THE JUS LIGATUM.[55]
[Footnote 55: _Jus ligatum._ The right of conspiring
secretly against an offender unreachable by the
ordinary law.]
'Tis a good old custom which requires that every ceremony should end
with a feast, and so the boisterous Diet was succeeded by a still more
boisterous banquet, whereat Michael Apafi also presided; and here he was
in his proper place, for the chronicles tell us that a skin of wine at a
sitting was a mere nothing to his Highness.
Wine inflames hate as well as love. When ladies are at table, we must
look to our hearts; but when only men sit down together, our heads are
often in danger.
After dinner, according to Transylvanian custom, the guests stood up to
drink. Conversation flows more easily thus, and the Prince, going the
round of his guests, presented to them an overflowing beaker with his
own hand, challenging them one by one to drain it--"Come, a toast--my
health, the welfare of the realm, and whatever else you like!"
The gentlemen were in high good-humour, and kept falling out with each
other and making it up again from sheer lightness of heart. Only one man
was quite sober--Michael Teleki, who never drank at all.
Beware of the man who keeps sober while every one else is in his cups.
Teleki went about among the wrangling roysterers, and lingered for a
long time round Banfi's chair. When the magnate caught sight of him,
creeping about like a cat, he turned sharply round upon him.
"Why, how sad you look!" he cried, with a mocking laugh; "just like a
man whose coveted palatinate falls into the dust before his eyes."
That was all Teleki wanted.
With a smile, beneath which there lurked a deadly sting, he replied--
"That is no merit of yours. If Paul Beldi had not been present, you
would have been left all alone with your vote. But I must confess that
we all bow before such a distinguished man as Paul Beldi. The whole
nation cries Amen! to whatever he says."
Teleki then bowed low, with a semblance of deep respect, well aware that
he had sent a venomous shaft into the proud magnate's heart, for nothing
wounded Banfi so much as to see some one honoured above himself,
especially some one who really deserved it.
Teleki next turned to Beldi, drew him into a window-niche, and thus
began in his suavest manner--
"I had always held your Excellency for a very magnanimous man, but
to-day I learnt to recognize you as doubly such, though it was to my own
detriment. The Diet only knows that in voting for peace you sacrificed
your fatherly affection; but _I_ know that at the same time you
sacrificed your hatred of Banfi."
"I?--I have never hated Banfi."
"I know why you conceal your hatred. You fancy that no one knows your
secret reasons for it. My friend, we men know well that a sword-thrust
may be forgiven, but a _kiss_ never."
Beldi started. He knew not what reply to make to this man, who, after
planting the sting of jealousy in his heart, quitted him with a smiling
countenance, leaving the wound to rankle.
At that moment Banfi appeared behind Beldi's back with his haughtiest
air. He was burning to make Beldi feel his haughtiness, and was thinking
how he could best pick a quarrel with him.
Beldi at first did not perceive him, and when the Prince, chancing to
stray into that part of the room, holding a costly pocal set with
turquoises, which he affably extended, saying familiarly--"Drink, my
cousin!" Beldi, fancying that the invitation was meant for him, and
never suspecting that any one was behind him, took the cup out of the
Prince's hand, and drained it to his Highness's health, at the very
moment when Banfi also held out his hand towards it.
Banfi, purple with rage, turned furiously upon Beldi, and said in his
most insulting tone--
"Not so fast, Szekler. You might, I think, have a little more respect
for the Marshal of the Diet, and not snatch away the cup from beneath my
very nose. Let me tell you, sir, that if you persist in such courses,
you and I shall fall out!"
Beldi was anything but a quarrelsome man. Had he been in another frame
of mind, he would simply have apologized for his mistake. But now he too
was in a pugnacious mood, so, calmly measuring Banfi from head to foot,
he replied with suppressed rage--
"Yes, Denis, I am a Szekler, as you say, and a tough one too; and if it
came to a bout between us, and I fell uppermost, I'd give you such a
squeeze that you'd never raise your head again in this world."
"Come, come! What's all this nonsense about?" cried the Prince,
intervening. "I'm surprised at you, gentlemen! _Inter pocula non sunt
seria tractanda._" And, with that, Apafi compelled the two magnates to
shake hands with each other, and then passed on, thinking that the whole
affair was a mere drunken brawl, and that he had put it right.
But it did not escape Teleki that, immediately after this scene, both
the magnates quitted the room, and he learnt soon afterwards that they
had suddenly left Fehervár, thus leaving the field clear for him.
