and all. A
four-horse waggon would bring it from Vienna to Bialystok. Let them only
keep an eye on the frontier custom-house officers, lest they injured
it.
The bringing of the picture to the house was a veritable triumphal
progress. It was packed in a gigantic case, and it required four master
carpenters to open it and disentangle it from all its swathing bands and
wrappings.
On the same day on which the picture arrived, the Governor intimated to
the Starosta that he was inviting himself to dinner at the latter's
house.
"So much the better," said the Starosta. "I should like him to be
present when they bring in the picture. Don't tell him anything about
it. Let it be a great surprise for him. How the chinovnik will stare
when he sees Casimir in the imperial uniform! I wonder if the painter
has painted his golden key?"
"He cannot paint that," said Klausner, "because these Kammerherr
gentlemen wear it behind their backs."
"What, wear a mark of distinction behind! Who ever heard of such a
thing?"
Mr. Eskimov arrived punctually to dinner. There were only three at
table--the Starosta, the clergyman, and the Governor--and they very
pleasantly drank a few glasses of Tokai together. When the pipes were
produced, by way of winding up the repast, the Governor observed--
"Well, my good sir, we can now talk together about a very serious
business. I didn't want to put you out in any way during the meal. I
want to speak to you about your _poor_ son."
"Oh, that won't put me out in the least; though I don't know why you
should call him _poor_. I, for one, don't consider my son's fate at all
a sorry one."
"Come, now, that's very noble of you to be so content with the Tsar's
exalted measures, and not consider your son's fate so terrible,
especially as I may at once give you the assurance that his fate has now
come to an end; the Tsar has just issued a general amnesty for the
leaders of the rebellion of 1824."
Moskowski shrugged his shoulders. "My son held no leading part in that
rebellion."
"Come, come, my dear Starosta, don't tell me that. I am acquainted with
all the details of the process. I know exactly what part Casimir took in
it. I took a lot of trouble to get the capital sentence commuted to
lifelong transportation to Siberia."
"My son in Siberia?"
"Yes. The Tsar's clemency delivered him from it not so very long ago."
"My friend, that little drop of Tokai has got into your head. You
shouldn't play with your glass; take bigger gulps, and cure yourself
that way. My son was never in Siberia."
"Indeed! Why, I sent him there myself. I have about me my letter on the
subject to the Governor of Tobolsk, which I sent to him seven years
ago."
"And I have a letter of congratulation from the Lord High Steward of the
Imperial Court, in which he informs me of the promotion of my son to the
rank of a major of Lancers."
"Your son a major of Lancers! Why, he's a raskolnik."
"A raskolnik? They would not be likely, I think, to give a Princess of
Sonnenburg in marriage to a raskolnik."
"A Princess of Sonnenburg to your son! You're mad! Why, I seized him
myself when he was attempting to escape across the border. He could not
deny that he had taken part in the rebellion, for we found on his person
full powers from the revolutionary committee. It was a good job for him
that he also had about him his academic diploma, which certified that he
understood chemistry and mining. Those delinquents who understand the
science of mining are treated with particular favour: they do not get
the knout, and are not put in chains. But, on the other hand, they are
obliged to utilize their knowledge in the gold mines of the Urals."
"My son in the gold mines of the Urals! You are beside yourself,
comrade."
"On the contrary, I am a good deal in advance of you. This was in the
beginning of 1825."
"What was in the beginning of 1825? At that very time my son was
enjoying his honeymoon in Italy. He wrote to me there, from the summit
of Vesuvius--he and his consort."
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Governor. "Your son's consort wrote to you!
The daughter of a Samoyede chief wrote to you from the summit of
Vesuvius! Ha, ha, ha!"
"Don't enrage me, my son! Do you mean the Kamtschatka to which that mad
Vulko alluded?"
"I don't know the name of your son's consort; but I do know that she is
the daughter of a Samoyede chief. The Governor of Siberia has sent me
regular reports about your son Casimir every year. I expressly asked him
to do so. One year your son spent in the gold-mines of the Urals, and
then, because of his good conduct, and also out of regard to his father,
he was permitted to devote himself to agriculture on the banks of the
Jenisei. There he fell in with a Samoyede stock, good, honest,
hospitable people. The chief's daughter fell in love with him, and they
gave her to him. Casimir built himself a _jurta_, as they call their
huts, reared reindeer, ploughed up a bit of land, and settled down there
with his Siberian rose, and in the mean time two children have been born
to them."
