CONSORT AND CONCUBINE.
Ever since that painful scene at Bonczhida, Lady Banfi had not met her
husband. Fate so willed it that Banfi was constantly away from home;
scarcely had he come back from the Diet of Fehervár when he was called
away to Somlyo, where his troops stood face to face with the Turks.
During the few hours however that he remained at home, his wife had
locked herself up from him; not even the domestics caught a glimpse of
her face. She did not quit her chamber, and received no one.
One day both the spouses were invited to Roppad by a distant kinsman,
one Gabriel Vitez, who knew nothing of their estrangement, to act as
sponsors to his new-born son. To decline the invitation was impossible,
and thus it came about that on the day in question, Lady Banfi coming
from Bonczhida and her husband from Somlyo met together, to their mutual
confusion, at the festive mansion of the Vitezes.
At the first meeting they instinctively shrank back from each other.
They had both indeed longed for such a meeting, but pride had kept them
apart, and thus while their affection rejoiced at, their pride revolted
against this chance encounter. Of course they let nothing of all this
appear openly. In the presence of their friends they had so to conduct
themselves that nobody might suspect that this meeting was anything but
an everyday occurrence.
At the end of the banquet, which lasted far into the night, Master
Gabriel Vitez took care that all his guests should be lodged with the
utmost convenience. Husbands and wives and all the young girls had
separate quarters, and the young men were accommodated in the hunting
saloon. For Banfi and his spouse the garden pavilion had been reserved,
which, being at some distance from the noisy courtyard, promised to be
the quietest resting-place of all. The host, with the most distinguished
courtesy, accompanied them thither himself.
It was now a long time since they had slept together under the same
roof.
Before so many acquaintances they could not declare their estrangement,
and had been compelled to accept the nice quarters provided for them by
their amiable host, who insisted, despite their protests, in showing
them the way; jested pleasantly with them for a time, and only left them
to themselves after wishing them good-night some scores of times.
The pavilion consisted of two small adjoining rooms, such cosy little
cribs, with quite an air of home about them. In one of them a merry fire
was crackling and flickering on the hearth. In the corner a tall solemn
clock was softly ticking. The brocade curtains of the large tester-bed
were half drawn back, revealing behind them a comfortable, snow-white,
downy expanse, on which lay, side by side, _two_ little pillows adorned
with red ribbons.
In the other room, which was half lighted by the reflection of the fire,
a couch was visible provided with a bear-skin covering and a single
stag-skin bolster. In all probability no one had ever thought that it
would be occupied.
Banfi looked sadly at his wife. Now that he was no longer free to
approach her, he saw what a heaven he had possessed in that noble and
lovely being. She stood before him with downcast eyes, so sorrowful and
yet so mild.
In her heart, too, many traitorous thoughts pleaded for her husband;
wounded pride, that unbending judge, was already beginning to waver. In
a noble breast it is not hate but grief that takes the place of love.
Banfi drew nearer to his wife, seized her hand, and pressed it in his
own. He felt that her hand trembled, but he also felt that it did not
return his pressure.
He went still further. He tenderly pressed her to him, and kissed her
forehead, cheeks, and lips. She suffered his caresses but did not return
them. But if only she had looked up into her husband's eyes, she would
have seen them glistening with two tears as sincere as ever repentant
sinner shed.
Banfi, with a deep sigh, sat down in an armchair, still holding
Margaret's hand in his own; it needed but a single tender word from his
wife, and he would have flung himself at her feet and wept like a
remorseful child. Instead of that, Dame Banfi, with self-denying
affectation, said to her husband--
"Do you wish to remain in this room, and shall I go into the other?"
The icy tone of these words cut Banfi to the heart. His broad breast
heaved a deep sigh, his eyes looked sorrowfully at Margaret's joyless
face--to him a closed paradise. He rose gravely from his seat, pressed
his wife's hand to his lips, whispered her a scarcely audible
good-night, and tottered into the adjoining room, closing the door
behind him.
Dame Banfi set about disrobing, but on casting a glance at the lonely
couch, a painful feeling overcame her. She threw herself sobbing on the
pillows, and then, finding no rest for her soul there, she stood up
again, drew a chair in front of the fire, sat down, and burying her face
in her hands indulged in brooding, melancholy, dreamy thoughts.
And can there be any greater grief than when the heart fights against
its own conviction; when a woman can no longer conceal from herself that
the ideal of her love, him whom, after God, she loves the most, is after
all only a common, ordinary mortal?--that he whom she has loved so nobly
deserves nothing but her contempt? And yet she cannot but love him! She
feels she ought to hate him, yet she cannot bear the thought of being
without him. She would fain die for him, and the opportunity of dying
will not come.
A single unlocked door separates her from him. They are only a few steps
apart. How small the distance, and yet how great! She can hear him
sighing. He too cannot sleep while he is so near to her whom he has so
deeply wounded. What bliss it would be to traverse those few steps, to
nestle side by side, to gratify each other's longings! But
reconciliation is impossible; her heart yearns after it and recoils from
it, loves and loathes at the same moment.
Oh! why can we not forget the Past? Why is it impossible to prevent
Grief from grieving?
The lady fell a-thinking, a-dreaming.
It seemed to her as if she were talking to her husband in a vision--
"You said yourself that we ought to part while we still loved each
other, while our hearts would bleed at the rupture. Then why don't you
do it? Why do you sigh when you look at me? Why do you kiss me? Those
sighs, those kisses are torture to me; they wound my heart. Let us
part! It was your own wish."
The fire had burnt very low in the grate; over the ruddy embers a pale,
ever-dwindling flame was feebly flickering to and fro, like the last
thought of an extinguished passion. All around the room was growing
darker and darker; the light of the expiring embers barely lit up the
form of the sorrowing lady who sat there, with her head buried in her
hands, like a marble statue mourning over a tomb.
Suddenly, amid the silence of the night and of her own thoughts, it
seemed to her as if whispering voices and stealthy footsteps were
approaching the doors of the pavilion.
Lady Banfi really did hear these sounds; but she was like one but
half-awakened from his first sleep, who hears but heeds not, who knows
what is going on about him without regarding it.
The whispering was now audible close beneath the windows, and now and
then it seemed to her as if the smothered clash of arms was mingling
with it. In her dreamy state the lady fancied she had got up and bolted
the door; but this was a delusion, the door remained ajar.
Then some one pressed the latch, and the creaking sound made Lady Banfi
dream that her husband had come to her, and was speaking to her in a
tearful, supplicating voice. She felt the terrors of nightmare strong
upon her as she came within the magnetic influence of that shape. "Let
us part, Banfi!" she would have said, but the words died away on her
lips. Then the dream-shape whispered to her--"I am not Banfi, but the
headsman!" and seized her hand.
At this cold touch Lady Banfi uttered a shriek and started up.
Two men stood before her with drawn swords. The lady looked into their
faces with a shudder. Both were well known to her. One was Caspar
Kornis, chief captain of the Maros district, the other John Daczo, chief
captain of Csik, who now stood before her with menacing looks, and the
points of their naked swords at her breast.