Teleki and his satellites remained alone with the half-besotted Prince.
"Drink, gentlemen! drink! be merry!" cried Apafi. "Don't drop off one by
one! Who last went out there?"
"Beldi!" cried several voices.
"Ah, I understand! The poor fellow has not seen his wife for a long
time. Let him go. And who else has gone?"
"Banfi!"
"What? Banfi too? What's the meaning of that?"
"He has gone to lord it at home?" sneered Szekely, one of Teleki's
creatures.
"He can't endure to be anywhere where there is a greater than he," put
in Nalaczi.
"I certainly shall not resign the princely diadem to please his
Excellency!" cried Apafi.
"That is not necessary!" insinuated Teleki. "He knows how to rule in
Transylvania without an _athname_. When he commands the country must
obey, and what the country commands he contemptuously rejects."
"I should like to see him do it!" murmured Apafi angrily.
"But is it not so? We want war, he doesn't, and we must give way. We
want peace, and he is immediately up and waging war against our allies
on his own account. The throne is ours, the realm is his!"
"Don't say that, Master Michael Teleki!"
"I appeal to you, Nalaczi! What answer did he give in the Zolyomi
affair?"
"He said that if the country wished him to surrender the Gyulai property
to Zolyomi, it must give him in exchange the domain of Szamos-Ujvar."
"What!" cried the Prince, "the property which the Estates gave to me for
my maintenance! My princely domains! The man must be mad!"
"So he said, adding that he would not surrender the property even if
Zolyomi saddled us with the Turks in consequence."
"Well, now we've had enough of him. Not a word more about it,
gentlemen."
"The insult to the Turks your Highness might overlook," persisted
Teleki, "but we really cannot look through our fingers any longer at the
way in which he treats the gentry. The latest victim of his tyranny is
Lady Saint Pauli. The poor widow's ancestral dwelling was an eyesore to
the great lord, because it spoiled the prospect from his palace windows;
so he had the house appraised at his own valuation, and turned the poor
lady out of doors. The magistrate gave her a letter of indemnity, but my
Lord-Marshal tore the letter to pieces, and pulled down the poor widow's
sole possession, her ancestral dwelling-place. The Diet, he said, might
build it up again if it felt so disposed. Such an act, sir, in ordinary
times has been known to cost the doer thereof his head!"
Apafi was silent, but his bloodshot eyes began to glow savagely.
"But that is not all," continued Teleki; "outrages on individuals are of
small account when the security of the whole realm is at stake. This
great lord can speak very prettily about the blessings of peace, let us
see now how he labours to uphold it. He takes the sword out of our hands
and closes our mouths, while he himself collects an army and goads the
Turk against us, well knowing that we have no money wherewith to buy the
gifts necessary to counteract his vagaries. Now, three letters have
reached us simultaneously--one from the Pasha of Grosswardein, another
from the Pasha of Buda, and a third from the Sultan himself--demanding
instant satisfaction, or an indemnity of three hundred purses of gold,
for the defeat which the Pasha of Grosswardein has suffered at Banfi's
hands. As, however, we cannot expect Banfi to pay the indemnity, will it
please your Highness to consider from whence such a large sum of money
is to be procured?"
"From nowhither!" cried Apafi furiously, smashing his glass to pieces on
the table. "I'll show the world that I'm able to exact satisfaction from
whomsoever I will, let him be even as mighty again as Denis Banfi."
"Then I wish your Highness would tell us how, for we know that Banfi
will not appear to our summons, and we cannot compel him, for he has
shown himself stronger than the whole realm. If we attempted to use
force he would call out the banderia and the garrison troops, and then
it might fare with us as it fared with Ladislaus Csaky--he would arrest
the officers sent to arrest him, and expose us to universal derision."
"As our first counsellor, it is your province to give us good counsel in
such cases," cried Apafi wrathfully.
"I only know of one remedy capable of curing the realm thoroughly of
this disease."
"Then prescribe it. In what does your remedy consist?"
"In the _jus ligatum_."
Apafi, despite his semi-besotted state, instinctively shrunk back from
such an expedient, and throwing himself into his arm-chair, looked
blankly at Teleki.
"Are you not ashamed of yourself," he murmured in broken sentences, as
tipsy people usually do, "to propose a secret conspiracy against a free
nobleman? To privily conspire against him is contrary to the law of the
land."