"I know--I know it right well," said the Starosta, whose long-repressed
laughter now burst forth, "and he has sent his father their portraits."
"His father? Their portraits?"
"And two pretty little fair-haired chaps, too!"
"Fair-haired! Has _he_ got fair-haired children, too?"
"One of them has been christened Maximilian, after his maternal
grandfather; the other is called Stanislaus."
"I had no idea there were ancestral Maximilians and Stanislauses among
the Samoyedes."
But now the Starosta began to grow really angry. He struck the table
viciously with his fist.
"In the name of St. Procopius, what do you mean? We have had about
enough of this Siberian joke and these Samoyede princes. You must not
jest so with me. D'ye hear?"
"And I protest by St. Michael that I am not jesting at all, but that you
are jesting with me; and your jesting is very much out of place, and out
of season, too. D'ye hear?"
"Very well. I'll fetch this instant the letter of the Lord High Steward
at Vienna, and that will open your eyes a bit."
"And I'll produce letters from the Governors of Tobolsk, Irkutsk, and
Jeniseisk, and that will make you prick up your ears."
The two distinguished gentlemen were on the point of coming to
fisticuffs when, fortunately, the pastor, always sober-minded,
intervened between them.
"Pray be calm, your honours," said Gottlieb Klausner. "Why all this
barren strife? Have we not here the very portrait painted for his honour
the Starosta by a famous Viennese painter--the portrait, I mean, of
Squire Casimir in the uniform of a lieutenant-colonel of the Imperial
and Royal Uhlans? That picture will be the best means of deciding which
of you is right."
Two heydukes thereupon brought the huge picture in its bronzed frame
into the room, and they leaned it up against the wall.
And as they all three gazed at the picture--and, remember, they were all
of them strong-minded men--they bounced back in amazement, as if they
had seen a spectre.
"Lord have mercy upon us!"
And yet it was an extremely handsome picture, too, painted in a most
masterly manner--true to the life. An officer of Uhlans, a manly and
picturesque figure. Tawny, lion-like locks flowed over both shoulders;
his ruddy face, blue eyes, and light eyebrows went very well together.
At the corner of his smiling mouth there was a little mole.
"That is my son," gasped the clergyman, and he fell senseless to the
ground.
CHAPTER VI
THE EXCHANGE
"'Tis the way of the world," Heinrich Klausner had said to himself when
he had locked himself into his attic after that memorable ball. "I am
nobody. I am not recognized among living beings. I am empty air; people
look through me without seeing me. In society I am alone with the
servants. At table I sit beside a big dog. I am the sport of the court
fool. If they think of me at all it is only to laugh at me. They promise
me the daughter of a Samoyede chief to wife. Pretty girls put out their
tongues at me when I ask them for a dance. And why? Because my name is
Heinrich Klausner, and by profession I am only a doctor. Casimir every
one kisses and embraces and exalts. Casimir's health is drunk. Casimir
carries the national standard. The dignity of Starosta will one day be
Casimir's. Casimir opens the ball. Casimir may do anything. All the
girls adore Casimir. Casimir gives his right hand to the daughter of a
prince at Vienna, and his left hand is good enough for my former
sweetheart. Why? Because his name is Casimir Moskowski, and he has a
noble title before his name. What if we were to change places? Then who
would have the daughter of the Samoyede chief to wife, the Kamskatka
lady?"
It was thus that the demoniacal idea was first hatched in his breast.
First of all, he induced the Starosta to send his son to St.
Petersburg. In the foreign Universities they had frequently come across
young democratic Russians belonging to the great league whose object it
was to depose Tsar Alexander and put in his place the Grand Duke
Constantine, and then to form from the provinces of Russia, Poland,
Hungary, and Wallachia a confederation of constitutional states. The
pillars of this project were the leading members of the Russian
aristocracy.
Heinrich felt certain that if Casimir could be got to St. Petersburg he
could easily be inveigled into this league. His enthusiastic spirit,
responsive to every noble idea of liberty, would be unable to resist the
temptation which would be all the stronger as it sprang from its most
natural source, the love of the ardent and fanatical Poles for their
country. Such a grand part would satisfy all his desires. He would be
the Voivode of liberated Volhynia. His hands would hold the banner
emblazoned with the Ureox of Grodno. His birth, his rank, his
riches--everything would entitle him to the _rôle_ of leader. It was
impossible to conceive that he would refuse the offer.