"Not a sound, my lady!" said Daczo grimly. "Where's Banfi?"
The lady, thus scared out of her first sleep, was scarcely able to
distinguish the objects around her: terror made her dumb.
Suddenly she observed through the open door that the passage was filled
with armed men, whereupon her presence of mind seemed instantly and
completely to return. She grasped at once the tremendous significance of
the moment, and when Daczo, gnashing his teeth, again asked her where
Banfi was, she bounded from her chair, ran to the door which separated
her husband's chamber from her own, turned the key quickly round, and
screamed with all her might--
"Banfi! Save yourself! They seek your life!"
Daczo ran forward to stop her mouth and snatch the key from her; but
with singular presence of mind Lady Banfi had, in the meantime, thrown
the key into the heart of the red-hot embers, and cried again--
"Fly, Banfi! Your enemies are here!"
Daczo tried to pick the key out of the fire, and burnt his fingers very
badly in the attempt, whereupon, still more furious, he rushed upon the
lady sword in hand to cut her down, but Kornis held him back.
"Softly, sir! We have no orders to kill the woman, nor would it be
worthy of us; let us try rather to burst open the door as quickly as
possible," and with that they both pressed their shoulders against the
door, Daczo cursing and swearing, and calling upon all the devils in
hell to help him, while Lady Banfi on her knees prayed God to allow her
husband to escape.
* * * * *
Banfi had gone to sleep at the same time as his wife. He too had had a
tormenting dream. He fancied he was in prison, and the moment he heard
Margaret's shriek, he sprang in terror from his couch, tore open the
window of the pavilion, and without thinking what he was doing, leaped
into the garden at a single bound. He looked hurriedly about him. The
house was surrounded by armed Szeklers, and the rear of the garden was
bounded by a broad ditch filled with greenish rain-water. Amongst the
masses of infantry stood here and there a group of grooms, holding by
the bridles the chargers from which their masters had just dismounted.
Banfi had very little time for reflection, nor did he need much. Under
cover of the darkness, he rushed swiftly upon the nearest groom, gave
him a buffet which brought the blood in streams from his nose and mouth,
sprang upon one of the vacant horses, and struck the spurs into its
flanks.
The cry of the groom, who had fallen beneath the horse but still held on
fast by the bridle, brought up to the spot a crowd of yelling Szeklers.
It immediately occurred to Banfi to put his hands into his
saddle-pouches, where pistols were sure to be found, and the moment he
felt the handles, he as quick as light sent two shots among the crowd
which was pressing upon him from all sides, and taking advantage of the
consequent hubbub and confusion, spurred his horse fiercely, till it
reared and plunged and flew away with him through the garden. The groom
still stuck to it like a leech, and allowed himself to be dragged along
the ground, till at last his head came into collision with the stump of
a tree and he fell back unconscious. Banfi thereupon galloped towards
the ditch, and leaped it at a single bold bound; his pursuers, not
daring to follow him that way, were obliged to make a long détour to
reach the gates, thus giving Banfi a start of several hundred paces. His
steed too, scared by the noise of the pursuit, had become half frantic,
and Banfi gave him his head, and away they went over stock and stone, up
hill and down dale, without aim or purpose.
* * * * *
"Oh, accursed woman!" roared Daczo, threatening Lady Banfi with his
fists, when he learnt that Banfi had made his escape. "'Tis all through
you that Banfi has slipped through our fingers."
"Oh, Almighty God! I thank Thee!" stammered Margaret, with hands
upraised to heaven.
The Szeklers, enraged at having let the husband escape, swung their
weapons and rushed upon the wife to murder her.
"Let her die! Her blood be upon her own head!" they roared, with bestial
rage.
"Kill me! Death will be welcome to me!" cried Margaret, kneeling down
before them. "To die for him was my only wish. God be with me!"
"Be off with you!" cried Kornis, suddenly intervening, beating down the
weapons of the Szeklers with his sword, and covering the kneeling lady
with his body. "Shame on you! Would you kill a woman? Ye are worse than
the Pagan Tartars. If you've let Banfi escape, run after him."
"We'll kill her! We'll kill her!" bellowed the Szeklers, and again they
attempted to tear Kornis away from the lady.
"Eh! you damned beasts! Who commands here, I should like to know? Am I
not your captain?"
"No!" bluntly replied a stiff-necked, bull-headed Szekler, twitching
his bulky shoulders to and fro. "Our captain is Nicholas Bethlen, and he
is not here."
"Then go and find him. But let me tell you that whoever does not
instantly quit this room shall be beaten into a pulp."
Still the Szeklers persisted in remaining, and there is no knowing what
they might not have done, had not one of the hindermost suddenly
exclaimed--
"Let us go to Bonczhida!"
Thereupon all the others fell a-shouting--"To Bonczhida! to Bonczhida!"
and they withdrew, cursing horribly, and in the most chaotic confusion.
But Captain Kornis quietly put Lady Banfi into a carriage, and sent her
to Bethlen Castle, which then belonged to Paul Beldi, hoping that Banfi
would behave with a little more discretion when he heard that his wife
was a prisoner.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, the Szekler rabble sent out against Banfi by order of the
Prince had arrived at Bonczhida, and on showing the castellan the
Prince's mandate, the gates were opened to them without the slightest
contradiction. Daczo only left a portion of his band there, whom he
strictly charged to arrest Banfi the moment he appeared, then with the
rest he went on to Örmenyes, where Banfi had another castle, to seek him
there.
The Szeklers left behind at Bonczhida no sooner perceived themselves
captainless, than they proceeded to make themselves perfectly at home in
the occupied castle. At first indeed they only jostled each other in the
hall and vestibules, but presently they began to insist that the private
apartments should also be thrown open to them.
The castellan hesitated. He declared that there was no necessity for
such a step, and begged the noble gentlemen to keep within their legal
rights, whereupon the before-mentioned broad-shouldered, bull-headed
rogue stepped forth, twirled his blonde moustache, which consisted of
about nine hairs, and thrusting his pock-marked face close under the
castellan's nose, exclaimed--
"What do you mean by that? You are a conspirator! You have robber-bands
concealed in those rooms. Open the doors instantly, or we'll burn the
house down!"
The castellan was very wroth, but he was also very frightened, so he
threw open the rooms in order that the Szeklers might see with their
own eyes that nobody was concealed there.
The Szeklers thereupon, with astonishing conscientiousness, thoroughly
explored every hole and corner, even looking into places where no one
would ever have thought of hiding anything. They looked under and inside
all the beds. They pulled out all the cupboards. They took the grates
out bodily to see what was behind them. They pitched all the books out
of the book-cases, and, after ransacking every room, came at last to
Lady Banfi's bed-chamber.
