'Midst the Wild Carpathians

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[Illustration: cover of 'Midst the Wild Carpathians by Dr. Jókai Mór]

'Midst The Wild Carpathians

("Az éRdéLy AráNy KóRa")

By Maurus JóKai

Translated By R. Nisbet Bain From The First Hungarian Edition

Authorised Version

LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LD. 1894 [All rights reserved]

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay.

Introduction.

Hungarians regard _Az Érdély arány kora_ as, on the whole, the best of Jokai's great historical romances, and, to judge from the numerous existing versions of it, foreigners are of the same opinion as Hungarians. Few of Jokai's other tales have been translated so often, and the book is as great a favourite in Poland as it is in Germany. And certainly it fully deserves its great reputation, for it displays to the best advantage the author's three characteristic qualities--his powers of description, especially of nature, his dramatic intensity, and his peculiar humour.

The scene of the story is laid among the virgin forests and inaccessible mountains of seventeenth-century Transylvania, where a proud and valiant feudal nobility still maintained a precarious independence long after the parent state of Hungary had become a Turkish province. We are transported into a semi-heroic, semi-barbarous borderland between the Past and the Present, where Mediævalism has found a last retreat, and the civilizations of the East and West contend or coalesce. Bizarre, gorgeous, and picturesque forms flit before us--rude feudal magnates and refined Machiavellian intriguers; superb Turkish pashas and ferocious Moorish bandits; noble, high-minded ladies and tigrish odalisks; saturnine Hungarian heydukes, superstitious Wallachian peasants, savage Szeklers, and scarcely human Tartars. The plot too is in keeping with the vivid colouring and magnificent scenery of the story. The whole history of Transylvania, indeed, reads like a chapter from the _Arabian Nights_, but there are no more dramatic episodes in that history than those on which this novel is based--the sudden elevation of a country squire (Michael Apafi) to the throne of Transylvania against his will by order of the Padishah, and the dark conspiracy whereby Denis Banfi, the last of the great Transylvanian magnates, was so foully done to death.

In none of Jokai's other novels, moreover, is the individuality of the characters so distinct and consistent. The gluttonous Kemeny, who sacrificed a kingdom for a dinner; the well-meaning, easy-going Apafi, who would have made a model squire, but was irretrievably ruined by a princely diadem; his consort, the wise and generous Anna, always at hand to stop her husband from committing follies, or to save him from their consequences; the crafty Teleki, the Richelieu of Transylvania, with wide views and lofty aims, but sticking at nothing to compass his ends; his rival Banfi, rough, masterful, recklessly selfish, yet a patriot at heart, with a vein of true nobility running through his coarser nature; his tender and sensitive wife, clinging desperately to a brutal husband, who learnt her worth too late; the time-serving Csaky, as mean a rascal as ever truckled to the great or trampled on the fallen; Ali Pasha and Corsar Beg, excellent types of the official and the unofficial Turkish freebooter respectively; Kucsuk Pasha, the chivalrous Mussulman with a conscience above his creed; the renegade spy Zülfikar, groping in slippery places after illicit gains, and always falling on his feet with cat-like agility; and, last of all, that marvellous creation, Azrael, the demoniacal Turkish odalisk, blasting all who fall within the influence of her irresistible glamour, a Circe as sinuously beautiful and as utterly soulless as her own pet panther--all these personages of a, happily, by-gone age are depicted as vividly as if the author had known each one of them personally.

Finally, the book contains some of Jokai's happiest descriptions, and in this department it is generally admitted that the master, at his best, is unsurpassable. The description of the burning coal-mine in _Fekete Gyemantok_, of the Neva floods in _A szabadság a hó alatt_, of the plague in _Szomoru napok_, or of the Danube in all its varying moods in _Az arány ember_, stand alone in modern fiction; yet can any of these vivid tableaux compare with the wonderful account of Corsar Beg's aërial fairy palace, poised on the top of the savage Carpathians, or with the glowing picture of the gorgeous harem of Azrael, or with the fantastic scenery of the Devil's Garden, with its ice-built corridors, snow bridges, boiling streams, fathomless lakes, and rushing avalanches?

R. N. B.

Contents.

Book I.

By Command Of The Padishah.

CHAP. PAGE I. A HUNT IN THE YEAR 1666 1 II. THE HOUSE AT EBESFALVA 18 III. A PRINCE IN HIS OWN DESPITE 27 IV. A BANQUET WITH THE PRINCE OF TRANSYLVANIA 37 V. BODOLA 45 VI. THE BATTLE OF NAGY SZÖLLÖS 57 VII. THE PRINCESS 70 VIII. THE PERI 85 IX. THE PRINCE AND HIS MINISTER 105

Book II.

The Devil'S Garden.

I. THE PATROL 125 II. SANGE MOARTE 135 III. AN HUNGARIAN MAGNATE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 155 IV. THE MIDNIGHT BATTLE 173 V. THE BANQUET TRIBUNAL 189 VI. THE DIET OF KAROLY-FEHERVÁR 197 VII. THE JUS LIGATUM 210 VIII. DEATH FOR A KISS 218 IX. CONSORT AND CONCUBINE 228 X. THE SENTENCE 257

'Midst The Wild Carpathians.

Book I.

By Command Of The Padishah.

Chapter I.

A Hunt In The Year 1666.

Before us lies the valley of the Drave, one of those endless wildernesses where even the wild beast loses its way. Forests everywhere, maples and aspens a thousand years old, with their roots under water; magnificent morasses the surface of which is covered, not with reeds and water-lilies, but with gigantic trees, from the dependent branches of which the vivifying waters force fresh roots. Here the swan builds her nest; here too dwell the royal heron, the blind crow, the golden plover, and other man-shunning animals which are rarely if ever seen in more habitable regions.

Here and there on little mounds, left bare during the long summer drought by the receding waters, sprout strange and gorgeous flowers, such perhaps as the earth has not brought forth since the Flood overwhelmed her. In this slimy soil every blade of grass shoots up like gigantic broom; the funnel-shaped convolvuluses and the evergreen ground-ivy put forth tendrils as stout and as strong as vine branches, which, stretching from tree to tree, twine round their stems and hang flowery garlands about the dark, sombre maples, just as if some hamadryad had crowned the grove dedicated to her.

But it is only when evening descends that this realm of waters begins to show signs of life. Whole swarms of water-fowl then mount into the air, whose rueful, monotonous croaking is only broken by the melancholy piping of the bittern and the whistle of the green turtle. The swan, too, raises her voice and sings that melodious lay which now, they tell us, is only to be heard in fairy-land,--for here man has never yet trod, the place is still God's.

Now and again, indeed, sportsmen of the bolder sort presume to penetrate far into this pathless labyrinth of bush and brake; but they are forced to wind their way among the trees in canoes which may at any moment be upset by the twisted tangle of roots stretching far and wide beneath the water, and it is just in these very places that the swamp is many fathoms deep; for although the dark green lake-grass and the yellow marsh-flowers, with the little black-and-red efts and newts darting about among them, seem close enough to be reached by an outstretched hand, they are nevertheless all under water deep enough to go over the head of the tallest man.

In other places it is the dense thicket which bars the canoe's way. Fallen trees, the spoil of many centuries, but untouched by the hand of man, lie rotting there in gigantic heaps. The submerged trunks have been turned to stone by the water, and the roots of the lake-grass, the filaments of the flax-plant, and the tendrils of the clematis have grown together over them, forming a strong, tough barrier just above the water which rocks and sways without giving way beneath one's feet. The knotty clout-like film of the lake, stretching far and wide, seems, to the careless eye, a continuation of this barrier, but the treacherous surface no longer bears--one step further, and Death is there. This unknown, unexplored region has however but few visitors.

Southwards, the wilderness is bounded by the river Drave. The trees which line its steep banks dip over into its waves. Not unfrequently the fierce stream sweeps them into its bed and away, to the great peril of all who sail or row upon its waters.

Northwards, the forest extends as far as Csakatorny, and where the morass ends oaks and beeches of all sorts flourish. In no other part of Hungary will you meet with trees so erect and so lofty. The wide waste abounds with all sorts of game. The wild boars, which wallow in the swampy ground there, are the largest and fiercest of their kind. The red deer too is no stranger there, and huge, powerful, and courageous you will find him; nay, at that time, even gigantic elks showed themselves occasionally, and made nocturnal incursions into the neighbouring millet-fields of Totovecz; but at the first attempt to lay hands upon them, they would throw themselves into the innermost swamps, whither it was impossible to follow them....

On one of the brightest days of the year in which our story begins, a numerous hunting-party was bustling about an old-fashioned hunting-box which then stood on the borders of the forest.

The first rays of the sun had scarcely pierced through the thick foliage, when the grooms and kennel-keepers led out the hunters by their bridles and the hounds in leashes, which sprang yelping up to the shoulders of their keepers in joyful anticipation of the coming sport. The huge store-wagons, each drawn by from six to ten oxen, have already gone on before to fixed rallying-places, whither all the quarry is to be carried. The villagers for miles round have been enlisted as beaters, and stand together in picturesque groups armed with axes, pitch-forks, and occasional muskets. A few smaller groups have been posted at regular intervals along the wood, with canoes made from the trunks of trees. Their duty is to scare the game back from the swamp, should it turn thither for refuge. Every man, every beast shows signs of that precipitancy, that ardour, that restlessness by which the true huntsman is always distinguishable; only a few of the older hands find time to sit by the fire and roast slices of bacon with perfect equanimity.

At last comes the signal for departure, the blast of a horn from the porch of the hunting-box; the retinue spring shouting upon their snorting horses; the unruly, barking pack drag the kennel-men hither and thither; the huntsmen wind up their heavy shooting muskets, and every one stands in eager expectation of their lord and his noble guests.

They have not long to wait. A cavalcade, with a few attendant pages, descends the hill. Foremost rides a tall, muscular man--the lord of the manor--the rest, as if involuntarily, linger some little way behind him. His broad shoulders and superbly-arched chest indicate herculean strength; his sun-burnt features are wonderfully well preserved, not a wrinkle is to be seen on them; his short clipped beard and his shaggy moustache, which is twisted sharply upwards, give his face a martial expression, and his very pronounced aquiline nose and coal-black, bushy eyebrows lend him a haughty, dictatorial air; while the dreamy cut of his lips, his mild, oval, blue eyes and high, smooth forehead throw a poetic shimmer over his peculiarly chivalrous countenance. A round, unembroidered hat, surmounted by an eagle's plume, covers his closely-cropped hair; his upper garment is a simple green, shaggy jacket, which he wears open, thus allowing you a glance at his under-garment, a white buckskin dolman,[1] trimmed with silver braid. By his side hangs a broad scimitar in an ivory sheath, and the mother-of-pearl handle of a crooked Turkish dagger peeps forth from a scarlet girdle richly set with precious stones.

[Footnote 1: _Dolman._ An Hungarian pelisse. A more magnificent kind, worn only on state occasions, is called the _attila_.]

The pair which ride immediately behind him consists of a young cavalier and a young Amazon. The cavalier can scarcely have counted more than two-and-twenty summers, the lady seems even younger. A better-assorted couple you could find nowhere.

The youth has smiling, gentle, pallid features; rich chestnut-brown locks fall over his shoulders; a slight moustache just shades his upper lip; an eternal smile, nonchalance, not to say levity, are mirrored in his bright blue eyes; but for his brawny arms and his stalwart frame, the iron muscles of which protrude at the slightest movement through his tight-fitting dolman, you might take him for a child. His head is covered by a kalpag[2] of marten skin with a heron's plume in it; his dress is of heavy twisted silk stuff; down from his shoulders hangs a splendid tiger's skin, the claws meeting together round his neck in a gorgeous sapphire agraffe. He rides a pitch-black Turkish stallion, whose shabrack, richly embroidered with golden butterflies, is plainly the work of a gentle lady's hand.

[Footnote 2: _Kalpag_ or _Calpak_. A tall, skin cap of Tartar origin, part of the Hungarian national costume.]

The Amazon, over whom the youth bends from time to time (doubtless to whisper some sweet compliment in her ear), is his very antithesis, and perhaps for that very reason tallies so well with him.

Hers is an earnest, dauntless, energetic countenance; her eyes are brighter than garnets; she loves to pout a little and arch her bushy but delicate eyebrows, which lend a proud expression to her features, and when she raises her flashing eyes and her coral-red lips expand into a peculiar enthusiastic smile, a heroine stands before you whose head, heart, and arm are as strong as any man's. Her jasper-black, braided locks, which fall half-way down her shoulders, are surmounted by an ermine kalpag, from the top of which waves a gorgeous plume of bird-of-paradise feathers. A light, lilac robe, meet for an Amazon, clings tightly to her slim waist, and sweeps down in ample, majestic folds over the flanks of her rose-white Arab. This robe is unbuttoned in front, so as to leave free her heaving bosom, which is covered right up to the neck with lace frills. Her short sleeves, richly trimmed with batiste, are fastened by intertwining gold cords. Over her left foot, which rests upon the stirrup, the long robe is thrown carelessly back, presenting us with a glimpse of her white satin, padded petticoat, and one of her little feet in its red morocco shoe. Her snow-white arms are half protected by silk embroidered buckskin gloves, which do not quite conceal the velvety skin, and the play of the well-developed muscles. Both form and face rather demand our homage than our love. A smile rarely rests on those features; the glance of her large, dark, sea-deep eyes rests from time to time upon the youth who is bending over her, and then there beams from them such witchery, such tenderness--yet all the while her face is without a smile. A loftier, nobler longing is then visible on her face, a longing deeper than love, higher than the desire of fame--perhaps it is that self-consciousness of great souls who foresee that their names will be an eternal remembrance.

Behind the loving pair, ride side by side two cavaliers who, to judge from their dress, belong to the higher nobility. One of them is a man of about thirty, with a long, glistening black beard; he sits upon a full-blood Barbary charger, with a white star upon its forehead; the other is a sallow man advanced in years, whose long, light moustache is already touched with grey; an astrachan cap covers his high, bald, wrinkled forehead; his beard is carefully clipped, and his dress almost ostentatiously simple. No lace adorns his jacket, no fringe of any sort sets off the caparison of his good steed; his neckerchief, which peeps out of his dolman, might almost be considered shabby.

This man does not appear to stand very high in the estimation of his companion, and marks of annoyance at the neglect he suffers are plainly visible on his shrewd, not to say crafty, features. The reader would do well to study this man's face, for we shall often meet with him. Cold, withered features, thin fair hair and beard speckled with grey; a pointed, double chin; disdainful, contracted lips; keen and lively, red-rimmed, sea-green eyes; projecting eyebrows; a lofty, bald, shining forehead which, beneath the play of his emotions, becomes furrowed with wrinkles in all directions. This face we must not forget; the others--the herculean horseman, the laughing youth, the stately Amazon--will only flit across our path and disappear; but he will accompany us all through our story, pulling down and building up wherever he appears, and holding in his hands the destinies of great men and great nations.