When, then, the plans of the conspirators had so far matured that the
day for the outbreak of the insurrection was already fixed upon, the
revolutionary committee authorized Casimir to begin the rising in the
Province of Volhynia, and, with this object, Casimir and Heinrich
proceeded to Bialystok.
The St. Petersburg rising meanwhile was crushed as soon as it broke out.
In vain they made the Russian soldiers believe that the "Constitutsyd"
(the constitution) was the name of the consort of the Grand Duke
Constantine--they preferred the Tsar to any such lady.
Thus all those who had been sent to provoke a popular rising in the
provinces were obliged to fly for their lives so long as the frontier
still remained open, and it was then that Heinrich betrayed his friend
to Eskimov, the Governor of Grodno.
The pursuing Cossacks overtook them on the frontier. But the Cossacks
only had orders to seize Casimir, so they let the doctor go.
Casimir, however, had taken the precaution to hand over all his papers
to Heinrich, not only those on account of which they might prosecute
him, such as the credentials of the revolutionary committee, but also
the letters of introduction from his father to the Vienna magnates, the
Sonnenburg princes. Nothing whatever was found upon him.
But Heinrich sent the compromising documents to Eskimov by the first
post, together with Casimir's academical certificates.
He himself continued his journey to Vienna without interruption. On
arriving at the imperial metropolis he announced himself wherever
Casimir's letters of introduction gained him an entry as Count Casimir
Moskowski. His refined, distinguished appearance, social charm, and
brilliant accomplishments made the fraud easy. The acquaintance with the
Starosta and his whole environment, but especially his intimacy with
Casimir, had placed him in possession of the deepest family secrets
which justified the false part he was playing. His chivalrous bearing,
moreover, completely won the heart of the young princess. The engagement
between them contracted from afar through other hands, became a
veritable love-match, and it soon won powerful supporters in Court
circles. He took part in all the court festivities, for he had no lack
of money wherewith to maintain a splendour corresponding with his
dignity. He quickly mounted the rungs of the ladder of rank. He was
free-handed with his money or rather with the Starosta's. In a very
short time the false Count Moskowski was one of the most fêted, one of
the most envied personages at the Imperial Court.
He had nothing to fear from anyone. In the whole empire none knew
anything of Heinrich Klausner. Who was he? Nothing at all! Empty air.
Those who looked at him did not see him. The deception could not be
unmasked. The old Starosta could not come from Bialystok to Vienna on
any account. Gout and corpulence would not let him. He himself could not
cross the Russian border with his consort to visit his father, for he
was proscribed and an exile, and even if he could get an amnesty, a
Polish refugee prefers to hate the Russian at a distance and avoid his
territory.
But how about the genuine Casimir Moskowski? Well, he has very good
reasons not to come to Vienna. Even if he has not already died beneath
the blows of the knout, he may calculate upon lifelong imprisonment in
the mines of Siberia or on the endless snowfields, and while his good
comrade is making his fine charger caracole to the delight of the lovers
of sport at the Imperial Court, or guiding countesses through the mazes
of the minuet at Court balls, or receiving the congratulations of
foreign envoys, or responding to the toasts of his noble colleagues on
his name-day, and living out his days in an earthly paradise in the arms
of the loveliest woman in the world and choosing aristocratic names for
his children--in the mean time, the nameless man from whom he has
filched his family name, is known by no name at all, but simply by a
number fastened to or painted on the jacket which he wears on his
back--No. 13579. Why on earth should convict No. 13579 think of visiting
Vienna? All that _he_ sees before him is a huge piece of rock which he
has to break up in order to get at the vein of gold within. And even if
they release him from that, it will only be to conduct him still further
into the depths of Siberia, to the colonies of the skin-hunters. There
he will have to collect sufficient sable and ermine skins to enable him
to get permission to settle down somewhere by the banks of the river
where he may plough the land and wring bread from the earth by the
labour of his own hands, and in winter time tan leather and carve little
human figures out of walrus tusks for the Samoyedes. Perhaps also he may
get a consort from the chief of one of the tribes of these nomadic
tent-dwellers, a short-legged, tubby, seal-like beauty, with whom he may
taste the joys of family life. Find out the name of this new princess if
you can, but don't look for it in the Almanach de Gotha. Yes, the true
Casimir Moskowski has been very well disposed of.