"Look! look! There sits Banfi!" cried the bull-headed ringleader,
recoiling at first before a lifelike portrait of the Baron, but
immediately afterwards rushing forward and gouging out one of its eyes
with his spear. "And that pretty lady yonder is his wife, I suppose?"
asked he, pointing to another portrait by the side of the first. "Ai,
ai, ai! We were like to have killed her a little while ago, not knowing
that she was so pretty. Let us be off, comrades! This room we must leave
untouched, for it belongs to that pretty lady," and with that he drove
his comrades out, and wrote with a piece of charcoal on the white
enamelled door, in letters each an ell long--"THIS IS THE PRETTY LADY'S
CHAMBER."
"Why do you do that?" asked the castellan in some surprise.
"To prevent any fuddled blockhead from thrusting his nose in there, in
case we all get drunk."
"But where will you all get the drink from, pray?" asked the castellan,
more and more amazed.
"Nay, gossip! we must certainly have a peep at the cellars also, to see
if anybody is lurking there."
"There you cannot go, and so I tell you once for all, unless you have
brought petards with you under your coats of mail."
"What! Just say that again! I should like to hear it once more. Do you
know, gossip, to whom you are speaking? My name is Firi Firtos, and if
you speak a single word more, I'll chuck you over the house, so that you
will fall to the ground in half-a-dozen pieces."
"Why bandy words with him?" cried a voice from the crowd. "Let us pitch
the fellow out of the window."
The Szeklers did not wait to be told twice, but instantly raised the
castellan into the air and threw him, despite his frantic struggles, out
of the window. Luckily he fell on his feet, and took to his heels, to
the great indignation of Firi Firtos, who seized all the cactus and
hortensia plants that stood in the windows, and hurled them after him,
pots and all, after which the whole mob rushed bellowing down to the
cellars. Finding it impossible to open the large iron doors, they
dragged forward huge casks, filled them with big stones, and sent them
flying down the cellar steps, till at last the iron doors fell in with a
tremendous crash.
The vast cellar was fitted with huge butts and barrels of every size and
shape, and the Szeklers forthwith fell upon them and knocked the tops
off with their morning-stars to see what was inside them. The costly
wine poured out into the cellar. The Szeklers drank as only Szeklers can
drink, and what they could not drink was simply wasted.
When they had all drunk as much as they could hold, the mob stormed
up-stairs again, and while another batch took their place below, they
forced their way into the state-rooms, rolled about on the costly divans
and oriental carpets, hustled one another against the furniture and
mirrors, and indulged in many other like pleasantries. Firi Firtos
climbed on to a round ebony table in order to paint a moustache on the
portrait of a mediæval lady with a piece of charcoal, but some one else
jerked the table from under him, and the merry wag fell crashing down
into a glass chest containing the family treasures. Mad with rage, he
immediately began pitching about everything which came to hand: gorgeous
gold pocals, silver plates, enamelled snuff-boxes, flew one after
another at the heads of the Szeklers, who, entering into the joke, flung
them all back at him with great spirit.
This was the signal for a general devastation. The mania for destruction
is contagious. It needs but one to begin it, and the mob, as if
rejoicing at the sight, is never so ready as when there is something to
be pulled, torn, or smashed to bits. In an instant every piece of
furniture was broken up and every bit of tapestry torn down. Splendid
costumes, costly, fur-trimmed pelisses, gala-mantles--everything was
torn to pieces. They ripped open the feather-beds, scattered the
eider-down out of the windows, and bellowed to those who stood
below--"It is snowing! it is snowing!" whereupon all the others came
rushing up to tear and pull to pieces what still remained whole.
They pulled up the fragrant jasmines by the roots to make posies of
them, and cut up into neckties the delicate tapestries which Lady Banfi
had worked with her own hands. Stealing gave the Szeklers no pleasure,
it was destruction for its own sake that they found so delightful. Thus
they threw to the ground a rare and costly clock which needed winding
only once a year, broke it up, distributed the wheels and chains as
buckles for their shoes, and melted the silver keys into bullets, which
they fired off into the air.
Here too it was edifying to see how Firi Firtos tried to get at the
bottom of everything. He took down an antique urn and stuck it on his
head upside down by way of a helmet. A clock chain he wound round his
loins as a girdle, and he danced about hugging in his arms a huge statue
of Gutenberg, declaring that it would make an excellent scarecrow for
the Somlyo vineyards.
The fragments of the broken furniture they piled up on the hearth, and
made a great fire of the priceless ebony, mahogany, and palisander
woods. The conflagration of a whole village would not have been half so
costly.
Over this fire they hung, on a silver chain, a Corinthian amphora of
exquisite workmanship by way of a kettle, filled it with finely-chopped
mutton, and sent Firi Firtos out for beans, salt, and onions. He brought
them instead green coffee beans, white powdered sugar, and the most
costly tulip, amaryllis, and hyacinth bulbs, all of which they threw
pell-mell into the kettle, with the natural consequence that the mess,
when finished, was very nearly the death of them all, and the end of it
was that they pitched Firi Firtos neck and crop into the courtyard.
The Szekler, mad with rage and unable to obtain any other satisfaction,
rushed down to the cellars to drink himself dead drunk, but there all
the hogsheads had already been staved in, and he waded in wine up to his
middle. Looking about him, he perceived a door leading to a second
cellar, broke it open with his axe, and was overjoyed to see by the
light of the torch he held in his hand, a whole row of fresh casks. He
immediately rushed upon the first of them, and knocking the top in, held
the torch over it to see what was flowing out. It was _gunpowder_!
Luckily for him he was drunk, otherwise he would certainly have sent the
castle and everything it contained the shortest way to heaven. "That's
not good to drink!" thought he, and broke open the second cask; in that
too there was powder, and in the third also, and he swore a terrible
oath that if the fourth held the same thing he would hurl the torch into
it holus bolus. In the fourth cask, however, there was honey, and shake
it as much as he would, he could get nothing else out of it. At last he
came upon a six-gallon cask, and, smelling the bung, inhaled a strong
odour of spirits, which made him madder than ever, and seizing it by the
spigot he raised it bodily from the ground and swallowed long draughts
of the strong corn brandy, till over he fell backwards, cask and all.
There he wallowed about in the streaming honey; struggled laboriously to
his feet again, stumbled a few steps further on, fell down into the
gunpowder; rolled backwards and forwards in it for some time, and
finally, all candied as he was, scrambled into the courtyard, and there
the honey-and-powder-bedaubed form fell prone into the heaps of
eider-down which covered the ground, and sprawled helplessly about till
he was covered with plumage from the crown of his head to the soles of
his jack-boots, and in this plight the grotesquely hideous creature
crawled up stairs on all fours in amongst his carousing companions. The
man no longer resembled any known beast of the Old or New Worlds. He was
black and white all over: white where he was not black, and black where
he was not white. Perhaps he had some distant resemblance to a polar
bear with a hide of feathers instead of hair, but his roaring was like
the roaring of a hippopotamus. It is therefore not surprising that when
the Szeklers beheld this strange monster crawling towards them on all
fours and bellowing loudly, they should take to their heels in terror,
scatter to all points of the compass, and leave the flesh-filled kettle
in the lurch. Most of them took the shortest but most dangerous way out
of the window, exclaiming--"That is Banfi's devil! Here comes Banfi's
devil!"