The bald-pate drew nearer to the cavalier trotting by his side, who was balancing his spear in one hand as if to test it, and said to him in a low tone, as if continuing a conversation already begun--

"So you will not interfere in the matter?"

"Pray don't trouble me with politics now," replied the other, with a gesture of angry impatience. "You cannot live a day without planning or plotting; but pray spare me for to-day! I want to hunt now, and you know how passionately I love the chase."

With these words he gave his horse the spur, galloped forward, and caught up the herculean horseman.

The other bit his lips angrily at this roughish flout, but immediately turned with a smile towards the youthful cavalier ambling in front of him.

"A splendid morning, my lord! Would that our horizon were only as serene in every direction!"

"It is indeed," returned the youth, without exactly knowing what he was saying, whilst his heroine bent over him with a darkening face, and whispered--

"I don't know how it is, but I am always suspicious of that man. He is continually asking questions, but never answers any himself."

At this moment the stately cavalier reached the hunting-party, returned their boisterous greetings, and halted close to them.

"David!" cried he to an old grey-bearded huntsman, who at once stepped forth, cap in hand.

"Put on your cap! Have the beaters taken their places?"

"Every one is in his place, my lord! I have also sent canoes into the swamp to scare back the game."

"Bravo, David! you know your business. And now set off with the dogs and the huntsmen, and strike into the path which we usually take. Our little company will be sufficient for my purpose. We mean to cut our way straight through the forest."

A murmur of surprise and incredulity began to spread among the huntsmen.

"Your pardon, gracious sir!" returned the old huntsman, who now took off his cap a second time, "but I know that way, and it is no good way for a god-fearing man. The impenetrable thicket, the bottomless waters, the sticky slime present a thousand dangers, and then there is the wide Devil's-dyke which goes right across the forest: no horse or horseman has ever leaped that dyke."

"We at any rate, my worthy old fellow, will go for it; we have done worse bits than that ere now. He who follows me will not come to grief; don't you know that I am Fortune's favourite?"

The old huntsman donned his plumed cap, and set out on his way with the others.

But now the bald-pate rode up to the hero's side.

"My lord!" remarked he calmly, but not without a touch of sarcasm, "I hold it a great blunder for a man to jeopardize his life for nothing, especially when he may turn it to good account. I know indeed that say and do are one with your lordship; but pray be so good as to cast a glance around, and you will perceive that we are not all men here; one of that sex is among us whom it were cruelty to expose to certain peril for the mere love of adventure."

During this speech, the hero gazed fixedly, not at the speaker but at the Amazon, and the fiery pride on his cheeks flamed up still higher when he saw how contemptuously the stately girl measured her unsolicited advocate from head to foot, and with what haughty self-confidence she chose a dart, adorned with ostrich feathers, from a bundle carried by a page, and then like a defiant matador planted the shaft firmly upon her saddle-bow.

"Look at her, now!" cried the hero. "Is that the girl you are so fearful about? I tell you, sir, she is my niece!"

The hero's exalted words rang far and wide through the forest like a peal of bells. There was, at that time, no voice in Hungary like his; so thunderous, so deep, and yet so melodious and penetrating.

The Amazon permitted the cavalier who had called her his niece to embrace her slim waist; she even allowed him to kiss her rosy red cheeks: in those days an Hungarian girl used to blush even when the kiss came from a kinsman's lips.

"Not in vain does my blood flow in her veins! Ha, ha! For valour I'll match her with the best of men. Have no fear for her! The time is coming when she will face greater perils than any of to-day, and still hold her own."[3]

[Footnote 3: The Amazon was Helen Zrinyi. She married first the young cavalier with whom we now meet her, Francis Rakoczy, and subsequently the famous Emerich Tököly, whose acquaintance we shall make presently. Her spirited defence of the fortress of Mohacz, 1689, against the Emperor is well known.]

After these prophetic words, the rider pressed his spurs into his horse's sides; the wounded beast plunged and reared, but the pressure of a knee as hard as steel quickly brought it to reason.

"Follow me!" cried he, and the picturesque little group dashed after him into the depths of the forest.

Let us anticipate them. Let us go whither the stag rests at noonday in the shady groves, whither the heron bathes and the turtle basks in the sun.

What habitations are these which rise up before us, built upon piles, in groups of five and six, between the waters and the wilderness, little huts carved out of the stumps of trees with round, clay-plastered, red-thatched roofs? Who has built that dam there, so that the water may never fall too far below the thresholds of those tiny houses? Here dwell the diligent beavers whom Nature herself has taught the art of building. This is their colony. 'Tis they who have gnawed through the thick trees with their teeth; they who have brought those logs hither; they who have thrown up a bank to make a dam, and watch over its safety all the year round. Look there! One of them has just glided out of the lowest storey of his dwelling, which is under the water. With what mild and gentle eyes he looks around him! He has never yet seen man!

Let us go on further. In the shadow of an old hollow tree rests a family of stags. A buck and a doe with her two little fawns.

The buck has come forward into the sunlight; his stately form seems to give him pleasure; he licks his smooth, shiny coat again and again; softly scratches his back with his branching antlers, and struts about with a proud, self-confident air, daintily raising his slender legs from time to time: the undulating movements of his slim and supple form show off to the best advantage the play of his elastic muscles.

The doe lies lazily in the rank grass. From time to time she raises her beautiful head, and looks with her large black eyes so feelingly, so lovingly at her companion or at her sportive little ones, and if she perceives they have strayed too far, she utters an uneasy, plaintive sort of whine, whereupon the little creatures come bounding back to her helter-skelter, frisking and gambolling about their dam; they cannot keep still for a moment, all their limbs quiver and shake, and all their movements are so graceful, so lively, and so lovely.

Suddenly the buck stands motionless and utters a low cry. He scents danger and raises his nose on high; his distended nostrils sniff the air in every direction; he scratches up the ground uneasily with his feet; runs round and round in a narrow circle with lowered head, and shakes his antlers threateningly. Once more he stands perfectly still. His protruding eyes betoken the terror which instinctively seizes him. All at once he rushes towards his companion; with an indescribable sort of gentle whine they rub noses together; they too have their language in which they can understand each other. The two fawns instantly fly in terror to their mother's side; their tender little limbs are trembling all over. Then the buck disappears into the forest, but so warily that the sound of his footsteps is scarcely audible. The doe however remains in her place, licking her terrified young (which return these maternal caresses with their little red tongues), and hastily raising her head and pricking up her ears at the slightest sound.

Suddenly she springs up. She has heard something which no human ear could have distinguished. In the far, far distance the forest rings with a peculiar sound. That sound is familiar to huntsmen. The hounds are now on the track. The beating-up has begun. The doe throws uneasy glances around her, but ends by quickly lying down in her place again. She knows that her companion will return, and that she must wait for him.

The chase draws nearer and nearer. Presently the buck comes noiselessly back, and turns with a peculiar kind of squeak towards his mate, who immediately springs up and scuds away with her young ones obliquely across the line of the beaters. The buck remains behind a little while longer, and tears up the ground with his antlers, either from fury, or on purpose to efface all traces of his mate's lair. Then he stretches out his neck and begins to yelp loudly, imitating the barking of the hounds, so as to put them on a wrong track, a stratagem which, as old hunters will tell you, is often practised by the more cunning sort of stags. Then, throwing back his antlers, he disappears in the direction taken by his mate.

Nearer and nearer come the beaters. The crackling of the down-trodden brushwood and the shouts of the armed men mingle with the barking of the dogs. The forest suddenly teems with life. Startled by the cries of the pursuers, scores and scores of hares and foxes dart away among the trees in every direction. Sometimes a panting fox makes for an open hole, but bounds back terrified before the fiery eyes of the badger which inhabits it. Here and there a grey-streaked wolf skulks along among the scampering hares, standing still, from time to time, with his tail between his legs, to look round for some place of refuge, and then, as the pursuing voices come nearer, running off again with a dismal howl.

And yet no one pursues these animals; the huntsmen are after a greater, a nobler prey, a stag with mighty antlers. The beaters draw nearer and nearer; the dogs are already on the track; the blast of a horn indicates that they are hard upon the stag.

"Hurrah, hurrah!" resounds from afar. The beaters, advancing from different directions, halt and fall into their places, completely barring the way. The din of the hunt approaches rapidly.

Shortly afterwards, a peculiar rustling noise is heard. The hunted stags, with their young ones, break through the thicket and disappear. A broad chasm lies between them and the beaters. Quick as lightning, both the noble beasts bound over the fallen tree-stumps which lie in the way, and reach the chasm. The pursuit is both before and behind, but the danger is greatest from behind, for there the herculean hero, the bold Amazon, and the ardent Transylvanian huntsman head the chase. The buck leaps across the broad chasm without the slightest effort, raising both feet at the same time and throwing back his head; the doe also prepares for the leap, but her young ones shrink back in terror from the dizzy abyss. At this the poor doe collapses altogether; her knees give way beneath her, and bowing her head she remains beside her young. A dart, hurled by the Transylvanian huntsman, pierces the animal's side. The wounded beast utters a piteous cry, resembling the moan of a human being, but much more horrible. Even her slayer, moved by sudden compassion, forbears to touch her till she has ceased to suffer.

The two kids remain standing mournfully beside their dead dam, and allow themselves to be taken alive.

Meanwhile, the flying buck, shaking his heavy antlers with frenzied rage, rushes with bloodshot eyes upon the beaters who bar his way. The beaters, well knowing what this generally mild and timid beast is capable of in his valiant despair, throw themselves with one accord to the ground so as to allow him a free passage. A few of the dogs, indeed, go at him; but the now furious animal gores them with his antlers, hurls them bleeding to the ground, and then dashes off towards the swamps.

"After him!" roars the hero, in a voice of thunder, and he urges his horse towards the chasm over which the stag has just flown.

"Help, Jesu!" cry the terrified beaters on the opposite side; but the next moment their terror is changed to boisterous joy; the horse with his bold rider has come safely across.

Of the whole of his suite only two dared to imitate him, the stately Amazon and the gentle stripling. Both horses flew over the abyss at the same moment; the lady's long velvet robe flapped the air like a banner during the leap, and she threw a proud look behind her as if to inquire whether any man was bold enough to follow her.

Their suite thought it just as well not to risk their necks over such a piece of foolhardiness. Only the young Transylvanian made a dash at the chasm, although, as his horse had already injured one of its hind legs in the forest, he might have been quite sure that it was unequal to such an effort. Fortunately for him, just before the leap his saddle-girth burst and he was pitched across the chasm, just managing to scramble up the bank on the other side. His good steed, less fortunate, was only able to reach the opposite margin with its front feet; and after a wild and hopeless struggle, fell crashing back into the abyss below.

The three riders alone pursued the flying stag, which, now that he had got clear away, drew his pursuers after him into the marsh-lands. The hero was close upon his heels; the Amazon and her cavalier trotted a little on one side, for the forest was very dense here, and prevented them from going forward abreast. At last the stag forced his way into the thick reed-grown fens and took to the water, with the hero still in hot pursuit. The youthful riders were also on the point of plunging among the reeds, when two hideous, black monsters, fiercely snorting, suddenly confronted them. They had fallen foul of a brood of wild swine. The loathsome beasts had been lying, deaf to everything around them, in their bed of trampled reeds and slush, and only became aware of the presence of strangers when the youth's horse, in bounding over them, trampled to death a couple of the numerous litter that lay crouching by the side of the sow. The rest of the speckled little pigs scattered squeaking among the reeds, while the two old ones, savagely grunting, advanced to the attack. The sow fell at once upon the slayer of her little ones; but the boar remained, for a moment, on his haunches; his bristles stood erect; he pricked up his ears, gnashed his tusks together, then, wildly rolling his little bloodshot eyes, rushed at the Amazon with a dull roar.

The youth flung his javelin at the sow from afar with a steady hand. The dart whirred through the air and then stuck fast, upright and quivering, in the horny skull of the impetuous beast, the point piercing to the very brain. The sow, not unlike a huge unicorn, ran forward a little distance; but its eyes had lost their sight, and it staggered past the rider only to fall down dead without a sound, a little distance off.

The lady calmly awaited the furious boar. She held her dart with a reversed grasp, point downwards, and drew tight her horse's reins. The noble steed stood perfectly motionless, but he pointed his ears, threw a sidelong glance at the boar, and at the very instant when the rabid beast had passed beneath the horse's belly, and was about to rip it asunder with a powerful upward heave of his gleaming tusks, the well-trained charger suddenly reared and sprang over his assailant; at the same instant the Amazon deftly stooped and hurled her dart deep between the shoulder-blades of the wild boar.

The mortally-wounded beast sank bellowing down into the long grass. Once more he would have rushed upon the girl, but the youth sprang, quick as light, from his horse, and gave him the _coup de grâce_ with his dagger.

At that moment the blast of a horn was heard in the distance. The hero had brought down the stag. The other horsemen, who now overtook the leaders of the chase (but only after making a wide circuit), welcomed the hero of the day with loud cries of "Eljen!"[4]

[Footnote 4: _Eljen!_ = Long live!]

The herculean horseman was mud-stained from head to foot, nor did the others look much better; only the Amazon's robe was spotless and untorn. Even at such times a girl knows how to take care of her clothes!

When the hero beheld the wild beast slain by his niece, which, as it lay stretched out stark and stiff before him, looked even larger than life-size, he was at first deeply affected, as if he now, for the first time, fully recognized the greatness of the peril to which his darling had been exposed, and he exclaimed, not without alarm--"My Nelly!" but immediately afterwards he stretched out his hand towards her with a smile, and gazed round triumphantly upon the bystanders.

"Did I not say she had my blood in her veins?"

Every one hastened to pay an appropriate compliment to the radiant heroine, who appeared to experience, on this occasion, something of that peculiar satisfaction which only belongs to the lucky huntsman.

The hero again looked proudly around till his eye fell upon the young Transylvanian, who was now sitting on a fresh horse. Him he at once accosted, and pointing to the dead boar asked--

"Nicolas, my son! prithee tell me, does Transylvania produce such boars as that?"

Now, not to mention that the Transylvanian was already somewhat sore on account of his recent mishap, it was not to be expected that he, a Transylvanian born and bred, would for a single moment permit the assumption that any natural product of Hungary was superior to the like product of Transylvania to pass unchallenged, so he answered defiantly--

"Most certainly, and even finer ones."