But suppose the White Tsar were one day to utter words of mercy and
grant an amnesty to the rebels deported to Siberia? Well, even then,
there will be no cause for anxiety. To those who receive permission to
return from Siberia to Russia is always assigned a particular town in
which they have to dwell, a good distance from the capital as well as
from their own homes. And this town they must never leave, nor are they
permitted to go abroad.
Then, too, the Starosta cannot live for ever; he is bound to have a
stroke some day. Heinrich felt quite secure. He need fear nobody. Yet
stay; there was one man he _did_ fear. He did not feel sure of his own
dear father. It might occur to the clergyman one day to take a journey
to Vienna to _see his own son_.
But this eventuality was also provided for. The false Moskowski had
provided on purpose for it a modest little lodging in the suburbs poorly
furnished, where the doctor might be able to receive his old father in
an austere environment. A special costume was held in reserve for that
occasion--should it ever occur.
And if, perhaps, which was more than probable, Gottlieb Klausner wished
to see his distinguished patron in the Sonnenburg Castle, against that
danger also Heinrich had provided an antidote. In the later letters to
his father he had tried to make the old man believe that for some little
time he had good cause to be angry with his dear friend, Casimir, and,
in fact, things had come to such a pass between them that he had been
forbidden the Prince's door. If, on the other hand, the clergyman went
by himself to see the Princess, he knew very well that his consort would
not receive him. He had already explained to her pretty clearly that
Heinrich Klausner was the traitor whose treachery was the cause of his
exile, and consequently he was quite sure that the Princess would tell
her servants to show the father of the treacherous comrade the door.
Meanwhile he kept up his correspondence with the Starosta, having learnt
to imitate Casimir's handwriting most exactly, and in all these letters
he was constantly complaining of Heinrich. So skilfully did he enwrap
himself in a spider's web of lies that it was impossible to catch a
clear glimpse of him through it.
There was only one thing he had never thought of--that his picture might
be painted for the Starosta without his knowledge. And this was the very
idea which had occurred to his father.
CHAPTER VII
NEMESIS
A great festival was being held in the Castle of Sonnenburg. It was the
sixth birthday of little Prince Maximilian.
The little lad had just recovered from a severe illness; from one of
those epidemics especially dangerous to children.
Heinrich during his son's illness had frequently been on the verge of
betraying himself. Three doctors had been summoned to the Castle, and
not one of them possessed his up-to-date knowledge. And all he could do
was to listen to their disputes while they were in consultation. How he
would have liked to exclaim: "You are charlatans, the whole lot of you!
Poisoners! Ignoramuses! I can diagnose the case quite well; you can't."
He had to bury his knowledge out of sight. Two or three pillules
administered in homoeopathic doses would immediately have cured the
child's weakness, and he could not give them to him. He was not allowed
to save his own child. He was obliged to look on while _his colleagues_
experimented with, tortured, the child. He could not reveal to them that
he was a physician. Ah, ah!--then where is your diploma? And his diploma
was in the name of Heinrich Klausner.
And self love was stronger in him than paternal love. So he was silent,
and looked on cold-bloodedly at the torments of his child.
And at last nature and a mother's prayers prevailed against the severity
of the disease. Little Max, despite the united operations of three
specialists, actually recovered. It was on his very birthday that he was
permitted to leave his room.
That day was kept in the Castle as a joyful festival. The grandparents,
the Prince of Sonnenburg and his wife, had come to the house. The feast
had been a calm and quiet rejoicing from beginning to end. No guests
outside the family had been invited.
At the end of the meal, just as the father, his face radiant with
happiness, had risen with a glass of foaming champagne to propose the
health of the grandparents, the Major Domo came in from the ante-chamber
and whispered something in the ear of the young Princess.
For an instant, Ingola angrily contracted her brows, but the next moment
a benevolent smile lit up her face.
"No. To-day I will be angry with no one. To-day I am ready to forgive my
mortal foe. Let him come in."
But at the sight of the visitor, as he passed through the doorway, the
champagne glass which had been raised for the toast fell from
Heinrich's hand, and he himself collapsed into a chair.
The visitor was Gottlieb Klausner; he had entered the banqueting-room in
his simple black cassock.
He made straight for his son, and, placing his muscular hand on his
shoulder, shook him out of his benumbing stupefaction.
"What do you want with Prince Casimir Moskowski?" exclaimed old Prince
Sonnenburg.