The Szekler, perceiving the success of his involuntary masquerade, sent
after the fugitives a still more ghastly howl, took the amphora down
from the chain, sat down with it in the middle of the parquetted floor,
thrust both hands into it at once like a demon of the woods, and gobbled
and roared alternately.
And these savage scenes took place in the very same chamber where, only
a few days before, the delicate form of Dame Banfi had appeared among
her jasmines and mimosas like a melancholy shade from fairyland which
only listens with its soul and speaks with its eyes.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Denis Banfi, after breaking through the ambush laid for him at
Koppad, began, as the noise of the pursuit gradually died away, to look
about him in the star-bright night, and picked his way so carefully
through woods and over stubble-fields that, at dawn of day, he saw
before him the towers of Klausenburg.
Once rid of the terrors of pursuit, anger and revenge began to rage
within him. He thought at first that this night attack was simply an
audacious conspiracy of his private enemies concocted without the
knowledge of the Prince, on the principle that an accomplished act is
more easily justifiable than an act that has still to be accomplished.
But the attempt had not succeeded, and the escaped lion had both the
will and the power to turn upon his pursuers and teach them respect for
the laws.
In the plain before the town Banfi's troops were just going through
their morning exercises when their leader came galloping up to them,
pale, agitated, unarmed, and without either hat or mantle. His captains
hastened towards him, aghast and curious.
"I've just escaped from a murderous assault," said Banfi, with a hoarse
voice and a heaving breast; "my enemies have treacherously fallen upon
me. I have escaped them, but my wife is in their hands. I recognized the
voices of Daczo and Kornis among my pursuers."
"Yes, and Daczo's name is embroidered on this saddle-cloth," said
Michael Angel.
Banfi appeared much disturbed. His face was dark and troubled, as if
neither the future nor the past was quite clear to him.
"I don't understand it at all," said he to his captains. "If the attack
was by the Prince's command, I ought to have been served beforehand with
a writ, a citation, or, at the very least, a notice of judgment. If
however it be only an act of private vengeance, my band is more than
sufficient to reach these honest Szeklers. In any case, you will remain
under arms before the town while I go up to my castle. In a few hours I
shall know whither we have to turn."
Thereupon Banfi rode into the town, accompanied by Michael Angel. As he
turned the corner of his palace, he was obliged to pass over the ground
where the house of Dame Saint Pauli had formerly stood. All that
remained of it now was a large stone, and Banfi, chancing to look in
that direction, saw the mistress of the vanished house sitting on that
single stone, and evidently awaiting him. He turned impatiently away,
but she arose, curtseyed low, and cried derisively--
"Good-morning, your Excellency! Good-morning!"
Banfi haughtily rode on without a word. At the palace gate the castellan
of Bonczhida awaited him, who, after escaping from the violence of the
Szeklers, had discreetly kept his evil tidings secret, and now told his
lord, in a hurried whisper, that his castle had been turned upside down,
and the Szeklers were making merry there to their hearts' content.
Banfi answered not a syllable, but he sent for his armour and his
charger, and calmly got ready to depart.
"Your lordship would do well to hasten," said the castellan; "by this
time the Szeklers must have penetrated into the state apartments."
"It is well," replied Banfi, walking up and down the room with folded
arms.
"No, my lord; it is not well. They have smashed to pieces everything in
the rooms, torn the carpets to shreds, divided among them the
curiosities, flooded the cellars with wine, and even made away with the
horses."
"It does not matter," replied the magnate hoarsely. What cared he at
that moment for his costliest treasures, his wine, his horses?
"They have done still worse, my lord. They forced their way into her
ladyship's bedroom, set up the bust of her ladyship as a target, and
mutilated it horribly amidst peals of laughter."
"What! My wife's bust?" cried Banfi, putting his hand to his sword. "My
wife's bust did you say?" repeated he with sparkling eyes. "Ha!" he
roared, and tearing his sword from its sheath, raised his face to heaven
with an expression which no one had ever seen there before. It was like
the face of a furious tiger chained down by force, with bloodshot eyes,
thick starting veins in the forehead, and lips thirsting after blood.
"God be gracious and merciful to them!" cried he, with a terrible voice,
threw himself upon his horse, and hastened to his host.
"My friends!" cried he, ere yet he had had time to marshal their ranks.
"A marauding swarm of hornets has fallen upon my castle and plundered
it. They have smashed everything in my rooms, emptied my stables, stolen
or destroyed my family treasures. All that troubles me little. Let the
half-starved wretches eat and drink their fill! Let them keep what they
have got! Let them rob, burn, and ravage if they will, poor devils! I am
still the master of many mansions, and can pay off this beggarly
Szekler crew out of one pocket. But they have defaced the image of my
wife!--my wife I say! Therefore will I take vengeance upon them, a
fearful vengeance. Follow me! The trees of the orchards of Bonczhida
have not borne fruit for a long time. We will now hang fruit upon them
ourselves!"
The enthusiastic shouts of the squadrons proved that the host was ready
to follow Banfi whithersoever he might choose to lead it. The captains
marshalled their divisions, and the second flourish of trumpets had
already sounded, when a company of twelve horsemen suddenly appeared in
front of Banfi's host. In the foremost of this company they recognized
the Prince's herald, a broad-shouldered man of gigantic stature, who
boldly rode up to Banfi and his staff, and raising his escutcheoned
bâton, cried--"Halt!"
"Use your eyes! We _are_ halting!" retorted Michael Angel.
"In the name of his Highness, the Prince, I cite you, Denis Banfi, to
appear within three days before the Privy Council at Karoly-Fehervár,
there to defend yourself as best you may against the charges brought
against you. Till then your consort remains in our hands as a hostage
for your good behaviour."
"We _are_ coming," retorted Michael Angel; "don't you see that we are
already about to start? We only wanted to know whither, and now we know
it."
"Silence, captain!" cried Banfi; "one must not jest with the Prince's
ambassador."
The herald next turned to the captains.
"This citation does not concern you. I have a very different message to
deliver to you in the Prince's name."
"You had better keep your message to yourself, or I'll speak a word in
your ears which will make them tingle," jeered one of the captains,
aiming at the herald with his pistol.
"Down with your weapons," exclaimed Banfi; "let him proclaim the
Prince's mandate. Give him room that he may speak freely."
The herald rose in his stirrups, and looking along the ranks cried
aloud--
"The Prince forbids you from henceforth to obey Banfi! Whoever takes up
weapons for him is a traitor!"
"You're a traitor yourself," roared Michael Angel, and the next moment
the crowd fell furiously upon the herald, with loud cries of "Kill him!
kill him!" A hundred blades flashed simultaneously over his head.