Nothing at that moment could have more mightily offended the questioner than this curt answer. What! to tell an enthusiastic huntsman that he will find elsewhere game even finer than what he has just been lauding to the skies; game, too, which the darling of his heart has just slain! It was simply outrageous.

"Very well, my son, very well," growled the hero; "we shall see, we shall see!"

With obvious marks of annoyance on his face, he turned away from his contradictor, and ordered that the quarry should be conveyed at once to the hunting-box. Not another word did he exchange with any one but his Nelly; but her he literally overwhelmed with compliments and caresses.

* * * * *

It was already late in the afternoon when the hunters sat them down to a simple but tasty repast spread upon a huge and level grass-plot in the midst of the wood. Wine and merry jests soon set everything right again; they talked of everything at the same time, of war and the chase, of beautiful dames, of poetry (a fashionable subject then amongst the higher classes), and of the intrigues of courts; but even after all this blithe discourse the hero could not quite forget his grievance, and again he inquired impatiently--

"So there really is excellent sport in Transylvania?"

The young Transylvanian began to feel this perpetual harping on the same string a little tiresome. He had never meant to be taken so literally. The bald-pate, remarking the growing tension, sought to change the conversation, and raising his beaker proposed the following toast--

"God keep the Turks in a good humour."

But the hero angrily overturned his glass.

"God grant no such thing!" cried he savagely. "I'm not going to pray for the goggle-eyed dogs now, after fighting against them all my days. The man who is always trying to change masters is a fool."

"Yet the Turk is a very gracious master to us," put in the young Transylvanian, with an ambiguous smile.

"Ha, ha! didn't I say so? With you, even Turks are bigger and finer than they are with us. Of course! of course! In Transylvania everything flourishes better than in Hungary: the boars are bigger, the Turks are daintier, than they are in this part of the country."

At this moment David, the old huntsman, approached the hero and whispered something in his ear. The hero's features brightened as if by magic, and springing from his seat he cried--"Give me my gun!" then, holding his long, silver-mounted musket in his hand, he turned towards his guests with a radiant countenance. "All of you stay here. There is a colossal boar close at hand. You shall see him, my son," added he, tapping Nicolas on the shoulder. "Twice already have I vainly pursued the fellow; this time I mean to catch him. He is, I assure you, a descendant in the flesh of the Calydonian boar"--and with that, carried away by his enthusiasm, he hastened towards that part of the wood which the old huntsman had pointed out to him. David he presently ordered back: nobody was to accompany him.

"I know not how it is," whispered Helen to the youth at her side, "but I have a foreboding that my uncle is in danger. How I wish you were by his side!"

The youth said nothing in reply, but he instantly stood up and seized his gun.

"Pray don't go after him," remarked the Transylvanian, when he saw the young man about to hasten off. "You will only enrage him. He wants to do the whole business himself, and a man who has exterminated hordes of Tartars can easily dispose of a single brute beast."

And so they kept the youth back from going. The men went on drinking, and the lady remained in a brown study, glancing uneasily, from time to time, at the skirts of the wood.

Suddenly a shot resounded through the forest.

Every one put down his glass and glanced at his neighbour with a beating heart.

A few moments passed and then they heard the roar of a wild beast; but it was not the well-known roar of a mortally-wounded boar--no, it was a peculiar, gurgling, half-stifled sound that told of a fierce struggle.

"What is that?" was the question which rose to every one's lips. "Surely he would call out if he were in danger!" Then came a second shot. Every one instantly sprang to his feet. "What was that?" they cried. "Oh! let us go! let us go!" exclaimed the girl, trembling in every limb, and the whole company hastened in the direction of the shot.

* * * * *

Our hero had scarcely advanced four or five hundred paces into the thicket when, at the foot of a mighty oak, he came upon the wild beast he sought. It was a gigantic boar, with span-long, glistening black bristles on its back and forehead; the tough hide lay, like plated armour, in thick folds about its huge neck; its feet were long and sinewy. Lazily grunting, it was making for itself a bed beneath the bushes in which its shapeless body was stretched out at full length, and it had found a place for its enormous head by rooting out with its tusks bushes as thick as a man's arm.

On hearing approaching footsteps, the monster irritably raised its head, opened wide its jaws, and cast a sidelong glance at its assailant.

Our hero knelt upon one knee so as to take better aim, and fired at the wild beast just as it suddenly raised its head, so that the bullet pierced its neck instead of its skull, wounding it seriously but not mortally.

The wounded boar instantly sprang from its lair, and gnashing its crooked tusks together so that sparks flew from them, rushed upon its foe. It would not have been difficult to have avoided such a furious attack by a skilful side-spring; but our hero was not the man to get out of any opponent's way; so he threw his gun aside, tore his dagger from its sheath, faced the savage beast, and dealt at its head a blow sufficient to have cleaved it to the chine; but the tremendous blow fell short upon one of the monster's tusks, and the dagger, coming into contact with the stone-like bone, broke off short at the hilt.

Half stunned by the shock, the boar only succeeded in grazing the hero's leg, whereupon the latter seized the beast by both ears and a desperate struggle began. Weaponless as he was, he grappled with the monster, which, grunting and roaring, twisted its head about in every direction; but the hero's iron grasp held fast the broad ears of the monster with invincible force, and when the boar tried to overturn its assailant by suddenly going down on its haunches, the hero, with a swift and tremendous blow of his clenched fist, hurled it backwards, falling himself indeed at the same time, but uppermost, and quickly recovering his balance pressed down with his whole weight upon the boar (which valiantly but vainly continued struggling against superior strength), and triumphantly bestrided its huge paunch.

The boar now appeared to be completely beaten; its glassily glaring eyes were protruding, the blood streamed from its jaws and nostrils; it had ceased to bellow, but a rattling sound came from its throat; its legs writhed convulsively, its snout hung flabbily down; it was plain that it could not hold out much longer.

The hero had now only to call to his companions, who were close at hand, but that would have been too humiliating; or to wait till the boar bled to death, but that would have been too tiresome. Suddenly he recollected that he had a Turkish knife in his girdle, and, meaning to put a speedy end to the long tussle, he pressed down the boar's head with his knee and felt for his knife with one hand.

At that moment the report of a gun[5] resounded somewhere in the wood. The down-trodden boar suddenly seemed to feel that the pressure of his opponent's hands and knees was slackening, and rallying all his remaining strength, threw off his assailant and dealt him one last blow with his tusks, and that blow was fatal, for it ripped open the man's throat.

[Footnote 5: Some pretend that this shot was fired by a secret assassin sent from Vienna. Many doubt whether a shot was fired at all.]

* * * * *

His kinsmen and friends, hastening to the spot, found the hero in the throes of death by the side of the dead boar. They rushed up with loud lamentations, and bound up his throat with their kerchiefs.

"It is nothing, my children; it is nothing!" he gasped, and expired.

"Alas! poor warrior!" sighed those who stood around him.

"Alas! my country!" sobbed Helen, raising her tearful eyes to heaven.

The gala-day had become a day of mourning; the hunt a funeral.

The guests sorrowfully followed the body of their best friend to Csakatorny. Only the bald-head took the opposite direction.

"Didn't I say that life was meant for other and better things?" murmured he. "Well, well! the world is large, and men are many. I'll go a kingdom further on."

* * * * *

Thus died Nicolas Zrinyi[6] the younger, his country's greatest poet and bravest son.

[Footnote 6: It is not without reason that Jókai alludes to Zrinyi as "the hero." He was one of the greatest warriors of his day (1618-1666), and his victories over the Turks were many and brilliant. As a poet he stands high, even judged by a modern standard. His chief works are his great epic, _Szigeti veszedelem_, and his religious poems, _Keresztre_, "On the Cross!"]

Thus died the man whom Fortune always respected, the darling, the bulwark, the ornament of his fatherland.

In vain will you now seek for his hunting-box or his castle. All has perished--the name, the family, nay, the very remembrance of the hero.

The general and the statesman are forgotten; only one part of him still survives, only one part of him will live eternally--the poet.

Chapter II.

The House At Ebesfalva.

And now we too will go "a kingdom further on."

Let us go one kingdom forward and four years backward. We are in Transylvania; the year is 1662.

A simple country-house stands before us, at the lower end of Ebesfalva, being almost the last house in the place. Evidently the architect of this edifice had rather an eye to usefulness than beauty, for each part of it has a style of its own, and differs from every other part in shape, size, and quality. On both sides stand stables, cow-houses, wagon-sheds, fowl-houses, and high-gabled, straw-thatched sheepfolds. In the rear lies an orchard, from which the pointed roof of a beehive peeps forth, and in the middle of the courtyard stands the whitewashed dwelling-house, surrounded by shady nut trees, beneath which stands a round table improvised from a millstone. A stone wall separates the courtyard from a thrashing-floor, in which we see incipient haycocks piled up into hillocks, and enormous stacks of corn, on the topmost point of the tallest of which an adventurous peacock shrieks exultantly. It is evening; the herds are returning home; the oxen are being unyoked from the huge, maize-laden wagons; the herds, jingling their bells, come back from the pastures; the swine jostle one another in the narrow gateway and rush grunting to their troughs; the cocks and hens are squabbling in the large nut tree, where they have taken up their quarters for the night; far away sounds the vesper bell, and further still the song of the village beauty, on her way to the spring; the hands see to their cattle: one carries a freshly-mown bundle of millet-grass across the farmyard, another bends beneath the weight of a huge pitcher, filled to overflowing with yellowish, fragrant, foaming milk, fresh from the udder. Through the kitchen window is to be seen the merry sparkle of a roaring fire, over which a girl with round, red cheeks holds a large pan; the fragrant odour of the savoury mess spreads far and wide. And now the meal is served on large, green platters; the family take their places round the millstone table, and eat with a good appetite, the white watch-dogs looking up respectfully all the while at the hasty gobblers. Then the dishes are cleared away, and the maize is shot out of the wagons beneath the projecting eaves. The peasant girls come trooping in from the neighbouring villages to help to husk the pods, and sit them down upon the odorous heaps. Some merry wag or other scoops out a ripe pumpkin, carves eyes and a mouth in it, sticks a burning light inside, and hangs it up by way of a lantern, and the girls shriek and pretend to be terribly frightened. Then the more handy lads, sitting on over-turned bread-baskets, plait long wreaths out of the maize-husks; and while the tranquil toil proceeds, merry songs are sung and fairy tales are told of golden-haired princesses and persecuted orphans. Now and again the fun requires a kiss or two to keep it going, and loud screams proclaim the daring deed to all the world. The little children cry out for joy if they chance to find an occasional scarlet or mottled maize knob among so many yellow ones. And there they sit and tell tales, and sing and laugh at the merest nothings till all the maize is husked, and then they wish one another good-night, and, chatting and bawling, linger over a long, last good-bye; and then they go singing aloud along their homeward way, partly from fun and partly from pure light-heartedness.

Then every one enters his house, shuts the door behind him, and puts out the fire; the sheep-dogs hold long dialogues in the village streets; the crescent moon rises; the night watchman begins to cry the hours in long-drawn rhythm; the others sleep and do not hear his golden saws. Only in one window of the manor-house a light is shining. There some one still is up.

The watchers are a grey-haired, venerable dame and a much younger serving-maid. The old lady is reading from a worn-out psalter, every line of which she already knows by heart; the serving-maid, as if not content with a long day's work, has sat herself down to her distaff, and draws long threads out of the silky flax which she heckled yesterday and carded to-day.

"Go to bed, Clara," said the old woman kindly, "it is enough if I remain up. Besides, you have to rise early to-morrow morning."

"I could not sleep till our mistress has returned," replied the girl, continuing her work. "Even when all the men are in, I always feel so frightened till she has come home, but when once she is here, I feel as safe as if we were behind the walls of a fortress."

"Quite right, my child; she is, indeed, worth many men. Shame upon it that the cares and anxieties which it behoves a man to bear should rest upon her shoulders! She has to look after the whole of this vast household, and, as if that were not enough, she must needs farm the estates of her sisters, the ladies Banfi and Teleki. How many lawsuits must she not carry on with this neighbour and with that! But they've met their match in her, I'll warrant. She appears in person before the judges and pleads so shrewdly, that our best advocates might take lessons from her. And then, too, when my Lord Banfi came capering hither with his killing ways, some little time ago, fancying that our gracious lady was one of your straw-widows, how she sent him away with a flea in his ear! The worthy gentleman did not know whether he stood on his head or his heels, and yet he is one of the chief men in the land! And afterwards, too, when, out of revenge, he saddled us with that freebooter of a captain and his lanzknechts, don't you recollect how our lady had them all flogged out of the village, and how the rascals took to their heels when they saw our gracious mistress herself march out against them, blunderbuss in hand?"

"Would that they had not scampered off quite so quickly," interrupted the girl, with a burst of enthusiasm. "I'd have laid the poker about their ears, I warrant you."

"Hark'e, Clara! when a woman has been forced to keep house alone for so long a time, and to defend herself and family by the might of her own arms, she comes at last to feel herself a man all over. That is why our mistress looks as stern as if she had never been a girl."

"But tell me, Aunt Magdalene," returned the girl, drawing her chair nearer, "shall we never see master again?"