The clergyman, in a dry, scornful voice, replied: "This man is not Count
Casimir Moskowski, but my son, Heinrich Klausner, betrayer, impostor,
thief."
Then, scarcely audible, he murmured to his son: "Rise and follow me."
Heinrich rose mechanically from the table and allowed his father to
seize his hand.
Then the Princess Ingola, full of fear, shrieked: "My husband! What are
you doing with my husband?"
The clergyman turned round, and with his long, lean, extended arm
indicated another visitor whom he had brought with him; and who, before
he made his appearance, had been leaning against the lintel of the door.
"Your husband, Princess Sonnenburg, is standing there. That is Prince
Casimir Moskowski, your lawful consort."
The creature standing against the door was the exile just returned from
Siberia; a creature broken down by oppression and suffering, with a mop
of tangled hair and a long beard prematurely grey; his face livid and
sunken, and prematurely aged by a network of wrinkles; bentbacked, with
hands purple, frost-bitten, and horny from hard labour. Six years in the
school of Siberia had reduced the stately son of the Starosta to this.
Just look at him!
At the sight of this spectre, Heinrich quickly snatched a knife from the
table, but his father still more quickly wrenched it from his grasp
before Heinrich could draw it across his throat.
"Oho! my son! You don't get out of it so easily. You must make an
exchange. The convict's coarse sheepskin awaits you. Your name is
'13579.' You can easily remember it; it is a perfectly straightforward
series of odd numbers. Your predecessor bore it for six years."
* * * * *
And the exchange really took place. Both the Austrian and the Russian
Governments agreed that this scandalous fraud must be kept a profound
secret, which would have ruined two of the most illustrious families of
both empires. They also compelled the party most interested in the
affair, the clever impostor, to make a late reparation. Moreover,
Casimir had his property returned to him on condition that he
acknowledged the Princess Ingola to be his consort. The Princess was
also obliged to take him for her husband in order to procure for her
children the family name, and the right of succession to the property.
They all went together to Bialystok, and there they lived, as well as
they could, joyless, cut off from the world, with their doors closed
against every one.
But Heinrich they sent to the banks of the Jenisei. They shoved him into
the sheepskin which had been made expressly for convict No. 13579, and
gave him his predecessor's digging implements, sledge--and Samoyede
consort.
And the old Starosta lived for a long time after that. He lived long
enough to see the death of the children bearing the name of Moskowski,
both Maximilian and Stanislaus; he lived long enough to see the family
name of the Moskowskis become extinct. No other offspring came to supply
their place.
But the veritable offspring of his flesh and blood, the little
Samoyedes, increased and multiplied like sparrows. Their descendants now
people the plains of the Jenisei, and very careful and industrious
peasants they are.
VII
THE CITY OF THE BEAST
_A CHAPTER FROM THE HISTORY OF A VANISHED CONTINENT_
CHAPTER I
THE TABLES OF HANNO
Plato, the Sage of classical Greece, speaks in his writings of a strange
continent which, if historians and geologists are to be believed, must
have lain somewhere between the island of St. Helena and the coast of
Africa. The poets and philosophers of antiquity called it Atlantis,
Oceania, or the Fortunate Islands.
In those days the earth was still a divinity to whom man raised altars.
In those days men had not arrived at the overpowering conviction that
the whole globe was nothing more than a wretched mite of a ball, which
the sun, out of regard for the equilibrium of the universe, or, perhaps
for the mere fun of the thing, twirls round and round. They had no idea
that you could sail completely round it; measure it; weigh it and
calculate exactly how long it has lasted and how much longer it is
likely to last. No! The Earth still retained the nimbus of divinity;
was still regarded as immeasurable, infinite, incomprehensible; and the
sun, moon, and stars were popularly supposed to be his vassals.
Above the earth was heaven; below the earth was the Styx, and the
dwellers on the earth lived in intimate relations with them both. No one
had an inkling that the blue expanse above was only the reflection of
the sun's rays refracted through the vapours of the earth, and that
neither the gods, nor the blessed, could endure to live up there for the
intense cold. No one knew that only the upper rind of the earth was
solid, and that in the depths below the heat was so intense that the
devil himself could only exist there in a molten condition.
In those days the earth was still an unappropriated domain. The poet
could picture to himself bright fairy worlds beyond the continents
already known, and the popular imagination was free to people the
uninhabited wilds with all manner of marvels and monsters.