"Hold!" cried Banfi in a voice of thunder, covering the herald with his
body; "this man's person is sacred and inviolable. To your places!
Sheathe your swords! I--your leader--command it!"
"Eljen! eljen!" roared the brigades, and at the word of command they
fell back into their places and stood there like an iron wall.
"You will not be very angry with me," said Banfi to the herald, who had
suddenly turned deadly pale, "you will not be very angry with me, I
hope, for making them obey me this once? Go back to the Prince and tell
him that in three days I will appear before him."
"And tell him that we will be there too," cried the captains in chorus.
The herald and his suite withdrew. Banfi moodily bent his head.
The third flourish of trumpets had already sounded, and the banners were
all unfurled; but Banfi still continued staring blankly, darkly, dumbly
before him.
"Draw your sword, my lord!" cried Angel; "place yourself at our head,
and let us start. First to Bonczhida and then to Fehervár."
"What do you say?" said Banfi, with a start. "What is it?"
"I say that if the law of the sword is to try you, the sword must also
be your defence."
"And such a process is generally called _civil war_!"
"We have not kindled it."
"Nor will we fan it. 'Tis no longer, I see, a struggle against my
personal enemies, but against the Prince, and he is the head of the
land."
"And are not you its right arm? If they choose to light up the flames of
civil war, we will not allow it to be quenched in your blood."
"And why should my blood flow at all? Have I committed any capital
offence? Can I even be charged with such a thing?"
"You are powerful, and that is a sufficient reason for killing you."
"I care not. I'll go, and what is more, alone. My wife is in their
hands. They have the power to make me feel their wrath in the most
painful way, and if there were no other reason for appearing, it is my
knightly duty to release her."
"You can save both her and yourself much more efficaciously by force of
arms."
"I have nothing to fear. I have done nothing for which I need blush in
the sight of justice, and if they plot privily against me, are not you
here? Summon hither my Somlyo troops as well, and only intervene if they
practise foul play."
"Oh, my lord! that army is good for nothing which is abandoned by its
leader. To-day it would go through fire and water for you, and is even
ready to proclaim you Prince; but to-morrow, when it hears that you have
appeared before the court, it will disperse and deny you."
"They need know nothing of my resolution. I'll immediately take coach
and go to Fehervár. Tell the troops I've gone to Somlyo to collect my
other forces, and keep them under arms till you hear from me."
With that Banfi rode off to Klausenburg, and Michael Angel irritably
stuck his sword into its sheath and told the troops that they might rest
if they felt tired.
* * * * *
An hour later Banfi was rolling in a carriage-and-four towards Torda, on
his way to Fehervár; a mounted servant led a spare horse after him by
the bridle.
The further he withdrew from the seat of his power, the more anxious he
became. His soul wavered. He began to see phantoms at every step. Only
his pride prevented him from turning back again.
Everything now wore a different aspect. He could read in the looks and
salutations of all whom he met what they thought of him. A smile was a
sign of compassion; a mere nod, a token of ill-will. He stopped to speak
to every one, even to very slight acquaintances, even to those whom he
had hitherto looked down upon or had never regarded at all. He even
condescended to question them. In the hour of misfortune it is wonderful
how a man recollects all his acquaintances. At such a time he who once
haughtily rejected the hand of friendship is ready to meet his very
enemy half-way.
Suddenly he perceived an open carriage coming towards him from Torda,
and in it sat a man wrapped up in a grey cloak, in whom, as he passed,
Banfi recognized Martin Kuncz, the Unitarian bishop; he called to him to
stop for a moment. The bishop, not hearing him for the clatter of the
wheels, simply doffed his hat and drove on. Banfi thought he did it on
purpose, and took it for a very bad omen. He who ordinarily treated all
danger so lightly, now recoiled before the veriest bugbears. He stopped
his carriage, and taking horse bade his coachman drive on to Torda and
await him there. In the meantime he galloped after the bishop's
carriage, whereupon the bishop, catching sight of him, stopped and
awaited the magnate, who cried to him from a distance--
"So you will not answer when I speak to you, eh?"
"I am at your lordship's command. I did not know that you wished to
speak to me."
"You know my situation, I suppose? What do you think of it? What ought I
to do?"
"In such a case, my lord, it is as difficult to give advice as to take
it."
"I have resolved to appear to the citation."
"Really, my lord?"
"I have nothing to fear. I feel that my cause is just."
"No doubt; but it does not follow that you will get justice because your
cause is just. In this world anything is possible."
Banfi understood the allusion. He had formerly said the very same words
to the bishop, and now he had not even sufficient strength of mind to
leave him and go on his way defiantly; on the contrary, he dallied with
him for some time longer.
"The Prince indeed is my enemy; but the Princess has always defended me,
and I have every confidence in her Highness."
"Yes; but unfortunately the Prince has quarrelled with his consort. They
say that he even forbids her to enter his apartments."
This answer seemed to quite confound Banfi; but he had still one hope
left.
"I don't believe they'd dare to do me mischief, for they know that at
Klausenburg and Somlyo I have armies in battle array which can call them
to account at any moment."
"Oh, my lord, it is difficult to direct an army from the walls of a
prison, and you know very well that a live dog is stronger than a dead
lion."
These words seemed to produce a great change in Banfi. For a time he
moodily rode by Kuncz's carriage; then, after a long pause, he replied
in a very low voice--"You are right," gave his horse the spur, and rode
back to Klausenburg with the firm resolve of not allowing himself to be
enticed from his stronghold.
On reaching the spot where scarcely six hours before he had restrained
the enthusiastic ardour of his troops, he was much surprised to find a
band of gipsies apparently searching for something on the ground.
"What are you doing here?" cried he, as he came up to them.
At this question their leader came forward, and recognizing Banfi,
humbly doffed his cap.
"Verily, your Excellency, the gipsies have come hither to collect the
cartridges which the brave and noble gentlemen have scattered about
here."
"But where then are the gentlemen?"
"Gone, your Excellency."
"But why, and whither?"
"The moment they heard your lordship had quitted
Klausenburg--whew!--they dispersed in all directions."
"And Michael Angel?"
"He was the first to depart."
Banfi felt sick and dizzy. The tears rushed to his eyes. To be so
abandoned by every one, by Fate, by his fellow-men, and even by his own
self-confidence! What now remained of all his former might? Whither
should he turn? What should he devise? Every way was closed against him.
Neither with the sword of justice nor with the sword of battle could he
fight. There was no hope and no refuge.
His horse carried him whither it would. The magnate sat upon it with a
darkened face, staring blankly at the clouds or on the ground. The
earth, the sky, and his own heart--everything within him and around him
was dark and desolate. Hitherto his soul had been so full of pride that
there was no room for anything else, and now all his pride was gone, and
had left a hideous blank behind it. On, on he went; but it was his horse
that chose the road. Vast forests lay before him, and he thought--What
lies beyond those forests? Lofty hills. And what beyond the hills? Still
higher hills. And what then? The snowy peaks. And nowhere was there any
refuge or shelter for him! So at the very first stroke every one had
fallen away from him, and he who only the day before had ruled over the
half of Transylvania, and held fortresses at his disposal, cannot even
find a hut to shelter him from the night. Or shall he give himself up
to the derision of his enemies, and not even have the poor satisfaction
of meeting death with front erect and a smiling countenance? Shall he
perish ignobly like a hunted beast? He fell a-thinking. If die he must,
he would at least die like a man. But how?