"Alas! God only knows," replied the old dame, sighing. "How can I tell when the poor fellow will be released from his captivity? I always had a presentiment that it would come to this, and I said so, but no one heeded me. It happened in this wise. In the days when our Prince George[7] of blessed memory, not content with his own land, must needs set out to conquer Poland at the head of the Hungarian chivalry, our good master, Sir Michael, went with him. Oh, how I tried--and our lady too--to keep him back. They were a newly-wedded couple then, and the good gentleman himself had little heart for war--he always preferred to sit at home among his books, his water-mills, and his fruit trees--but honour called him and he went. I begged him to at least take my son Andy with him. God gave me that thought, for otherwise we should never have heard again of our gracious master, for when his Highness, our Sovereign Prince George, beheld the bestial hordes of Tartars marching out against him, he himself galloped off home, leaving his nobility captives in the hands of the heathen, who dragged them off in fetters to Tartary. My son Andy, who was of no use to them, for he was badly wounded in the thigh, and therefore could not work, they sent home; he brought the tidings that Sir Michael was sickening in sad confinement, and the Tartars, perceiving how high he stood in the esteem of his fellow-prisoners, took him for their prince, and set upon his head such a frightfully high ransom, that all his property turned into gold could not have paid it off. Nevertheless our noble lady rejoiced exceedingly when she heard that her husband was still alive, and ran hither and thither and left no stone unturned to raise the money. But neither her kind friends nor her dear relations would lend her anything--no, not on the best security, for no one willingly lends on land in time of war. So she sold her treasures, her bridal dower which her mother had given her; all the beautiful silver plate, jewelled bracelets, and embossed gold and pearl ornaments which her ancestors had handed down to her; her large satin-trimmed, fur-embroidered mantle and her filagreed _mente_[8]; her rings, agraffes, and hairpins; her carbuncle bracelets and orient pearls; her diamond ear-rings--in short, everything which could be turned into money. Yet even all that came to not one-half of what the Tartar demanded, so what does she do but farm the estates of her sisters, plough up the fallow-lands, and cut down the forests to make way for corn-fields. To find time for more work, she turned night into day. No sort of husbandry whereby money could be made escaped her attention. At one time she laid down clay-pits and dug out quarries, the products of which found customers in the neighbourhood. At another time she bred prize oxen and sold them to the Armenian herdsmen. She visited all the markets in person; carried her wine as far as Poland, her corn to Hermannstadt, her honey, wax, and preserved fruits to Kronstadt--nay, in order to obtain a fair price for her wools, she crossed the border and took them as far as Debreczin. And how frugally she fared all the time! It is true she never stinted her servants in anything, but she seemed to weigh every morsel that went into her own mouth. At harvest time she would have nothing cooked for herself at home for weeks together, so that she might remain in the fields all day. A piece of bread which would have been too little for a child was all she ate, and her drink was a bowl of spring water; yet, believe me, Clara, we never once saw her in a bad humour, and never did a single bitter tear fall upon the dry bread which her loyalty to her husband constrained her to live upon."

[Footnote 7: George Rakoczy I., Prince of Transylvania, 1630-1648.]

[Footnote 8: _Mente._ A fur pelisse.]

"And why was all this?"

"I'll tell you, my child. The money which she thus scraped together by toil and frugality, year by year, is regularly sent by Andy to Tartary, in part payment of Sir Michael's ransom. At such times our dear lady grudges herself every morsel she puts into her mouth."

The old nurse wiped the tears from her eyes.

"And what then was the amount of the ransom?"

"That's more than I can tell you, my daughter. Andy always brings back the parchment on which the Tartar marks down the amount received and the amount still due. Our noble lady keeps it herself. I, of course, never ask any questions about it."

The girl was silent and appeared to be reflecting; doubly quick the spindle flew round in her hands, and her heart beat faster too.

"My son Andy is there now," said the old dame, weary of the long silence. "I expect him back every hour now; from him we shall hear something certain."

At that moment the gate outside creaked on its hinges, a little gig rolled boisterously into the courtyard, and a joyful barking and yelping told that an old acquaintance had arrived.

"Our mistress has come," cried the two servants, rising from their seats, and at the same moment the door opened and Anna Bornemissa, Michael Apafi's wife, stepped in.

A stately woman of almost masculine stature; the outline of her slim but vigorous and muscular figure is plainly visible through her simple grey linen dress. She cannot be more than thirty-six, but her face is of those on which time leaves no trace until extreme old age. Her features are deeply tanned by the sun, but the velvet down of well-preserved youth and the natural ruddiness of perfect health lend a peculiar loveliness to that extraordinary countenance. Her look surprises, dominates, subdues; the charm which lies concealed there appears not so much in the features as in the expression--her face is the mirror of a noble soul. Not as if there was anything hard, rough, stiff, or masculine in the features themselves: on the contrary. Her brow is finely arched, delicately smooth, unobscured as yet by a single wrinkle, and yet so full of majesty; her eyelashes are most exquisitely pencilled; the shape of the eyes is enchanting, those large, not exactly wild-black, but rather deep, bright, nut-brown eyes, half hidden by their long eyelashes, and in those eyes there is so much fire, so much sparkle, and yet so much coldness. The delicate nose, the oval face, every feature is so femininely regular. Even the mouth when closed is so sweet, so tender, the other features seem to use violence towards it to prevent its smile from spreading further, and yet when it opens, how haughty, how commanding it becomes.

"What, still up?" cried she to her servants.

The voice is pleasantly sonorous, although affliction has somewhat deadened its lower notes.

"We thought it best to stay up, in case your ladyship might be kept waiting outside," replied the old woman, tripping round her mistress and taking the heavy mantle from her shoulders.

"Has not Andy yet returned?" asked Lady Apafi, in a low, melancholy voice.

"Not yet; but I expect him every moment."

Lady Apafi sighed deeply. How much of stifled grief, vanishing hope, and patient renunciation was concealed in that sigh! The recollection of the manifold sufferings of her wretched life rose up before that heroic woman's soul. She called to mind her brave struggle with fate, with her fellow-men, and with her own heart; her love, grafted on pain, had brought forth not gladness but ungratified longing. Another toilsome year of her life had passed away. With the self-sacrificing industry of a bee, she had hoarded up, morsel by morsel, her little store, and who could tell how many years would be requisite to complete it? And till then nothing but toil, patience, and unrequited love.

Lady Apafi, not without an effort, resumed her habitual coldness, wished her servants good-night, and was already on her way to her chamber, when Clara rushed forward and kissed her mistress's hand. The lady looked at her with astonishment. She felt that a burning tear had fallen on her hand, which the girl held fast and pressed to her lips.

"What ails you?" asked Dame Apafi, much surprised.

"Nothing," replied the girl, sobbing; "it is only that I feel so sorry for your ladyship. I have long had an idea in my head, but have never yet dared to express it. We have often talked about our master's captivity and his grievous ransom. We village girls have all of us got necklaces of gold and silver coins which are no good to us. So we have agreed among ourselves to club together all this money now lying idle and give it to your ladyship towards our master's ransom. It may not be much, but still is something."

Lady Apafi, her eyes glistening with involuntary tears, pressed hard the peasant girl's trembling hand.

"I thank thee, my girl," she said, deeply touched. "I prize thy offer more highly than if my sister Banfi had placed ten thousand gold chains at my disposal. But God will also be my helper. In Him is my trust."

At that moment the trampling of horses was heard in the courtyard and the dogs fell to barking.

"Who can that be? Robbers, perhaps!" stammered the old nurse, and neither of the two servants durst approach the door.

Then Dame Apafi took the light from the table, stepped to the door, opened it, and looked out into the courtyard.

"Who's there?" she cried, loudly and clearly.

"We!--I mean to say I," returned a hesitating voice, which all three immediately recognized as Andy's.

"Oh, 'tis you? Come hither quickly!" said Lady Apafi joyfully, pushing Andy into the room, who was plainly very much confused, for he kept on twirling about his hat in his hands, and looked sheepishly at the floor.

"Well, did you see him and speak to him? Is he well?" asked Lady Apafi impetuously.

"Yes, he is quite well," replied the man, glad to have found his voice again; "he respectfully kisses your ladyship's hand. He also bade me say that God is good!"

"But what do you keep looking sideways for? At whom are the dogs barking?"

"At the black horse perhaps; it is a long time since they saw him."

"And you gave the purse to the Mirza?"

Instead of answering this question, Andy began to fumble about in the pocket of his sheepskin jacket, and as this pocket was very high up, narrow and deep, his features expressed the most exquisite torture till he had fished up the parchment, and he trembled all over as he handed it to his mistress.

"Is there still much in arrear? What says the Mirza?" asked Lady Apafi, with a very shaky voice.

"There is not much more. One might even say there is very little," replied Andy, with downcast eyes, fumbling in his confusion with the rim of his hat.

"But how much, how much then?" they all cried together.

Andy got very red.

"Well--well, there is nothing at all!"

He said this in a broken voice, and with that he burst into a loud and long roar of laughter, and immediately after wept as if his heart would break.

The mind of Dame Apafi instantly grasped the whole truth.

"Speak, man!" cried she passionately, seizing the fellow by the shoulder; "you have brought my husband back with you?"

Andy waved his fist behind him and nodded his head; he laughed and wept at the same time; but, to save his life, he could not have uttered a word.

Dame Apafi, with a sob and a cry of boundless joy, rushed to the door which already stood ajar. Some one had been waiting there and listening all the time; it was Michael Apafi, her long expected, often bewailed consort.

"Michael! my beloved husband!" cried the woman, trembling with emotion; and half swooning, half beside herself, she fell upon her husband's neck, murmuring unintelligible words of love, joy, and tenderness.

Apafi pressed her to his breast. She embraced him convulsively; no other sound was to be heard but a deep sobbing.

"Thou art mine!" she stammered, after a long pause, when the tempest of her emotion had somewhat subsided and she was more herself.

"I am thine," cried Apafi; "and I swear that nothing in the world shall ever tear me from thee again!"

"O God, what bliss!" cried Anna, raising her streaming eyes to heaven. "What joy thou hast brought back to me!" she stammered once more, leaning on her husband and hiding her face in his bosom.

"And if the whole world were mine," continued Apafi, "even then I should not be rich enough to requite thy devotion. I take God to witness, that if I could call a kingdom my own I would give it thee, and think it but a beggarly recompense."

The joyful, loving pair, happy beyond all expression, were then left alone with their joy and happiness. Late into the night burned the taper in their window. How much, how endlessly much they had to say to one another!

Chapter III.

A Prince In His Own Despite.

A year had elapsed since Michael Apafi's return home. There was a great hubbub in the house at Ebesfalva. One team of horses had scarcely had time to rest, when off went another at full gallop along the high-road; the servants themselves were sent hither and thither; some great trouble had evidently visited the house, but for all that, not a glum or sorrowful face was to be seen.

To those who could question discreetly, it was presently whispered that the wife of Michael Apafi expected every moment to be delivered of a child.

Good Sir Michael never quitted the chamber of his suffering consort. The gossips said that the sight of her husband was a great consolation to the invalid lady, and that he never ceased whispering sweet, caressing words into her ear.

Suddenly a wild tumult filled the courtyard, and, to the great terror of the servants assembled there, four-and-twenty mounted Albanians, armed with swords and lances, and headed by a big-headed Turkish Aga, dashed up to the door.

"Is your master at home?" cried the Aga dictatorially to Andy, who stood rooted to the spot with fright. "For if he is," continued he, without waiting for an answer, "tell him to come here. I have something to say to him."--Andy still could not find his voice.--"If, however," proceeded the Turk emphatically, "if he won't come, I'll go and fetch him."

And with these words he sprang from his horse, and was crossing the threshold, when Andrew plucked up sufficient courage to stammer--"But, most gracious sir ..." The Turk turned savagely upon him.

"It were better, my son, if you did not chatter so much!" said he, and forthwith he plunged into the vestibule.

At that very moment Apafi, startled by the clatter of the sabres, came out of his wife's chamber. He was not a little alarmed when he found himself face to face with this unexpected guest.

"Are you Michael Apafi?" asked the Turk wrathfully.

"The same, at your service, gracious sir," returned Apafi meekly.

"Good! My master, his Highness, the famous Ali Pasha, commands you to instantly get into your carriage, and come to my lord's camp at Kis-Selyk without a single attendant."

"This is a pretty go," murmured Apafi to himself. "Pardon me, worthy Aga," added he aloud; "just now it is quite impossible for me to comply with your wish. My wife lies in the pangs of child-birth; the issues of life and death depend on the next five minutes. I cannot leave her now."

"Send for a doctor if your wife is ill; and recollect that to bring down the wrath of the illustrious Pasha on your head is not the proper way to cure _her_."

"Grant me but one day, and then I don't care if I lose my head."

"You won't lose your head if you obey instantly; but otherwise I'll not answer for the consequences. Come! don't be a fool."

Anna heard in her chamber the dialogue that was going on outside, and anxiously called her consort. Apafi quitted the Aga and hastened to his wife.

"What is it?" asked the sufferer, much disturbed. How pale she was at that moment!

"Nothing, nothing, my darling! Some one has sent for me, but I don't mean to go."

But Lady Apafi had perceived the points of the Turkish lances through the rifts of the window-curtains, and she cried despairingly--

"Michael, they want to carry you off!" Then she clasped her husband convulsively to her heart. "I won't let you go, Michael! I won't lose you again. You shall not be dragged off into captivity. Rather let them kill me."

"Calm yourself, dear child," said Apafi soothingly. "I really don't know what they want me for. I have certainly done nothing to offend these good people. I suppose it is an attempt to levy black-mail. I'll satisfy them."

"Alas! I have an evil foreboding. My heart fails me. Some calamity threatens you," stammered the sick woman; then, bursting into a violent fit of sobbing, she threw herself on her husband's bosom. "Michael, I shall never see you again."

Meanwhile, the Aga outside began to feel bored, so he fell to hammering at the door, and cried--

"Apafi! hi! Apafi! come out! I may not enter your wife's chamber, for that would be an abomination to a servant of Allah; but if you don't come out at once I'll burn your house down."

"I'd better go, perhaps," said Apafi, trying to soothe his wife with kisses. "My refusal would only make matters worse for us. They are sure to let me go. I shall be back in the twinkling of an eye."

"I shall never see you again," gasped Anna. She was near to swooning.

Apafi took advantage of this momentary fainting fit, plucked up his courage, left his wife, and joined the Aga with streaming eyes.

"Well, sir, let us be off," said the Turk. "But surely you won't go without your sword, just as if you were some poor peasant," continued he fiercely. "Go back, I say; gird on your sword, and tell your wife that she need fear nothing."

Apafi returned to his room, and as he took down his large silver-embossed sword (it was hanging up on the wall right over the bed) he said cheerily to his wife--

"Look, now! there can scarcely be anything unpleasant in store for me, or they would not have bidden me buckle on my sword. Trust in God!"

"I do, I do trust in Him," she replied, convulsively kissing her husband's hand and pressing it to her heaving bosom. Then she broke forth again into bitter lamentations. "Apafi, if I die, do not forget me."

"Alas!" cried Apafi; then bitterly cursing his fate, he tore himself out of his consort's arms, and wishing all Turks, born and to be born, at the bottom of the sea, rushed violently out of the room.

Then he threw himself into his carriage, and looked neither up nor down, but wrestled all the way with the one thought that if his wife were now to die, he would not be able to receive her parting words; and this thought conjured up before him a whole series of images each more lugubrious than the other.

He and his escort had scarcely left Ebesfalva a mile behind them when the Turks caught sight of a horseman dashing after them at full tilt, obviously bent on overtaking them, and they called Apafi's attention to the fact. At first he absolutely refused to listen to them; but when they told him that the horseman came from the direction of Ebesfalva, he made the carriage stop and awaited the messenger.

It was Andy who came galloping up, with waving handkerchief and loosely hanging reins.

"Well, Andrew! what has happened?" cried Apafi with a beating heart to his servant while he was still a long way off.