The wondrous thoughts of a poetic spirit betray themselves in these
ideas and guesses. The spirit of invention three thousand years ago
spoke of two gates which the then known world was said to have. One of
these gates lay in the far north-east, between the snow and ice-clad
Altai mountains, which set bounds to the wanderings of the nations.
Beyond this mountain chain it was said you could hear the din of Gog and
Magog, whom the mighty conqueror Alexander had thrust out of the world
behind gates of bronze, and who ever since have been baring and blasting
rock and mountain, and digging subterraneous ways in order to escape
from their prison. Woe betide the world and all that dwells therein if
ever they succeed in forcing their way through the woody Imaus and
appear, with their hairy faces, angular heads, unknown tongues, arms,
and clothing, and deluge the world from end to end like the stroke of a
great spirit paint-brush, which, after filling its canvas with mighty
nations, splendid cities, and world-renowned conquerors, should suddenly
wipe them off again at a single sweep in order to paint fresh subjects.
At the opposite end of the world, in the warm south-west, where the gaze
of the dreamer loses itself in the endless blue mirror of ocean, the
poet pictured to himself that happier world which sprang from the
rapturous embrace of heaven and earth; a world where the air is balmier,
where love is sweeter, where man is more valiant and woman more
faithful; where the light knows no shadow, joy no grief, and the flower
no fading; where everything--herbs, trees, and the hearts of
men--rejoices in an eternal youth.
It is an odd phenomenon in the psychology of nations, that popular fancy
should always have painted the North with the pale and sombre hues of
fear and terror, whilst she looked for the fulfilment of her
unattainable hopes to the equally dim and impenetrable South, and
constantly sent her dreams and her sighs in that direction.
* * * * *
In the days when Rome, still in her first bloom, had begun to be the
mistress of those regions which the geographers of antiquity called the
known world, there arose another young city on the opposite seashore,
almost over against that great boot which we call Italy, and which, when
once it had a good strong foot inside it, was to conquer the world with
such rapid strides.
The new metropolis sprang from the ground as rapidly as Rome herself.
The legend still lives of its imperious foundress, who purchased from
the strange king as much land for her fugitive people as could be
covered with an oxhide, and now that plot of land, once meted out by a
buffalo-skin cut into strips, was already the seat of a great empire,
and of all the coast land round about, and might perhaps have won the
dominion of the whole world besides--if Rome had not chanced to be in
that very world at that very time. Two centres the world cannot have;
round two axles the earth cannot revolve.
This young city was called Carthage.
Men counted 330 years from the foundation of Carthage, which time
Christians call 550 B.C., when the following event took place in the
city of Carthage.
The captain of a merchant vessel, who very often touched the African
coasts in the way of business, had been absent from his native land so
long that his funeral feast had been held; his wife had wedded a second
time, and another had succeeded to his office. Suddenly, when no one
ever expected to see him again, he reappeared at the entrance of the
great double harbour, which shut out the sea by means of huge chains,
and had not its equal in the whole world, not even in Tyre itself, the
oldest of all trading cities.
The mariner's name was Hanno. The whole city knew all about him, and
every one now said how wonderful it was that Hanno should have come
back again, after remaining away so long.
And he brought back with him treasures and curiosities such as no man
had ever seen before, not even in dreams.
It was the custom at Carthage for the merchants who traversed distant
lands to record the sum and substance of their experiences on marble
tables, which tables were then preserved in the Temple of Kronos, which
was in the heart of the city, near to the circumvallated Byrza. That the
God of Time also possessed a temple there proves that, even in those
early days, the fact that time is the greatest of all treasures, that
time is money, was generally recognized at Carthage.
So Hanno's tables were placed on the altar of Kronos. These tables the
people were not allowed to see. The inspection thereof was solely
reserved for the Council of Elders, the grey Senators whose business it
was to calculate how the information thus acquired could be turned to
the profit of the fatherland.
The very next day after Hanno's tables had been placed on the altar, he
was summoned to the dwelling of the Governor, which stood on a little
island, midway between the two havens, exactly opposite the Gate of
Elephants. At that time Carthage had already 260 gates and 650,000
inhabitants. A wall 180 feet high encircled the city on the land side;
the cupolas of her palaces sparkled with gold; and, high above all her
palaces, towered a temple whose walls were of black marble, whose
columns were of alabaster with silver capitals, and from the top of
whose domed roof rose a huge golden cupola, surmounted by four silver
wings.