Gradually a thought began to dawn in his benighted soul, and with that
thought the colour returned to his cheeks. Slowly he raised his head,
and this secret thought ripening into a quick resolution, it was as
though a voice within him cried--"Yes! Thither! thither!" His eyes began
to sparkle, he turned his horse's head towards the forest, and
disappeared beneath the thick foliage.
* * * * *
The tempest is raging. The storm snaps the trees. The rain patters down,
and the swollen torrents roar. From time to time fitful lightning
flashes illumine the whole region, and snowy mountain peaks grow dark
and the black sky gleams white--and again the sky darkens and the snowy
peaks shine forth.
The scanty patches of brushwood clinging to the bald rocks are rudely
torn and shaken by the hurricane, and the distant pine forests roar like
the last trump. Every beast crouches trembling in its den and listens to
the storm.
Lofty, inaccessibly steep rocks shut out the horizon, and far, far down
in the vale below, like a toiling ant, we see a horseman struggling
through the pathless wilderness.
God be merciful to him in such a night in such a place!
It is the Devil's Garden!
* * * * *
A gorgeous oriental chamber opens out before us. Round about the walls
gleam hundreds of torches; but the ceiling is so lofty that it is
invisible, the light of the torches never reaches it. Two rows of
columns support the gigantic architrave, slender columns with capitals
in the shape of beasts' heads, as we are wont to see them in ancient
Persian temples. Splendid curtains fill up the interstices of the
columns. Moorish arabesques adorn the walls; the arched portals are
ablaze with gold and malachite. In the centre of the room a lofty red
velvet couch rests on four gold griffins with amethyst eyes. In front of
the couch is a little ivory table, supported by intertwining silver
snakes, and beside the table a golden censer exhales light-blue fragrant
clouds of ambergris and aloes. On the couch reclines a sylph-like girl
with languishing and yet ardent eyes. A string of pearls, dependent from
her neck, draws her light tunic up to her bosom. Her slender form is
girdled round the hips by a gorgeous oriental shawl. Her black locks are
held together by a golden fillet, which encircles her brows, and the
huge diamond clasp of this fillet flashes its myriad blinding rays
amidst her dark tresses, like a rainbow condensed into a star gleaming
through darkest night.
The girl is alone. Everything around her is motionless. We seem to be in
an enchanted fairy palace. Nowhere a sound, a movement.
Who would ever have thought of finding such a magic chamber in the
bowels of the earth, six hundred feet within the solid rock, on the
surface of which the storm is worrying the hardy shrubs and trees?
It is the crypt of the Devil's Garden, and the woman, sylph or demon,
who inhabits it is Azrael.
How can this woman live here so lonely, so far from everything human?
And yet, why not? She is a whole world, a hell, to herself. Within the
resounding walls of the populous harem she felt herself lonely, and she
peoples this vast vault with the creations of her own wild fancy. Here
she shapes the future, forms endless plans, dreams of battles, of
intoxicating love, of more than earthly might, of new realms of which
she is the Queen, the Sun surrounded by her starry train.
Suddenly a light trampling is heard overhead, as if some one were riding
over the vaulted roof. Azrael arises and listens. The sound of footsteps
is audible in the corridors, and presently three familiar, measured
knocks are heard at the doors.
"'Tis he!" she whispers; springs from her couch, hastens to the door,
draws back the heavy bolts, tears the door violently open, and falls
into the arms of him who enters.
"At last! at last!" she murmurs, twining her arms round the man's neck
and pressing her cheeks to his lips.
The man is Denis Banfi.
Sad, speechless, broken as he never was before, he does not even greet
the girl as he enters. He seems to freeze, all his limbs are trembling.
He has left his tiger-skin outside, but the drenching rain has soaked
him through and through.
"Thou art wet to the skin," says the girl. "Quick! warm thyself. Thou
hast come from afar. Thou dost need repose," and dragging Banfi to her
couch, she took off his dolman, covered him with her own costly ermine
mantle, placed under his feet soft velvet cushions, which she first
warmed over the steaming censer, and pressing the man's frozen hands to
her throbbing bosom, warmed them there.
Yet Banfi remained dumb. Misfortune seemed to be written on his
forehead. A far less practised eye, a far less penetrating genius than
Azrael's, could have seen at a glance that he was no longer the haughty
magnate he had been, but a fallen viceroy, whose fall was all the
greater because he had stood so high; who had come to her, not because
he had forsaken every one, but because every one had forsaken him; whom
not pleasure but despair had brought to this place.
"I have been waiting for thee!" cried the girl, burying her head in
Banfi's bosom, while he played involuntarily with her rich tresses. "To
me thy absence is an eternity, thy presence but a fleeting moment."
Not for all the world would Azrael have let Banfi perceive that she had
observed the change in him. She pushed a little round stool in front of
the couch, took up her mandolin, and began to sing with a voice of
thrilling sweetness one of those improvisations which the ardent
imagination of the East brings spontaneously to the lips, striking the
while with her fingers wild, fantastic chords.
"If thou hast joy, share it with thy beloved, and thou wilt have so much
the more. If thou hast grief, share it with thy beloved, and thou wilt
have so much the less."
Banfi looked at the odalisk with beetling brows.
But Azrael struck fresh chords and began another song--
"False is the world and all that is therein! Every day the sun forsakes
the sky. Every day the sea forsakes her shores. Every year the swallow
forsakes her nest. But the maiden who loves never forsakes her beloved."
Still Banfi remained silent. There he sat with staring, bloodshot eyes,
his head resting on his elbows, like a poor, mortally-wounded lion.
And again the odalisk sang--
"If choice were thine, which wouldst thou choose--love with hell, or
heaven without love?"
Banfi stretched out his arms towards Azrael, and as the odalisk, casting
away her mandolin, bent down to kiss his hand, he drew her to his
breast, and the odalisk, softly stroking Banfi's forehead, said--
"What mean these wrinkles on thy noble brow, which I have never seen
there before? Vainly do I charm them away with my kisses; they come back
again and again. Wait!--I'll cover them with this diadem. So!--how well
a kingly crown becomes thy brow!"
Banfi uttered an inarticulate cry, tore the diadem from his head, and
hurled it far away, while with the other hand he roughly repulsed the
girl. Every line of his face proclaimed his agony of mind. The odalisk
looked into his face and could read there everything which had happened.