"Good news, sir!" cried Andy: "our most gracious lady has just now given birth to a son, and she herself, thank God! is quite out of danger."

"Blessed be the name of the Lord!" cried Apafi, with a lightened heart; and as he dismissed the messenger, the idea which was at the bottom of all his griefs vanished from his brain, and with it all his griefs also. He thought of his new-born son, and in the light of that thought he began to regard his Turkish escort with other eyes: they now seemed to him as good, honourable, civilized a set of people as it was possible to find on the face of the earth.

It was late at night when they reached Ali Pasha's camp. The sentinels slept like badgers; you might have carried off the whole camp bodily so far as they were concerned. Apafi had to wait in front of the Pasha's tent till the latter had huddled on his clothes. The curtains of the tent were then drawn aside, and he was invited to enter. Ali Pasha was sitting with folded arms on a carpet spread out in the back part of the tent; behind him stood two gorgeously-dressed Moors with drawn scimitars. The outlines of a couple of figures were distinctly visible through the tapestry wall which separated the back part of the tent from the audience chamber--no doubt the Pasha's wives, on the alert to pick up something of what was going on.

"Art thou that same Michael Apafi who was for some years the prisoner of the Tartar Mirza?" asked the Pasha, after the usual greetings.

"The same, most gracious Pasha, to whom also the Khan compassionately remitted the remainder of the ransom money."

"Think no more of that. The Mirza remitted the remainder of the ransom money because my master, the Sublime Sultan, commanded him so to do, and the illustrious Padishah will do yet more for thee."

"Wonderingly I listen, and gratefully; not knowing how I have deserved such grace," returned Apafi.

"The Sublime Sultan has heard how honestly, discreetly, and manfully thou hast borne thy doleful captivity, and how thou didst win the hearts of thy fellow-captives, insomuch that they all looked up to thee, though among slaves there is no distinction of rank. For which cause therefore, and also having regard to the fact that the present Prince of Transylvania, John Kemeny, would fain rebel against the Sublime Porte, the illustrious Padishah, I say, has for these reasons resolved to raise thee without delay to the throne of Transylvania and keep thee there."

"Me! You are pleased to jest with your servant, most gracious sir!" stuttered Apafi.

His eyes were blinded by excess of light.

"Nay, thou hast not the slightest cause to be amazed thereat. The Padishah has but to nod, and pashas and princes become slaves, beggars, or corpses. He nods again, and beggars and slaves rise up into their places. Thou art highly favoured, for thou hast found grace before him. Use it discreetly then, but beware of abusing it!"

"But, most gracious sir, does it occur to you how I'm to become a prince?"

"Leave that to me. I'll make thee one."

"But Transylvania has got another prince, John Kemeny."

"Leave that to me also. I'll dispose of him."

Apafi shrugged his shoulders. He felt that he had never been in such a mess in all his life.

"My wife was quite right in her presentiment that a great misfortune was about to befall me," thought he to himself.

The Pasha began again.

"Summon therefore a Diet at once, so that the installation may take place as speedily as possible."

"I summon a Diet! I should like to know who would appear to my summons. Why, sir, I am the least amongst the gentry of the land; people will laugh in my face, and say that I am mad."

"In that case they will soon see that it is they who are mad."

"But how am I to send out the writs? for, excepting the land of the Szeklers,[9] Kemeny[10] holds every place."

[Footnote 9: _Szeklers_ (Siculi). The Szeklers were originally a military colony placed, at the beginning of the twelfth century, in the waste lands of Transylvania, which they engaged to defend against the incursions of the pagan Pechenegs, on being exempted from every other obligation.]

[Footnote 10: John Kemeny, Prince of Transylvania, 1661-1662.]

"Then summon the Szeklers. They, at any rate, will come."

"But I don't even know _their_ chief-men, for I am not a born Szekler. The only persons I know amongst them are Stephen Kun, John Daczo, and Stephen Nalaczi."

"Then summon hither Stephen Kun, John Daczo, and Stephen Nalaczi, if you consider them fit and proper persons."

Apafi began to scratch his head.

"But supposing they do appear, where shall we hold our Diet? There is no place for us. At Klausenburg the governor, my brother-in-law, Denis Banfi, is my sworn enemy, while at Hermannstadt lies John Kemeny in person."

"We can assemble here in Kis-Selyk."

Harassed as he was, Apafi could not help laughing aloud.

"Why, here there is not a house large enough to hold thirty men," cried he energetically.

"What! is there not the church?" interrupted the Pasha. "If that house be sufficiently fine for the honour of God, I suppose it will do to honour men in!"

Apafi saw no further escape.

"Can you write?" asked the Pasha.

"Yes, I can do that," replied Apafi, sighing deeply.

"Very well, for I cannot. So sit down and issue the writs for a Diet."

A slave then brought in a writing-table, a scroll of parchment, and an inkhorn. Apafi sat down like a lamb about to be slaughtered, and began with a caligraphic flourish so large that the Turk sprang up in affright, and asked what it meant.

"It is a W," answered Apafi.

"You won't leave any room for the remaining letters."

"That is only the initial letter, the others will be much smaller."

"Read aloud then what you are writing."

Apafi wrote with a trembling hand and read: "Whereas--"

The Pasha furiously tore away the parchment and roared at him.

"Plague take all your whereases and inasmuch-ases! Why all this beating about the bush? Write the usual formula--'We, Michael Apafi, Prince of Transylvania, command you, wretched slaves, by these presents, to appear incontinently before us at Kis-Selyk, under pain of death.'"

Apafi was brought almost to his wits' ends before he could make the Pasha comprehend that it was not usual to correspond in this style with free Hungarian noblemen. At last the Pasha allowed him to write his letter in his own way, but took care that its purport should be emphatic and dictatorial. As soon as Apafi had written the letters, Ali Pasha put a Ciaus on horseback, and sent him off at full speed to all those to whom the writ was addressed.

"And now," said Apafi to himself, sighing deeply as he wiped his pen, "and now I should like to see the man who could tell me what will come of it all!"

"Till the Diet assembles," said the Pasha, "you will remain here as my guest."

"Cannot I go home then to my wife and child?" asked Apafi, with a beating heart.

"To give us the slip, eh? A likely tale. That is always the way with you Hungarian nobles. Those we won't have at any price are always dangling about our necks, and begging and praying for the princely diadem; and those we would place on the throne take to their heels as if we were going to impale them." And with that the Pasha assigned Apafi a tent and dismissed him, at the same time giving secret but strict orders to the guard of honour stationed at the door of the new Prince, not to lose sight of him for an instant.

"I'm nicely in for it now," sighed Apafi with the resignation of despair.

His solitary hope now was, that the deputies whom he had summoned would ignore his informal mandate by failing to appear.

* * * * *

A few days afterwards, as Apafi still lay on his camp bedstead in the early morning, Stephen Kun, John Daczo, and Stephen Nalaczi, with all the other noble Szeklers to whom the circular had been sent, suddenly walked into his tent.

"In Heaven's name!" cried Apafi, starting up, "why have you come hither?"

"Your Highness ordered us to come hither," replied Nalaczi.

"True; but you would have shown far greater wisdom if you had kept away. What are you going to do?"

"Solemnly install your Highness, and, if need be, defend you also in the good old Szekler fashion," replied Stephen Kun.

"You are too few for that, my brothers," objected Apafi.

"Pray be so good as to cast a glance outside the tent!" replied Nalaczi, drawing aside the curtain and pointing to a band of Szeklers armed with sabres and lances, who had remained outside the tent. "We have marched out _cum gentibus_, to prove to your Highness that if we have accepted you as our Prince, we have not done so simply by way of a jest."

Apafi shrugged his shoulders and began to draw on his boots; but he was so dazed all the while, that almost an hour elapsed before he was half dressed. He put on every article of clothing the wrong way, and had to take it off again. Thus, for example, he had slipped into his mantle before he even thought of his vest.

Several hundred gentlemen had met together in Selyk at his bidding, a thing he had never expected, still less desired.

When Ali Pasha came out of his tent, he went towards the deputies, took Apafi by the hand in the presence of them all, threw over his shoulders a broad, new green velvet mente,[11] put an ermine embroidered cap on his head, and explained to the assembled crowd that henceforth they were to regard him as their legitimate Prince; whereupon the Szeklers roared out deafening "Eljens," raised Apafi on their shoulders, and hoisted him on to a daïs covered with velvet which Ali Pasha had expressly provided for the occasion.

[Footnote 11: _Mente._ See Note 2, p. 21.]

"And now," said the Pasha, "go to church, administer the oaths to the Prince according to ancient custom, and yourselves take the oath of allegiance. I have ordered the bells to be rung myself, and you had better have a mass sung in the usual way."

"Your pardon, but I am a Calvinist," protested Apafi.

"So much the better. The ceremony will be over all the quicker, and will cost less trouble. There is the Rev. Francis Magyari, he will preach the sermon."

After that Apafi let them do whatever they liked with him, merely twirling his long moustaches hither and thither, and shrugging his shoulders whenever they asked him questions.

Nalaczi and the other Szeklers thought good to treat him in church with all the respect due to a sovereign prince, and the Rev. Francis Magyari improvised a powerful sermon, in which he prophesied, in a voice of thunder, that the God of Israel who had called David from the sheepfolds to a throne, and exalted him over all his adversaries, would now also graciously maintain the cause of His elect even though his enemies were as numerous as the grass of the field or the sand on the sea-shore.

This modest little house of prayer could never have thought that it would have been the scene of a Diet and a coronation; and as for Apafi, not even in his wildest dreams had it ever occurred to him that such things might befall him.

He had eyes and ears neither for the coronation nor for the sermon, but kept on thinking of his wife and child. What would become of them, poor creatures; where would they be able to hide their heads when John Kemeny had put him in prison, confiscated his estates, and driven them out of house and home? It next occurred to him that, somewhere in Szeklerland, he had a brother, Stephen Apafi, with whom he had always been on the most friendly terms, who would certainly take them under his roof if he saw them destitute. These thoughts made him so forgetful of everything around him, that when at the close of the sermon all present arose and intoned the _Te Deum_, he too got up, oblivious of the fact that all this ceremony was being held in his special honour.

Then some one behind him placed two hands on his shoulders, pressed him down into his seat again, and a well-known voice growled into his ear--

"Keep your seat."

Apafi looked in the direction of the voice, and fell back in his chair completely overcome. His brother Stephen was actually standing behind him.

"You here too?" said Apafi, deeply distressed.

"I was a little late," returned Stephen, "but quite early enough after all, and I'll venture to remain here till you tell me to go."

"So you have also resolved to plunge into destruction?"

"Brother," said Stephen, "we are in the hands of God; but something has been put into our own hands also which may have a say in the matter," and he touched the hilt of his sword. "Kemeny has lost the affection of the greater part of the country; why I need not now tell you. Your cause is righteous, nor do you lack the means of success."

"But if it should turn out otherwise, what would become of my wife? Have you not seen her?"

"I came straight from her--that is why I came so late."

"What! You have spoken to her? What did she say about my evil case? Was she not much troubled?"

"Not in the least. On the contrary, she was very glad of it, and said that Transylvania could not have got a better prince; that you deserved this honour far more than any of the magnates who practise nothing but tyranny and extortion, and that she much regretted her illness prevented her from assisting you with her sympathy and counsel."

"Well, I should have liked it better if the election had fallen upon her," said Apafi, half in jest and half in anger.

"Take heed to yourself," answered Stephen archly; "the lady is already so much used to ruling the roost, that we shall live to see her put the Prince's diadem on her own head, unless you plant it right firmly on your temples. Nay, brother, don't look so serious; I was but in jest!"

But does not the proverb say that there is many a true word spoken in jest?

Chapter IV.

A Banquet With The Prince Of Transylvania.

Meanwhile, his Highness, Prince John Kemeny, was faring sumptuously at Hermannstadt. This gentleman's darling vice was gluttony--even if the whole machinery of state were to fall to pieces in consequence, he would not have risen from table, and amongst all his counsellors his cook always stood highest.

And now, too, we find him at dinner. He has converted the Town-hall to his own use, and it is thronged by his suite. In the courtyard we see spurred and iron-clad cuirassiers flirting with the Saxon serving-maids; German musketeers, professedly on guard, who have left their muskets standing against the doorposts, in order to cultivate friendly relations with the scullions removing the dishes. With brimming glasses raised on high, they jocosely warble Hungarian airs picked up on the spur of the moment, improvising at the same time an absurdly artless sort of dance, in which one leg performs aimless aërial gyrations. On the other hand, the heydukes of the Hungarian bodyguard, dressed in yellow dolmans with green facings, sit morosely in twos and threes against the wall, not even condescending to look at the bumpers of wine thrust, from time to time, into their hands; but gravely tossing it down at a single gulp into its proper place, returning the empty pocal to the friendly butler, who has as much as he can do to keep his feet; keeps on offering the noble fluid to Tom, Dick, and Harry; and finding it easier to go backwards than forwards, is constantly backing against the head cook as he passes to and fro, bearing now a sugared almond tart adorned with flowers on a silver salver, and representing the tower of Babel, now a large porcelain bowl exhaling the spicy fragrance of hot punch, or a peacock on a large wooden platter, roasted whole, with his gorgeous head-dress and splendid tail still upon him.

The head cook is scarcely able to force his way through the gaping mob of petitioners assembled here, who must wait till the Prince has dined, and are regaled in the meantime with wine, roast meats, and pastry, getting in short everything but what they came for--justice.

Within the dining-room itself the gentlemen and ladies are by this time in a merry mood. The meal has already lasted a pretty long time, and is likely to last a good while longer.

French gastronomic science seemed to have reserved all her masterpieces for Kemeny's banquet. Nature's three kingdoms have been laid under contribution to tickle the human palate. Every extravagant and extraordinary delicacy invented by Epicureanism, from the days of Lucullus to the days of Gallic gourmandism, is here in abundance. Here is to be seen every sort of foreign and domestic wine, in artistically-carved and gorgeously-coloured Venetian flasks, placed in huge silver refrigerators; game, large and small, of the rarest kind, on silver dishes; transparent, rose-coloured, quivering jellies with names unpronounceable by Hungarian lips; Indian fruits preserved in cane sugar; _ragoûts_ of cocks' combs; enigmatical-looking snails, fit rather for the eye than for the palate; gigantic lobsters and the rarer kinds of marine fish fantastically disposed; meats which men who have already eaten to surfeit can only make believe that they enjoy by a supreme effort of the imagination; dishes which a true man would only eat by way of penance; immense pasties made entirely of pikes' livers; large baskets of rosy swans' eggs, which the guests may boil for amusement in little silver egg-boilers placed over spirit-lamps in front of them, and other wonderful dishes innumerable, the purpose of which is not immediately obvious to ordinary children of men, and everything in such profusion as would have more than sufficed for six times the number of guests present. Then too there were there all sorts of spiced drinks to suit every one's taste, from punch-royal to Polish brandy. Nothing was forgotten.