The Archon led Hanno over the scarlet, asphalted bridge, and, stopping
short midway in front of the huge statue of Baalti, bade him survey the
streets and public places of the huge city, along which a motley tide of
human beings was ebbing and flowing, while whole armies of elephants,
with heavy loads and gaily painted towers on their backs, were striding
along the thoroughfares.
"Look, Hanno! Dost thou not see how great the city hath grown during thy
absence, and how the number of the people hath increased in like
measure?"
"It hath indeed become as great again," replied the mariner.
"Wouldst thou not be sad at heart if these palaces were one day to fall
to the ground, if nothing but bats and serpents were to dwell in the
place of these busy crowds, so that the stranger who heard tell of
Carthage must needs ask: 'But where, then, is this great city? Who is
there that can tell me anything about it?'"
"God forbid."
"And if one were then to make answer to the stranger, and say: 'That
city once ruled half the world, and her fall dates from the day when a
certain seafarer, called Hanno, returned from a long voyage,' wouldst
thou have that come to pass?"
"Astarte and all the good gods preserve me from such a thought."
"Then guard thy lips, and take heed to what thou sayest before the
Council."
Soon afterwards Hanno stood in the council chamber. The elders of the
city sat round about the walls, and Hierkas, the eldest of the Senators,
with a white beard reaching down to his girdle, held in his lap the
large stone tables on which Hanno's experiences were recorded.
"Hanno," said the eldest of the elders to the seafarer, "thou hast been
absent for years from thy native land; we waited for thee and thou
camest not. In thy native land palaces, treasures, beautiful gardens,
fruitful fields were thine; at home thou hadst a lovely wife and beloved
slaves, and yet thou couldst find it in thy heart to remain away so
long. Are the things true which thou hast recorded on these marble
tables?"
"True every whit, and nought added thereto."
"Is it true that thou wast tossed by tempests on to a great continent in
the far west, a continent larger than all the rest of the known world
put together?"
"It is even so as I have said."
"Is it true that the winter there is as warm as the summer here, the
grass as high as trees are with us, and the beasts as wise as men?"
"So it is in very truth."
"Is it true that there the women are fairer and fonder, and the men
braver and mightier than with us; that there the very air is a healing
balm, which heals the sick and makes the coward valiant, and the
ill-favoured comely?"
"I have said it."
"Is it true that gold abounds there like sand, that precious stones are
to be found on the mountain-tops, and pearls and purple on the
seashore?"
"So have I found it."
"Thou hast said that thou didst see a plant, the roots whereof yield
fruit sweeter than bread; that thou didst find a reed which yields
honey, bushes which furnish wool white as fallen snow, and a tree from
the pierced bark whereof flows streams of wine, while vessels full of
milk grow beneath its crown?"
"All this have I seen, and to prove it I have brought of them all back
with me."
"Hast thou not also brought back with thee a wonder-working bird with
human speech and man's understanding?"
"I have it on my ship."
"Hast thou spoken with others of these things?"
"Only on the marble tables are my secrets recorded."
"Thy sailors have not yet been in the town, then?"
"None of them have left the harbour."
"Then, Hanno, return to thy ship."
They led the mariner back to his ship. Late the same evening the vessel
was escorted by four men-of-war into the open sea, where, after
stripping her of boats, sails, and helm, they deluged her on all four
sides with what was known long afterwards as Greek fire. In an instant
the inextinguishable flames had ignited the planks, and there, on the
open sea, Hanno's ship, with its owner, its crew, and the gold-dust, the
bread-fruit, the sugar-canes, the cocoa-nuts, and the talking-bird which
they had brought back with them, were utterly consumed. The fire burned
everything down to the very water's edge.
And a proclamation went forth in the streets of Carthage, that whoever
presumed to say a word about Hanno's happy land should be instantly
offered up to the goddess Astarte, and if a Senator should dare to
betray a word of what was written on Hanno's marble tables, he should be
stoned at the entrance of the harbour, and his bones strewn in the sea.
For if the men of Carthage had but learned that such a happy land
existed anywhere under the sun, they would have quitted their native
land in troops, the palaces would have fallen to pieces from decay, bats
and serpents would have dwelt within the gates, and thus the day would
have come when the stranger, on hearing the name of Carthage mentioned,
would have asked: "But where, then, is the site of that great city?"