This passionate outburst, however, aroused Banfi from out of his dull
despondency. He sprang from the couch, resumed with an effort his usual
proud, devil-may-care look, and raising the girl into the air cried,
with bitter, scornful mirth--
"Bring me wine! To-day I'll make merry! Over our heads the storm is
howling--let it howl! We'll laugh at it, eh! my pretty wench? To-day is
ours! On this one day we'll heap together everything which can bring
bliss and mad delight, so as to leave nothing for the morrow. Wine and
kisses and music--and hell-fire!"
The girl skipped away like a chamois, and came back like a Hebe with a
large silver salver covered with gold goblets.
"No, not the golden pocals!" cried Banfi. "They won't break when we dash
them against the wall. Serve the wine in Venetian crystals."
The odalisk obediently brought forth the gorgeously-coloured and gilded
Venetian glasses, then so much in vogue, and pushed a broad,
short-legged table close to the couch.
"Come, embrace me!" cried Banfi, drawing the girl to his bosom, and
gazing into her abysmal black eyes.
"My love is an endless sea," whispered the girl, her hands resting on
Banfi's shoulder.
"My desire is as hell itself, which drinks to the very dregs!" cried
Banfi, embracing the odalisk and pressing a burning kiss on her lips, as
if he would have drunk in her very soul.
With that he seized the first glass that came to hand; the wine sparkled
in the torch-light. Azrael's kisses had not yet softened his heart. With
bitter scorn he raised the glass, and cried--
"I drink to my friends."
He drained it to the last drop, and hurled it contemptuously against
the wall, so that it was shivered to pieces. Immediately afterwards he
seized a second glass--
"I drink to my enemies."
With a wild peal of laughter he hurled the second glass into the air. In
its flight it almost reached the ceiling, but it fell back again on the
couch and did not break.
"See, it mocks me and will not break!" exclaimed Banfi, with sparkling
eyes.
Azrael sprang up, seized the glass, and crushed it beneath her foot.
In Banfi's heart the flames of three passions began to mingle--wrath,
intoxication, and frantic love.
He raised the third glass to his lips, and while the girl held his body
fast embraced, Banfi exclaimed, with flushed face and strident voice--
"I drink to Transylvania."
He drained the glass, but when he took it from his lips, the smile had
frozen on his face, and instead of dashing the glass against the wall,
he placed it gently on the table. A cold shudder ran through him at his
own words--"I drink to Transylvania."
He did not remove his hand from the glass, and would shyly have put it
aside in a safe place, when the crystal, without any visible cause,
suddenly burst in pieces, filling the magnate's hand with a million
fragments.
The diamond ring on his finger had scratched the glass, which, as all
badly-cooled crystals are wont to do, shivered instantly at the contact,
scattering its sparkling fragments in every direction like a Bologna
flask.
Banfi shrank shuddering back at this phenomenon and hid his face in
Azrael's bosom, as if he had seen a portentous enchantment.
The girl, however, impetuously seized her glass and cried exultantly--
"I drink to our love."
Her voice broke the spell of Banfi's sobering horror and plunged him
into frenzied joy. He caught the slim, supple body of the odalisk in his
arms, and pressed her to him with the strength of a boa-constrictor: she
was almost stifled in his embrace.
"I know not what you have given me to drink," stammered Banfi, "but I
have lost my head. I am beside myself for love."
"Then take heed that thou dost not faint. Long hast thou let me
languish, and I swore that when next thou camest, to murder thee in thy
sleep, so that thou mightest never forsake me more."
"Oh, do it, do it," whispered he, and drawing his dagger from his girdle
and stretching himself at full length upon the couch, he laid bare his
breast with one hand and gave the girl the dagger with the other.
Azrael, with demoniacal ferocity, grasped the dagger by its beryl
handle, and threw herself like an armed Fury upon Banfi, who looked at
her with a frenzied smile as the sharp edge of the dagger grazed his
breast. Then the weapon fell from the hand of the odalisk, and the
madly-distended eyes and lips resumed their languishing smile.
"Kill me rather than forsake me," stammered the girl, embracing Banfi.
"We'll die together, eh?"
"Yes, yes!"
"Jest not, Azrael. I am ready to do what I say."
"And I am ready to die," replied the girl. "Come, I'll show thee
something,"--and with that, drawing aside the carpet, she lifted up a
trap-door, beneath which was visible through the gloom a deeper, lower
room, supported by short, stout, arched columns, close beside which a
number of large barrels had been placed.
"Yes," said Banfi, "I know. In that cellar I have hidden the gunpowder
which I saved after John Kemeny's fall."
"Look at this long nitrous linstock," said Azrael, drawing up the end of
a thick cotton coil out of the cellar; "the barrels are connected with
it, and many a time when thou hast been with me have I had the end of
this lunt under the cushions of my couch, and held in my couch the torch
which was to have kindled it whilst thou wert sleeping with thy head
upon my breast, and I lay and listened calmly for the explosion which
was to send us both to heaven or to hell."
"And you were afraid to do it?"
"Not for myself. But I reflected that thou wert not thine own but thy
country's."
"I belong to no one now."
"Thy mind was so full of lofty plans. Destiny chose thee to be a Prince
among men, a hero among the kings of the earth whose name should fill
the pages of history."
"All that is over now," cried Banfi, with drunken self-forgetfulness.
"I am nobody and nothing. The vault beneath this floor is all that
belongs to me. In the world without I am a fugitive and a vagabond."
"Ha!" hissed Azrael. "Then thy enemies have triumphed over thee?"
"My curse be upon their heads! I had compassion upon them, so I have
perished."
"Is Csaky also among thy persecutors?"
"Yes; he is my most pitiless pursuer."
"And have all thy faithful friends deserted thee?"
"The fallen has no faithful friends."
"Thou mightst hire mercenaries and begin the struggle anew. Thou art
rich enough."
"My wealth has gone."
"Thou mightst beg for help from foreign lands."
"That would be treason against my country. I have fallen and know what
awaits me. I must die. But my enemies shall not triumph at my death as
at a festival, or laugh aloud to see me go pale and downcast to my doom.
I will die alone."
"By Allah, thou shalt not die alone! Come, let us fill our glasses.
Accursed be the world! we'll speak of it no more. Come, stifle thy soul
in the delirium of joy, and when thy drooping head sinks down upon my
breast, I will light the end of this lunt. Thou shalt dream of bliss, of
paradise, of kisses ravished and returned; the twofold throbbing of our
hearts shall beat the minutes; here below, the stillness of death; there
above, the howling of the tempest and of thy foes; and then an
earthquaking thunder, rending and scattering the rocks, shall proclaim
to heaven and hell that none shall ever find Denis Banfi here on earth
again!"
"Azrael, thou art a devil, and I love thee!" cried Banfi, and he clasped
the girl in his arms as if she had been a little child.
* * * * *
An hour has passed, and the room has grown dark. The torches are
expiring. In the huge vaulted chamber no other light is visible but the
red vapour streaming from the orifices of the censer, which gleams like
a many-eyed monster, and the burning end of the linstock, lit by Banfi
in the midst of his mad orgy, crawling slowly along the room like a
fiery serpent.