Behind every guest stands a little page, who whisks away his well-filled plate from him the instant he turns his head, and places before him a clean one instead. Behind the Prince's chair stands the son of Count Ladislaus Csaky, who is right proud that a son of his should have the privilege of filling and refilling the Prince's pocal.

And the Prince's pocal has to be filled pretty often. Transylvanian banquets generally ended with a wager on the part of the gentlemen to drink one another under the table. At such banquets John Kemeny has no equal. Now too he invites the bolder spirits to take up the usual challenge. The greater part of the guests, however, decline the invitation. Only three persons respond to the Prince's challenge. The first is Wenzinger, the leader of the German mercenaries, a big, raw-boned man, with a closely-shaven head, bright blue eyes, somewhat stooping neck, and scarcely visible grey eyebrows. The second is Paul Beldi, Captain-General of the Szeklers, a grave, handsome, amiable-looking man with a very high forehead. The wine he has taken gives a sparkle to his gentle eyes, and his taciturn lips are parted in a half-smile--drink produces no other effect upon him. He wears a simple yellow camelot dolman, with a scarlet, silver-embossed girdle round the waist; his white shirt-collar extends far over his dark-blue kerchief. His smoothly-combed hair is parted down the middle, brushed behind his ears, and falls in long locks over his shoulders. The man with delicate white hands who sits opposite to him, Denis Banfi, Lord-Lieutenant of Klausenburg, is the third competitor. He is a middle-aged, broad-shouldered, haughty-looking man, with an air of savage truculence on his aristocratic face. His thick black beard has never yet been touched by a razor. His dark, chestnut brown locks lie in spiral rolls upon his forehead, and flow down over both shoulders in rich crisp curls. His round face is red by nature, but wine has now made it redder than ever. His sparkling eyes glance defiantly around. When he addresses any one he strokes his double chin, screws his neck on one side, and speaks in a sharp, irritating tone, at the same time throwing back his haughty head provocatively, and assuming an expression of endless condescension. His dress consists of a purple dolman with large enamelled buttons, and over that a short, heavy, white silk tabard trimmed with swan's-down, the sleeves of which are slit up to the elbows and garnished with rubies. His golden knightly belt is thrown over his shoulder with lordly negligence.

At the head of the table sits John Kemeny himself, with the consorts of Beldi and Banfi one on each side of him. Kemeny, despite his frequent intercourse and close relations with the West, still prefers to adopt the oriental costume. He is characterized by short clipped hair, a long beard, a grave, dignified face, and a curt, monosyllabic style of speech. The ruling expression of his face is an unmistakable, fatalistic indifference to everything about him, an indifference which was ere long to overwhelm him in so terrible a catastrophe.

One of the ladies by his side, Banfi's wife, is a delicate, nervous, gentle being, scarcely twenty years old. Ever since her sixteenth year she has stood beneath the influence of her violent, imperious husband, and is now almost as timid as a child. She scarcely ever dares to raise her eyes, and then only to look at her lord, whom she loves idolatrously. Her neck and shoulders are covered by a heavy, watered silk dress, fastened by a row of diamond buttons. Round her neck twines a gold chain, between each of the large broad links of which sparkles an emerald. A silk coif set with pearls adorns her head, reaching half-way down over her forehead, and jealously hiding the blonde locks of the lovely lady.

On the other side, between her husband and the Prince, sits Beldi's wife, still a dazzling beauty. Her complexion ordinarily has the tint of the white rose, but is now all aglow with the fire of the banquet: her flushed cheeks seem literally to burn. Her coquettish black eyes roam hither and thither. A seductive magic lurks in her eyebrows, and when she lowers her long eyelashes over her burning eyes, how ravishing she is! Her black locks are held together, not by a coif, but by strings of pearls artistically intertwined and fastened behind to a little diamond diadem, from which a long gold filigree veil descends to the ground. Her dress consists of a tight-fitting, cherry-coloured kirtle of Hungarian velvet, wide open in front and fastened over her embroidered cambric smock by strings of pearls. Her snow-white shoulders peep half out of the short, puffed sleeves, which are fastened in the middle by huge opal clasps, leaving bare her exquisitely-shaped arms. She wears bracelets of large oriental pearls, and a pale pink rose is stuck nonchalantly in her bosom.

The guests sitting at the far end of the table are plainly scandalized by the coquettish ways of the siren, who, although she has a marriageable daughter, still presumes to appear publicly in an open kirtle; but the Prince, the impetuous Banfi, and even her own dove-like husband, who worships his wife, appear to be all the more delighted with her in consequence.

The drinking wager had already somewhat exhilarated the worthy gentlemen, so that they began to mingle their songs with the music which had been playing in the gallery ever since the banquet began, when the captain of the guard, Gabriel Haller, suddenly rushed into the room with a very serious face, and hastening to the Prince, whispered a couple of words in his ear. Kemeny looked first at him and then at the glass he held in his hand, emptied it with the utmost composure, and then burst into a loud peal of laughter.

"Pray tell your tidings to the company, that they may know what is going on," cried he to Haller, in a loud voice.

Haller hesitated.

"Come! Out with it. You could not, if you tried, invent anything half so entertaining. Stop playing up there, will you! This is something like a joke."

The company urged Haller to lose no time in passing the joke on.

"There is not much to tell," said Haller, shrugging his shoulders. "It is only that Ali Pasha has proclaimed Michael Apafi Prince of Transylvania."

"Ha! ha! ha!" resounded on all sides. The Prince, with comic affectation, turned first to one and then to the other.

"Who is the individual? Does any one know him? Has anybody ever heard of him?"

Lady Banfi turned pale and clung tightly to her husband's arm, who leaned his elbow on the table and replied with sublime indifference--

"The poor devil is, I believe, a very distant connection of mine. He has married some relation or other of my wife's. He was for a long time a slave among the Tartars, and the Turks (being wroth with us just now) have no doubt only released him on condition that he allows himself to be made Prince. He must be clean out of his senses."

At this all the gentlemen laughed still more loudly than before.

"Well, we'll go and inaugurate him," said Kemeny sarcastically, throwing back his head.

"That has already been done, your Highness," put in Haller.

"Where? By whom?" asked the good-humoured Prince, with arched eyebrows.

"At Kis-Selyk, by the Diet!"

Kemeny intimated by a wave of his hand and a contraction of his eyebrows that this explanation was not quite clear to him.

"Who then were present? Where were the Estates? All the men of any importance in the land are here with us."

"There were Stephen Apafi, Nalaczi, Kun, Daczo, and some two hundred Szeklers."

"Well, we'll go and count them as soon as we have disposed of our other affairs," said the Prince contemptuously. "Pray give Master Haller a chair!"

"But they are not awaiting us there. They are marching against us. By this time they must be at Segesvar."

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Kemeny. "I suppose, then, Master Michael Apafi thinks to drive us out of the country with his couple of hundred Szeklers."

But now Wenzinger rose from his chair, and remarked with soldierly precision--

"Does your Highness wish me to concentrate the army? We have eight thousand armed men, and, if it please your Highness, we will disperse this mob of nondescripts so effectually that not a couple of them shall remain together."

"Keep your seat!" commanded Kemeny, who treated the whole affair with the most sovereign contempt. "Sit down again and drink! Let them come a little nearer! Why should we inconvenience ourselves by going out against them? We can then take the whole lot together bag and baggage. I much regret, my lord Denis Banfi, that this fellow is a kinsman of yours; but, out of regard for you, I will take care that he is not broken on the wheel--I will simply have him _stuffed_!"

Kemeny's witticism was received with uproarious laughter.

"Give Master Haller a glass. And you up there! go on playing where you left off."

And once more the music resounded. The gipsy band now played a _csárdás_.[12] The gentlemen clinked glasses and sang in unison. The guards outside joined in the song. The glasses flew against the wall. Every one was ready to dash his glass into a thousand pieces except Gabriel Haller, who, being the last comer and therefore tolerably sober, was ashamed to destroy the expensive Venetian crystals so recklessly.

[Footnote 12: _Csárdás_ [pr. _chárdásh_]. The national dance of Hungary. It is danced in 3/4 time by single couples, who improvise the figures. It commences with a very slow and stately movement, gradually quickening into a furious gallop.]

"Come! down with it! Let the splinters fly!" roared the Prince at him, and to please his Highness Haller dutifully but gingerly rapped his glass against the table till it broke off clean at the neck, quite decently and respectably, whereupon he bowed low to his Highness with obsequious humility.

Dame Banfi sighed at the thought of her kinswoman; but Banfi, to show how very little he cared about the matter, leaped from his chair, and with the wild music of the _csárdás_ ringing in his ears, invited the lovely Lady Beldi to a dance.

The merry siren did not require twice bidding. Banfi passed his arm around her slender waist, pressed her tightly to his breast, and whirled away with her. The fiery beauty hung with elfin airiness on her partner's arm.

Then all the other gentlemen present, carried away by Banfi's example, also leaped from their seats and whirled away with their fair neighbours, till the whole company resolved itself into a maze of fantastically revolving figures, every one dancing, applauding, and huzzahing to his heart's content.

Banfi was an impetuous, hot-blooded man who loved pretty women in general and at all times. Now, moreover, he was heated with wine, and thus it came about that as his lovely partner was dangling on his arm and her glowing cheeks came very near to his, he suddenly so far forgot himself as to press the bewitching dame to his breast and imprint a burning kiss upon her lips.

Lady Beldi shrieked aloud, and instantly repulsed the self-forgetful Lothario. Banfi, much confused, cast a glance around him; but apparently every one was so taken up with his own amusement, that neither the shriek nor the kiss had been observed.

Nevertheless, Lady Beldi, very much offended, left off dancing, and when Banfi began stammering some sort of an apology, she sharply told him to be off and leave her.

Banfi will one day have to pay very dearly for that kiss!

Nobody had observed it, however, save him whom it most concerned--the husband. Beldi's eyes had seen it. Oh! you must not imagine that an uxorious husband is never jealous. Even though he makes as though he hears and sees nothing, he sees and hears and observes all the same. He had seen Banfi kiss his wife, although he feigned not to perceive his consort's confusion as, excited and indignant, she went in search of him. He took her by the hand and led her out of the room. When they got outside, he bade her go to her lodgings and dress for a journey.

"Whither are we going?" asked the agitated lady.

"Home to Bodola!"

* * * * *

Of all the guests, Denis Banfi was the only one who saw them quit the room.

Chapter V.

Bodola.

In one of the innermost recesses of the county of Felsö-Feher, when you have left behind you the Boza Pass, or avoided it by taking one of the narrow footpaths which wind along the mountain side, you will come in sight of the Tatrang valley.

On every side of you are hills wrapped in lilac-coloured mists, and behind the hills the heaven-aspiring peak of Kapri, glistening with early-fallen snow. From the mist-shrouded valley below emerge four or five villages, with their white houses sending up bluish smoke-wreaths among the green orchards. The little Tatrang stream winds, silvery blue, in and out among the quiet villages, forming cascades in its downward progress, which in the dim distance look like fleecy mists. The clouds sink so deeply down into the valleys that their golden, veil-like shapes hide first this and then that object from the eyes of the observer on the hill-tops. There you can see Hosszufalva, with its far-stretching street. There, again, the tiny church of Zajzonfalva, whose pointed, tin-covered roof gleams far and wide in the rays of the sun. Tatrang lies on the banks of the stream, just where a large wooden bridge has been thrown across it. Far, very far off, black and misty, are to be seen the walls of Kronstadt and the blue outlines of the still unscathed citadel. In the valley just below you is the straggling village of Bodola. The houses lie low, but the church stands on rising ground, and opposite the village you notice a sort of small fortress with broad towers, black bastions, and projecting battlements. The western bastion is built on a steep rock, whence there is a fall of three hundred feet on to the roofs of the houses below.

It is only in the distance, however, that the castle looks so gloomy. On approaching nearer, you perceive that what had seemed, from afar, to be a dark green belt of bushes, is really a wreath of flower-gardens thrown round the ramparts. The large Gothic windows are adorned with handsome sculptures and stained glass. A well-kept, serpentine path winds up the steep rock, and there is a mossy stone seat at every bend. Where the rock is most precipitous a breastwork has been thrown up. The pointed turrets of the castle are all painted red, and adorned with fantastic weathercocks.

The path leading through the Boza Pass to Kronstadt is not more than an hour's journey from this little castle, and along this path, at the very time when Prince John Kemeny was still regaling himself at Hermannstadt, we see a long line of cavalry wending their way into the valley below--two thousand Turkish horsemen, or thereabouts, distinguishable from afar by the scarlet tips of their turbans and their snow-white kaftans. Among them are some hundreds of Wallachian irregulars in brown gabardines and long black _csalmaks_.[13]

[Footnote 13: _Csalmak_ [pr. _chalmak_]. A low, skin turban.]

The way is so narrow here that the horsemen can only proceed along in couples, so that while the rearguard is still painfully making its way through the narrow defile between converging rocks, the vanguard has already reached Tatrang.

The Turkish general is a middling-sized, sunburnt man, with eyes as bold and bellicose as an eagle's. A large scar runs right across his forehead. His beard curls in little locks around his chin. His moustache is twisted fiercely upwards on both sides, making one suspect an excessively fiery temper in its possessor, a suspicion confirmed by his hard and curt mode of speech, the haughty carriage of his head, and the impatient movements of his body.

He halts his little army outside the village, to give the rearmost time to come up. Last of all roll a few wagons and a large pumpkin-shaped coach. This is all the heavy baggage which the Turks carry with them. The rearguard is led by a child whose round, cherub face contrasts strangely with his glittering scimitar and his grave, commanding look. He cannot be more than twelve. Inside the coach, the curtains of which are thrown back on both sides so as to freely admit the evening air, we perceive a young lady of about five-and-twenty years of age, dressed half in Turkish, half in Christian costume, for she wears the wide silken hose and the short blue open kaftan of the Turkish ladies, but has taken off her turban, and her face, contrary to Turkish custom, is without a veil. She gazes with the utmost composure out of the carriage window, bestowing her attention now upon the landscape and now upon the passing peasants.

The Turkish commander is marshalling his forces in the village below. They seem used to the strictest discipline. Every one looks steadily at his leader without moving a muscle. At the head of the left wing stands the little boy; a tall, muscular man leads the right. The Wallachs are drawn up in the rear.