"It is not my fault if the expedient is shameful," returned Teleki
calmly and steadfastly; "but it is shameful that the law should not
possess sufficient power to bring a rebel to book, and that one of our
own subjects should be able to openly defy justice and laugh at the
decrees of the Prince. If in such a state of things the _jus ligatum_ is
our only means of defence, the shame falls not upon me but upon the
Prince."
Apafi rose angrily from his seat and paced to and fro. The lords
remained perfectly silent.
At last the Prince stopped short in front of Teleki, and, leaning on the
back of his arm-chair, asked him--
"And how then do you propose to bring about this league?"
Nalaczi and Szekely exchanged a smile. It was plain that the idea had
caught the Prince's fancy. Teleki beckoned to Szekely to fetch him
writing materials and a strip of parchment.
"We will quickly draw up the necessary articles of impeachment; your
Highness will subscribe them, and we'll secretly persuade the great men
of the land to consent to Banfi's arrest and join the league before any
legal steps have been taken."
At these words many of the gentlemen present began to bite their
moustaches and move uneasily in their chairs.
Teleki observed the movement, and added emphatically--
"I perceive that no one here has the courage to put down his name first
on the list. Nevertheless I have already found a man, who in dignity and
power is every whit Banfi's equal, and when once he has subscribed the
list, the other signatures will follow as a matter of course."
"And who may that be?" asked Apafi.
"Paul Beldi!"
The Prince shook his head.
"He won't do it. He is much too honourable a man for that."
Wine-inspired as this sentence was, it completely ruffled Teleki's
equanimity. Turning vehemently upon the Prince he cried--
"Then you mean to imply that _we_ are acting dishonourably?"
"I meant to say that Beldi is never very willing to pick a quarrel with
anybody. He is a peace-abiding man."
"But I know his sore point, and if you but touch it with the tip of your
finger, he'll answer with his clenched fist, and the lamb will become a
lion. I'll get him to----"
At that moment the door opened, and, to every one's astonishment, the
Princess entered the room.
Nevertheless, her appearance at this time was no freak of chance. You
could see by her agitation that she was well aware of what was going on.
The lords were confused, and Apafi, despite his tipsy wrath, became so
frightened when he beheld the pale face of his consort that he whispered
to Teleki--
"For heaven's sake put that document out of sight."
Only Teleki kept his countenance, and instead of hiding the parchment,
ostentatiously spread it out before him.
"What are you doing?" asked the Princess. She was very pale, and her
bosom heaved tempestuously.
"We are holding a council," replied Teleki grimly.
"A council?" repeated Anna, approaching nearer and nearer to the table.
"Yes; and we venture to ask your Highness by what right you intrude
here, while we are deliberating over the most momentous affairs of
state?" continued Teleki in a hard, dry tone.
"Deliberating over the most momentous affairs of state, eh?" repeated
the lady, measuring Teleki with a searching look. Then with a loud,
vibrating voice she exclaimed--"What mean these wine-cups then? You are
holding a council of state when the head of the state is drunk, that you
may sow discord and confusion."
Teleki sprang from his seat and turned towards the Prince--
"May it please your Highness to dismiss us. We perceive that a domestic
scene is about to begin."
"Anna!" cried Apafi, scarlet with shame and wine, "leave the room this
instant. We command it--and for a week to come do not presume to appear
in our presence."
"Be it so, Apafi. I have nothing more to say to you, for you are not
yourself; but to you, Mr. Chief-Counsellor, to you who are always sober,
I have a word to say. I raised you from the dust; I helped you into the
place where now you stand; you requite me by thrusting yourself between
me and the Prince's heart, for I find you in my way every time I
approach my husband. You have taken the sceptre out of the Prince's
hand, and have substituted for it the headsman's sword; but let me tell
you that if I cannot reach the Prince's heart, I can, at least, step in
the way of the sword, and as often as it descends, you will find me
between the stroke and the victim!--And ye! Nalaczi and Szekely,
ennobled lackeys as you are, who cannot explain to yourselves how you
became great lords, reflect that the wheel of Fortune debases as often
as it exalts, and that as you treat others to-day so may others treat
you to-morrow. And I say to you all, ye noble cavaliers, who seek your
courage in your cups, bethink you and tremble at the thought, that not
wine but innocent blood is foaming in the beakers that you hold in your
hands! Shame, shame upon you all! who give wine to the Prince in order
to ask blood of him. And now your Highness may add a couple of weeks to
my term of banishment."
With these words, the Princess rapidly left the room. The lords were
dumb, and dared not look at each other. But Teleki got up, closed the
door, dipped his pen in the inkhorn, and said--
"And now we will go on where we left off."