Naught is to be heard in the deep silence but the sighs of two lovers,
and the throbbing of two hearts.
Banfi slept long.
Suddenly he awoke. Pitch-black darkness surrounded him. It was some time
before his reeling brain could realize where he was, or why he was
there. He felt an icy wind streaming through the room, but it was only
after a long interval that he grasped the fact that a door was open
somewhere, and that the cold night air was rushing in from outside.
Gradually the scenes of the by-gone night and the vows of death came
back to his mind, and he felt that he still lived. "The girl has
certainly repented of her wish to die," thought he, and he began to
grope about for her. The couch was empty.
"Azrael! Azrael!" he cried repeatedly; but there was no answer.
At last he tottered to his feet, and snatching some embers from the
hearth, lit a torch. The solitary, feeble light did not penetrate far,
but as far as it extended Azrael was nowhere to be seen.
The first thing he perceived was the linstock cut in two by a pair of
shears.
"Coward soul!" he growled, and, pierced through and through by the air,
would have put on his mantle, when a roll of parchment fell at his feet,
and picking it up he recognized Azrael's handwriting, and read as
follows--
"My lord, you read not hearts aright. We give our love for our own
sakes, but we do not give ourselves for love's sake. You have frittered
away your power, and, deserted by all the world, think to find me
faithful who loved your power and that only: I am his who has inherited
that power. He who is in the ascendant I adore, but I hate and despise
the fallen. Corsar Beg's fate should have warned you that one day you
too might fare like him ..."
Banfi could not read it to the end. His face grew dark with shame. "To
sink so low as this! This wretched slavish soul even while embracing me
was devising treachery! And I to wish to spend my last moments in the
arms of such a monster----" At that moment he _loathed_ himself.
"Cowardice and infamy! A man who has lived as I have lived, to desire
such a death! He who has always been wont to meet his foes face to face,
to hide himself from them in his last moments!--to hide himself in the
arms of a slave! Shame upon him!
"This lesson has done me good. It was meet that I who could forget a
wife who sacrificed herself to deliver me out of the hands of my
enemies, should fall into the power of a harlot who would have betrayed
me to them. Yet even now it is not too late. My life is forfeit, but at
least I can save my honour. None shall be able to boast that he has
betrayed me. My enemies shall never say that I hid myself from them and
they found me out. I'll appear before them boldly, as I ought to have
done at first."
Full of this resolution, Banfi went straightway into the secret
courtyard, where he had left his horse. He was surprised to find it no
longer there. The odalisk had taken it away with her.
He smiled disdainfully.
"What matters it, so long as she has not stolen me also."
He returned into the rocky chamber, rekindled the lunt, came out, and
closing the iron door behind him made his way along the banks of the
cold Szamos.
Towards midday he sat down on the bank to rest, and he had scarcely been
there a quarter of an hour, when he heard the trampling of horses, and
looking up--the bushes completely concealed him--beheld Ladislaus Csaky
and Azrael on horseback, side by side, at the head of an armed band. The
girl seemed to be pointing out something to Csaky on the rocks above,
and the worthy gentleman was beside himself for joy.
Banfi smiled scornfully.
"Poor Tartars!"
As soon as the band had passed by, Banfi continued his journey. He had
not gone far when he came upon a poor peasant cleaving wood.
"Dost know whither that armed band has gone?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. They have gone to capture Denis Banfi, on whose head a great
price has been set."
"How much?"
"If a noble capture him he will receive an estate, if a peasant, two
hundred ducats."
"Little enough, but enough for you, I dare say. I am Denis Banfi."
The peasant took off his cap.
"Does my lord wish to be led anywhither?"
"Lead me to the place where they will pay you two hundred ducats."
* * * * *
A quarter of an hour afterwards a tremendous explosion resounded
through the mountains, which shook the earth for half-a-mile around. The
enchanted garden of the Gradina Dracului had collapsed into an
inaccessible chaos.
Csaky had fortunately lingered on the road, or he and his company would
have perished utterly.
On returning, he found Banfi already under arrest, and was thus deprived
of the glory of having captured his foe with his own hand. He
immediately hastened to accost him, and, with exquisite malice, brought
with him the odalisk, who looked at Banfi as if she had never seen him
before.
Banfi, however, since his voluntary surrender, had quite resumed his
former sangfroid, and looking contemptuously over his shoulder at Csaky,
said--
"So your Excellency means in future to wear my cast-off clothes, eh?"
At this bitter jest Azrael hissed like a snake upon whose tail one has
suddenly trodden, whilst Csaky blushed up to his ears and tried hard to
smile.
"Does your Excellency desire any favour from me?" asked Csaky presently,
with insulting commiseration.
"None from _your_ Excellency. I came here of my own free will, and have
been arrested I know not why. My wife, therefore, can now be set free."
"So at last we begin to whine for our wife, eh?"
"On the contrary. So far from wishing to meet her, I desire that as soon
as I am put in prison she should be let go."
"It shall be as you desire, my lord!" replied Csaky, with ironical
benevolence.
Banfi requited him with a look of the most withering contempt, and
turning to the jailers entered into conversation with them: the magnates
he no longer regarded.
* * * * *
When Teleki heard of the capture of Banfi, he ordered him to be sent at
once to Bethlen Castle, to make the world believe that the anti-Banfi
faction was headed, not by him, but by Beldi, to whom the castle
belonged.
On his way thither, the captive magnate learnt that his consort had
already been released, and thus relieved of his one remaining anxiety,
cared little for the rest.
On reaching Bethlen Castle he was received by the Rev. Stephen Pataky,
Rector of Klausenburg, to whom he cried jocosely--
"So they've appointed you my father confessor, eh?"
Pataky wept bitterly, but Banfi only smiled.
The jailer conducted Banfi up the steps with every demonstration of
respect.
Banfi turned round to him.
"I hope you will let Reverend Master Pataky remain with me all the
time?" said he.
Pataky was understood to say through his sobs--
"Truly your Excellency will find far better company awaiting you than
any my poor self can offer."
Banfi, not knowing what to say to this, only shrugged his shoulders and
hastened towards the door of his prison, but remained standing on the
threshold transfixed with astonishment. In the room was a lady in deep
mourning, who turned very pale on perceiving him, and clung to the table
unable to utter a word.
Banfi felt all his blood rush to his heart. The next moment he darted
impetuously forward and cried--
"My wife! Margaret!"
The lady threw herself upon her husband's breast and sobbed aloud.
"What! have they not released you?" inquired Banfi anxiously.
"I would not be released," answered Margaret. "How _could_ I forsake you
in your prison?"
The tears came to Banfi's eyes. Speechless he sank to the ground, and
covered her hands with glowing kisses.
"While we were what the world calls happy we might avoid each other,"
said Margaret, with a choking voice, "but misfortune has brought us
together again," and she bowed her head to kiss her husband's forehead.
Banfi fell senseless at her feet. It was more than even his strong soul
could bear.