"My brave fellows,"--the Pasha addresses his troops in a hard, sharp voice--"you will pitch your tents here! Every one will remain in his place hard by his saddled horse, without laying aside arms or armour. Ferhad Aga[14] with twelve men will go into the village and respectfully ask the magistrate to send hither forty hundredweights of bread, just as much flesh, and double as much hay and oats, at the average price of four asper[15] per pound, neither more nor less."

[Footnote 14: _Aga._ An honorary title among the Turks, here equivalent to lieutenant.]

[Footnote 15: _Asper._ A small silver coin worth about fifteen to twenty kreutzers.]

Then the Pasha turned towards the Wallachs--

"You, dogs! don't suppose that we have come hither to plunder! Stir not from this spot, for if I find out that so much as a goose has been stolen from the village, I'll hang up your leaders and decimate the rest of you!"

He then selected four horsemen.

"You will follow me," said he; "the rest remain here. This very night we resume our march. During my absence Feriz Beg commands."

The little boy bowed.

"If Feriz Beg receives orders from me to quit you, you will obey Ferhad Aga till I return."

With that the Pasha struck his spurs into his horse's sides, and galloped with his escort towards Bodola.

Then the boy whom the Pasha had called Feriz Beg rode forward with soldierly assurance, and in a deep, sonorous voice gave the order to dismount. His hard-mouthed Arab plunged, kicked, and reared, but the little commander, heedless of the capers of his steed, delivered his further orders with perfect self-possession.

Meanwhile the Pasha pursued his way towards Bodola Castle.

Paul Beldi had arrived there only the day before with his wife, having quitted Kemeny's Court without a word of explanation, and was standing in the porch at the moment when the Turkish horsemen trotted into the courtyard. In those days the relations of Transylvania with the Turks were so peculiar, that visits of this kind might be made at any time without any previous announcement.

The Pasha no sooner beheld Beldi, than he sprang from his horse, ran up the steps to him, and brusquely presented himself--"I am Kucsuk Pasha. Being in the way, I came to have a word with thee if thou canst listen."

"Command me," replied Beldi, pointing to the reception-room, and motioning to his guest to enter first.

It was a square-built room, the walls of which were painted with oriental landscapes, the spaces between the windows being filled by large cut-glass mirrors in steel frames. The marble floor was covered with large variegated carpets. Round about the walls hung ancestral pictures, with clusters here and there of ancient weapons of strange shape and construction. In the middle of the room stood a large green marble table with fantastically twisted legs. Huge arm-chairs with morocco coverings and ponderous carvings were dispersed about the room. Facing the entrance was a door leading to a balcony, commanding a panorama of the snow-capped mountains. The evening twilight cast red and lilac patches through the painted windows on the faces of those who are now entering.

"How can I serve you?" inquired Beldi of the Pasha.

"Thou art well aware," replied Kucsuk, "that great discord now prevails in this country on account of the throne."

"It does not concern me. I have made up my mind to remain neutral."

"I have not come hither to beg for thy advice or assistance in that matter; the sword will decide it. What brings me to thee is a purely family affair which concerns me deeply."

Beldi, much surprised, made his guest sit down beside him.

"Speak," said he.

"Thou mayest perhaps have heard, that once upon a time a daughter of the Kallay family fell in love with a young Turkish horseman, naturally without the consent of her kinsfolk?"

"Yes, I've heard of it. People say that the young Turk was equally victorious in love and in war."

"Possibly. His victories in war, however, have disqualified him from being the Knight of Love. Thou seest that my face is furrowed with scars; know that I am the man who wedded that woman!"

Beldi began to regard the Pasha with curiosity and astonishment.

"I have continued to love that woman devotedly," pursued the Pasha. "That may appear strange to thee in the mouth of a Turk, but so it is. I have had neither wife nor concubine beside her. She has borne me a son, of whom I am proud. My affairs just now are in such a critical condition that I must, with God's help, work wonders, or perish on the battle-field. Thou knowest that the religion of Mahommed highly commends such a death. I have therefore no anxiety on that score. It is the thought of my wife which disturbs me. If she should lose me and my son, she would be in great straits. She would be persecuted in Turkey because she remained a Christian; she would be persecuted in Transylvania because she married a Mussulman. There my kinsfolk, here her own, are her enemies. I come to thee therefore with a petition. I have heard tell of thee as an honourable man, and of thy wife as a worthy woman. Receive my consort into thy family circle. She will not be a burden to thee, for I leave her everything I possess. All she wants is thy protection. If thou dost promise me that, thou canst count upon my eternal friendship and gratitude, and mayst command my fortune, my sword, and my life in case I survive."

Beldi pressed the hand of the Pasha.

"Bring your wife hither. I and my family will welcome her as a kinswoman."

"I may bring her then?"

"We shall be delighted to see her," returned Beldi; and he commanded his retainers to escort the Pasha's suite back to Tatrang with torches, and fetch from thence his carriage.

Kucsuk sent word by them that Feriz Beg was to come too.

Meanwhile Beldi introduced Kucsuk to his wife, and he was not a little delighted to find that she recollected the Pasha's wife as one of her girlish friends, whom she looked forward to see again with sincere joy and some curiosity.

After the lapse of some hours the carriage rumbled noisily into the well-paved courtyard. Feriz Beg escorted it on horseback.

Lady Beldi hastened down the steps to meet the Pasha's wife as she stepped out of the coach, and received her with a cry of joy--"What! Catharine! Do you still know me?"

The lady immediately recognized her youthful playfellow, and the two friends rushed into each other's arms, kissed again and again, and said of course the sweetest things to each other--"Why, darling, you are more handsome than ever!"--"And you, dear! What a stately woman you have grown!" etc., etc., etc.

"Look, this is my son," said Catharine, pointing to Feriz Beg, who, after dismounting, had hastened with childlike tenderness to help his mother out of her coach.

"Oh, what a little darling!" cried Lady Beldi, quite enchanted, and covering the rosy-cheeked child with kisses.

If only she had known that this child was a child no longer, but a general!

"And I've got children too!" continued Lady Beldi, with maternal emulation. "You shall see them! Does your son speak Hungarian?"

"Hungarian!" cried Catharine, almost offended; "what! the child of an Hungarian mother, and not speak Hungarian! How can you ask such a question?"

"So much the better," said Lady Beldi, "the children will become friends all the more quickly. From henceforth you belong to the family. Our husbands have settled all that already, and we shall be so delighted!"

The amiable and sprightly housewife then embraced her friend once more, took Feriz Beg by the hand, and led them both into the family circle, chatting merrily all the time, and asking and answering a thousand questions.

A cheerful fire was sparkling in the chimney of the ladies' cabinet. Large flowered-silk curtains darkened the walls. On a little ivory table ticked a gorgeous clock, ablaze with rubies and chrysoprases. Sofas covered in cornflower-blue velvet offered you a luxurious repose. On a round table in the centre of the room, from which an embroidered Persian tapestry fell in rich folds to the ground, stood a heavy candelabrum of massive silver, representing a siren holding on high a taper in each of her outstretched hands.

In front of the fine white marble chimney-piece were Dame Beldi's children. The elder, Sophia, a tall, slight, bashful-looking beauty of some fourteen summers, was bustling about the fire. She still wore her hair as children do, thrown back in two long, large plaits which reached almost to her heels. This girl was afterwards Paul Wesselenyi's consort.

The second child, a little girl of about four, was kneeling at the feet of her elder sister, and throwing dried flowers into the fire. She went by the name of _Aranka_, which in Hungarian means "little goldy," for she carried her name on her locks, which flowed over her round little shoulders in light golden waves. Her vivacious features, sparkling eyes, and tiny hands are never still, and now too she is mischievously teasing and thwarting her elder sister, laughing aloud with artless glee whenever Sophia, naturally without succeeding in the least, tries to be very angry.

On hearing footsteps and voices at the door, both children spring up hastily. The elder one, perceiving strangers, tries to smooth the creases out of her dress, while Aranka rushes uproariously to her mother, embraces her knees, and looks up at her with her plump little smiling face.

"These are my children," said Lady Beldi with inward satisfaction.

Catharine embraced the elder girl, who shyly presented her forehead to be kissed.

"And here's your cousin, little Feriz. You must kiss him too!" said Lady Beldi, pushing together the bashful children, who scarcely dared to press the tips of their lips together. Sophia immediately afterwards blushed right up to the ears, and rushed out of the room. Nothing would induce her to show herself again that evening.

"Oh, you shamefaced mimosa!" cried Lady Beldi, laughing loudly. "Why, Aranka is braver than you. Eh, my little girl? You're not afraid to kiss Cousin Feriz, are you?"

The little thing looked up at the boy and drew back, clinging fast all the time to her mother's skirts, but never once removing her large, dark-blue eyes from Feriz, who knelt down, took the little girl in his arms, and gave her a hearty kiss on her round, rosy cheeks.

Having gone safely through this ordeal, Aranka was quite at home with her new acquaintance. She bade the Turkish cousin sit him down on a stool by the fire, and, laying her head on his lap, began asking him questions about everything he wore, from the hilt of his scimitar to the plume in his turban--absolutely nothing escaped her curiosity.

"Let the children play!" cried Lady Beldi merrily, as with high good-humour she led her friend out upon the balcony, from whence they could survey the whole Tatrang valley now floating in the bright moonlight.

Here the two women--while the men were engaged with serious matters, and the children were playing--here the two women entered into one of those long confidential chats which young ladies find so charming when they are by themselves, especially when they have as much to ask and answer as these two had.

Kucsuk Pasha's wife was a middling-sized, powerfully-built woman. Her well-rounded bosom and broad shoulders were shown off by her tight-fitting kaftan, which was fastened round the waist by a girdle of gold thread, and reached somewhat lower down than is usual with the dresses of Turkish ladies, just permitting a glance at her wide, flowing, red silk pantaloons and her dainty little yellow slippers. Her face, if a trifle too stern and hard, was yet most lovely; her full and florid complexion betokened a somewhat choleric temperament; her thick, coal-black eyebrows had almost grown together, and her gaze was burning in its intensity.

Lady Beldi made her sit down by her side, took her familiarly by the hand, and playfully asked--

"Your husband then has no other wife but you?"

Catharine laughed, and replied with just a shade of impatience--

"I suppose, now, you fancy that an Hungarian woman has only to wed a Turk to instantly become his slave? You have no idea how dearly my husband loves me."

"I am sure of it, Catharine. But recollect that my question related to what has long been customary among you."

"Among us! My dear, I am not a Turkish woman!"

"What then?"

"A Christian, just as you are. We were married by a Calvinist minister, the Rev. Martin Biro, now an exile in Constantinople, and for whom my husband, out of gratitude, has built a church where the Hungarians and Transylvanians who dwell there may attend divine service."

"Really! Then your husband does not persecute the Christians?"

"Certainly not. He believes that every religion is good, as leading to heaven, but that his own faith is the best, as opening the gate of the very highest heaven. Moreover, my husband has a very good heart, and is much more enlightened than most of his fellows."

"But why have you not tried to convert him to the Christian religion?"

"Why should I? Because our poets regularly conclude their love-romances in which a Turk falls in love with a Christian girl, by bringing him to baptism and dressing him in a mente instead of a kaftan? Here, however, you have one of those romances of real life, in which a woman follows her spouse and sacrifices everything for him."

"No doubt you are right, Catharine; but you must let me get used to the idea that a Christian, let alone an Hungarian, girl may wed a Turk."

"And listen, dear Lady Beldi: surely God would have imputed less merit to me, if I had converted my husband to our faith, instead of leaving him in the faith wherein he was born? As a Christian renegade he would have occupied but a humble place in our little church; while as one of the most influential of the Pashas, he has made the fate of all the Christians in Turkey so tolerable, that the Christian subjects of other states flock over to us as to a land of promise. Often, when he has received his share of the spoils of battle, he has handed me a long list with the names of those of my enslaved countrymen whom he has ransomed at a great price. He has expended immense treasures in this way. And believe me, love, the perusal of such a list gives me more pleasure than the sight of the most beautiful oriental pearls which my husband might easily have purchased with the amount, and it has raised him higher in my estimation than if he had learnt the whole Psalter by heart. And he is not the man to break the word he has once given, whether it be to God or to his fellow-man. If he were capable of abjuring his religion, I could believe no longer in his love, for then he would cease to be him whom I have always known; he would cease to be the man who, when once he has said a thing, always abides by it, never goes back from, and is to be moved neither by the terrors of death nor the tears of a woman."

Lady Beldi embraced her friend, and kissed her glowing cheeks.

"You are right, my good Catharine! 'Tis our prejudices that prevent us from rising higher than everyday thoughts. It is true. Love also has her faith, her religion. But how about your country? Have you never thought of that?"

Catharine rose with proud self-satisfaction from her seat, and pressed her friend's hand.

"Let this convince you that I indeed love my country. I am about to sacrifice for it the lives of my husband and my son, whom perhaps I now behold for the last time."

Lady Beldi's face plainly showed that she did not quite grasp the meaning of these words, and Catharine was about to explain them to her, when a servant announced that the gentlemen had long been awaiting them in the dining-room.

Lady Beldi thereupon gave her arm to her friend and led her into the dining-room. The children had already become such close friends that Aranka allowed Feriz Beg to carry her in to dinner, playing all the time with childish coquetry with the diamond clasp of his agraffe.

The lady of the house assigned to every one his place. Catharine took the upper end of the table. On her right sat the Pasha, on her left the hostess. The host took his place at the lower end of the table. Feriz and Aranka sat side by side. Opposite Feriz was an empty place, the shy Sophia's, whom nothing could induce to come to dinner.

Catharine seeing that a large wine-jug was placed in front of her husband, quickly seized it in order to exchange it for a cut-glass caraffe full of pure, sparkling spring water. Lady Beldi remarked the action, and glanced mischievously at her embarrassed friend.

"He never drinks wine," said Catharine apologetically. "It is not good for him. He is of a somewhat excitable nature."

Kucsuk smiled and lifted Catharine's hand to his lips.

"Why gloss over the truth? Why not say straight out that I do not drink wine because the Koran forbids it, because I am a Mussulman?"

Beldi shook his head at his wife and pointed at the children in order to give another turn to the conversation.

"It looks as if your son were already quite at home with us, Kucsuk. You shall see, when you come back, what a Magyar we have made of him."

Kucsuk and Feriz exchanged a proud and rapid glance, and then both of them looked at Beldi.

The child's features had suddenly and completely changed; at that moment he looked wondrously like his father. There was the same hard, stony glance, the same defiant bearing, the same haughty elevation of the brows.

"So thou dost imagine, Beldi," said Kucsuk severely, "that I only brought my son hither to leave him with thee?"

"But surely you do not mean to take that child with you to battle?"

"Child dost thou call him! He is already the commander of four hundred mounted Spahis; has already been in three engagements; has had two horses shot under him, and is to command the left wing of my forces in the impending battle."

The Beldis looked with amazement at the child, who, with all eyes fixed upon him, assumed his most manly air.

"But I hope that you will at least keep him by your side in the heat of the fight?" said Lady Beldi, much disturbed.

"Not at all. I lead the centre. He too will give a good account of himself. When I was his age I already wore the Nishan[16] order on my breast, and I hope that this time he will not return home without having at least deserved it."

[Footnote 16: _Nishan Order._ A Turkish order of merit for valour, instituted by Selim III. It consisted of a gold medallion bearing the Sultan's effigy.]

"But if it comes to a _mêlée_, and he is in danger?" continued Lady Beldi, with increasing apprehension.

"Then he will fight as a brave soldier should," returned Kucsuk, stroking his moustache, which immediately twisted upwards of its own accord.

"Ah, no; he is far too tender to sustain a conflict with grown men!" cried Dame Beldi compassionately.

"Feriz," cried Kucsuk to his son, "just take down that sabre from the wall, and show our friends that thou canst wield it like a man."

The boy sprang up, and, proudly confident in his own strength, chose from the weapons that hung on the wall not a sabre but a huge club--seized it by the extreme end of the handle, and swung it with outstretched arms in every direction with an ease and a dexterity which would have done honour to any man. His feat was rewarded by enthusiastic applause.

"Deuce take it!" cried the astonished Beldi; "that is what I call a good graft, a Magyar scion on a Turkish stock. You did not carry off his mother for nothing. Come, Kucsuk--give me that lad!"

"Be it so! But give me thy daughter."

"Which? Make your choice."

"She who sits next to him. When she has grown up they will make a good pair, and then we shall both have a son and a daughter."

Beldi laughed heartily, and both the women exchanged a smile. Kucsuk looked with an air of satisfaction at his son, who took his aigrette from his turban, tore off the diamond buckle which had pleased Aranka so much, and handed it to the little girl with lavish gallantry. The child timidly stretched out her tiny hand towards the costly gift, the material as well as the moral worth of which she was far from suspecting, but which nothing in the world would now have made her relinquish.

The parents suddenly became silent. Their faces still wore a smile, but there was a melancholy earnestness in their eyes.

Chapter VI.

The Battle Of Nagy SzöLLöS.

Meanwhile Michael Apafi, comforted by Ali Pasha's assurance that help was nigh at hand, had thrown himself into Segesvar, and there awaited the turn of Fortune's wheel. John Kemeny came out against him with a vast host. He had with him an imposing array of German and Hungarian troops, but what his army really wanted was an enterprising general.

Michael Apafi had very little to oppose to such a host--a few hundred stubborn, undisciplinable Szekler spearmen, a handful of Saxon burghers, and a bodyguard of blue Janissaries, altogether only about a tenth part of Kemeny's army.

Acting therefore on the advice of his brother Stephen, the Prince resolved to remain strictly on the defensive at Segesvar till auxiliaries should reach him from his Turkish protector. This resolution pleased the Saxon burghers immensely, for they were well able to defend themselves behind the walls of their own city, but never felt quite at ease in the open field. Upon the Szeklers, however, Apafi's resolution produced just the contrary effect.

It was Nalaczi's mission to keep the Szeklers in a martial humour, and one evening he took them all into the tavern, and filled them with such ardour that at break of day they marched clamorously beneath the windows of the Prince, and swore by hook and by crook that they must have one of the city gates opened for them at once, so that they might fall upon Kemeny there and then and fight him to the death.

The Prince and his counsellors went down among them in great alarm, and tried in every way to make it clear to them that Kemeny's suite alone was more numerous than all the Szeklers put together; that at least one-half of his army was armed with muskets, whereas with them scarcely any one except the Saxon burghers knew even how to use fire-arms; and that if they rushed out at one door, the enemy would rush in at the other, and then there would be neither outside nor inside--and much more to the same effect.

But whoever fancies he can drive out of a Szekler's head what he has once got into it is mightily mistaken.

"Either you must let us march against the foe or home we go!" cried they. "We don't mean to lie here for the next ten years like the Trojans, for there's work to be done at home. Apportion, therefore, so many of the enemy to each one of us; let every man go out and slay his lot, and then in God's name dismiss us. We won't submit to be blockaded and rationed on dog and rat-flesh."

"My good fellows, if you don't like stopping here, go home by all means," was Apafi's ultimatum; "but to fight a battle in my circumstances were mere madness."

The Szeklers did not waste another word; but they seized their wallets, shouldered their lances, and marched out of Segesvar as if they never had had anything to do with it.

From that moment the Szeklers became Apafi's enemies to his dying day.

Next day Kemeny's host stood beneath the walls of the town where Apafi now barely had armed men sufficient to guard the gates.

The siege operations were entrusted to Wenzinger as having had most experience in warfare. This great general, true to the principles of the school in which he had been brought up, first of all carefully surveyed every inch of his ground; then he cautiously occupied every position which by any possibility might become important, and took care also that the besieging host should be covered at all points--in short, he so spun out his preparations by his systematic way of going to work, that by the time he had really begun to think about the siege, tidings reached him that the Turkish auxiliaries were advancing by forced marches. Thereupon (still faithful to his system) he re-concentrated his scattered forces, and prepared to march against the Turks, the Hungarian gentry being ready to a man to follow him. But John Kemeny was against a general advance, holding that if the Turkish contingent was strong enough to put his forces to flight, he would have Segesvar in his rear, and thus would be caught between two fires. He therefore preferred to await his opponent's attack, and retiring in consequence from the town, pitched his camp at Nagy Szöllös, whence he looked calmly on while Kucsuk Pasha's horsemen, amid the bray of clarions, made their entry into Segesvar.

Apafi had eaten and drunk nothing for three days from sheer anxiety at the straits into which he had fallen, through no fault of his own, when word was brought him of the arrival of the auxiliaries. It was late in the evening when Kucsuk Pasha, after a fatiguing march along unfrequented mountain paths, entered the town. Apafi rode out to meet him, and saluted the Turks as his guardian angels. But great indeed was his astonishment, after mustering the troops twice or thrice, to find that at the very highest estimate they were only a fifth part of the forces opposed to him.

"What does your Excellency mean to do with this little band?" he uneasily asked the Pasha.

"God alone knows, who reads the destiny of man in heaven above," returned Kucsuk with laconic fatalism; and that was all that the Prince could get out of him. That night the Turks pitched their tents in the market-place, immediately opposite the dwelling of the Prince.

Apafi, after so many sleepless nights, could at last enjoy repose. It did his heart good to hear beneath his windows the snorting of the war-horses and the sabre-clattering of the sentries, and he gradually dozed off in the midst of the comforting hubbub, reflecting, that with such an army he could at least defend himself for some time, and that meanwhile a great many things might happen. Long before daybreak, however, he was awakened by the hammering of planks, the usual signal to the Turkish cavalry to feed their horses. "They feed their horses very early in the morning," thought the Prince, and he turned over on to the other side and again fell asleep. While still half-dreaming he fancied he heard the songs of the dervishes, songs apt to make even the wakeful feel drowsy. Then a loud and sudden flourish of trumpets once more aroused his Highness from his slumbers. "Egad! What are they about in the middle of the night?" cried he peevishly; got up, looked out of the window, and saw that the Turks were all sitting motionless on their horses in the dark. Then came a second flourish, and the whole squadron started off, the clattering of the horses' hoofs on the paving-stones and the watch-words of the sentinels resounding far and wide through the silent night. "This Pasha is a very restless man," thought Apafi. "Even at night, and after so many fatigues, he grudges his men their proper repose." And with that he again turned in, and fell into a yet sweeter sleep, from which he only awoke on the following morning.

The sun stood high in the heavens when Apafi rang for his steward and factotum, John Cserey.

The first question he put to him was, "What is the Pasha about?"

"He quitted the town last night, and sent back a messenger, who has been waiting outside there ever since dawn to deliver his message."

"Let him come in at once," cried Apafi, and he began hastily to dress.

Stephen Apafi, Nalaczi, and Daczo entered the Prince's apartments at the same time as Kucsuk's messenger. They too had been waiting for the last two hours for the Prince to awake, and were very curious to hear the Pasha's message.

"Speak quickly!" cried Apafi to the Turk, who bowed to the ground, folded his arms across his breast, and said--

"Illustrious Prince! my master, Kucsuk Pasha, speaks these words to thee through the mouth of thy servant: Remain quietly in Segesvar and be of good cheer. Let the troops that are with thee mount guard upon the walls. Meantime my master, Kucsuk Pasha, is marching against John Kemeny, and will fight him wherever he meets him, yea! though he lose his host to a man, yet will he fight with him to the death."

The Prince was so confounded by these tidings that he had not a word to say for himself. Kucsuk's forces were scarcely a fifth part of Kemeny's, and, moreover, they were still exhausted by their forced marches. To expect a victory under such circumstances was to look for miracles.

"Let us make up our minds for the worst and trust in God," said Stephen Apafi; and, under the circumstances, this was perhaps the most sensible thing that could have been said.

So Michael Apafi let things take their own course. If any one had a mind to guard the walls he was free to do so. So the commanders left the soldiers to their own devices, and the soldiers did nothing at all. The fate of the realm lay in God's hands in the fullest sense of the word, for man had withdrawn his hand from it altogether. One thing, however, the Prince did. He sent old Cserey up to the top of the church tower that he might keep a good look-out, and come and tell his master the moment he saw troops approaching.

* * * * *

John Kemeny had established himself at Nagy Szöllös, which is a few hours' journey from Segesvar. He had fixed his head-quarters at the parsonage there, and to this day the little room is pointed out in which he slept for the last time, as well as the round hillock in the garden, where stood at that time a pretty little wooden summer-house in which the Prince began the dinner which he never finished.

The Hungarian gentlemen had a long debate with Wenzinger and the Prince about the plan of campaign. Some were for taking the town by storm, others preferred starving it out by a blockade.

Wenzinger shook his head.

"Allow me, gentlemen, to express my opinion also," said the experienced German. "I am an old soldier. I have knocked about in all manner of campaigns; I know the value of numbers in war, but also the value of position, and well understand how to weigh the one against the other. I have learnt by experience that one hundred men under favourable conditions are often more than a match for a thousand. I also know how enthusiasm or indifference can multiply or diminish numbers. I can also calculate the relative importance of the various kinds of arms; nor is the military value of patriotism an unknown quantity to me. Now we have ten thousand men, and there are not more than three thousand opposed to us. But we must not lose sight of the fact, that the greater part of our Hungarian forces consists of cavalry, and to storm walls with cavalry is clearly impossible. Scarcely less impossible is it to persuade the mounted Hungarians to fight on foot. I would further remark, that although the Hungarian is a veritable hero when he stands face to face with a foreign foe, nevertheless, whenever I have seen him called upon to fight against his own countrymen (and often enough have I had that opportunity) he becomes as slothful and indifferent as if he were only awaiting the first pretext for taking to his heels. Then, again, we possess a troop of Servians, whom I consider very good shots, and if we only had them safely behind the walls of that town we might buckle to it against a ten-fold superiority; but outside fortifications these people are scarcely worth anything: they are strong enough to defend, but not strong enough to storm a bastion. We ought therefore to demolish the walls as soon as possible: but then, again, we have no cannon, and would have to send as far as Temesvar for our field-artillery, and while they were on their way to us along the vile roads--and of course it is a further question whether the commandant there would send them at all at our bidding--Ali Pasha would have time to return with fresh troops, and we should lose all our labour. I consider, therefore, that we ought not to remain here any longer. We are incapable of conquering that fortress either by assault or blockade. We cannot, on the other hand, suppose that the enemy would be insane enough to be lured into the open field. The most prudent thing, therefore, that we can do under such circumstances, is to set out for Hungary without delay, collect reinforcements and artillery, and then endeavour to force the enemy to an engagement."

Kemeny, little accustomed to listen to such lengthy discourses, could scarcely wait till Wenzinger paused, and, as if the whole plan of campaign deserved not the slightest thought, he now interrupted him with frivolous impatience.

"Mr. General, leave all that till the afternoon. After dinner we shall see everything in quite another light."

"No, not after dinner," blustered the German. "No time is to be lost. We are in the midst of war, where every hour is precious; not at a Diet, where matters may be debated for years together."

At this sally the Hungarian gentlemen laughed heartily, seized Wenzinger by the arm, and dragged him off to the banquet, joking all the way. "There will be lots of time after dinner!" cried they.

"Well, well," said Wenzinger, half in jest and half in anger; "it is a fine thing, no doubt, to have soldiers who will do everything but obey your orders!"

Not another word did he speak at table, but he drank all the more.

In the midst of these table-joys, John Uzdi, the commander of the skirmishers, stepped into the Prince's pavilion with a terrified countenance, and scarce able to speak for excitement.

"Your Highness! I see great clouds of dust approaching from the direction of Segesvar!"

The Prince turned his head towards the messenger, and said with comic phlegm--

"If it gives you any satisfaction to stare at your clouds of dust, pray go on looking at them as long as you please!"

But Wenzinger sprang from his seat.

"I should like to have a look at them myself," cried he, hastily ordering his heavy charger to be saddled; "possibly the enemy has come out to entice us nearer."

The others did not trouble themselves about the matter, but continued to make merry.

In a few minutes, however, back came Wenzinger, unable to conceal the secret joy which a professional soldier always feels when his plan is about to succeed.

"Victory, gentlemen!" cried he. "The enemy is marching against us in force. If it is not merely a diversion, and he really means business, the day is ours."

Some of the gentlemen at once rose from their seats and began buckling on their swords. The Prince, however, remained sitting.

"Are they still a good way off?" he indolently inquired of Wenzinger.

"Scarcely half-an-hour's march!" exclaimed the latter with sparkling eyes.

"Then let them come a little nearer still, and in the meantime sit down by our side."

"I'll be damned if I do!" cried the general angrily. "As it is, I have scarcely time enough to marshal my forces."

"But why marshal them at all? Let them advance upon the enemy _en masse_, that he may be terrified out of his life at the bare sight of them."

"Yes, but I don't want to scare them away, I want rather to surround them. I shall confront them with one-half the host, the rest I shall distribute as follows: one division shall creep through the maize-fields and cut off the enemy's retreat to the town; another shall attack him in flank from above the mill-dam; a third shall remain behind in reserve. Your Highness will join the reserve with your Court."

"What!" cried Kemeny, deeply offended, "I in the reserve! The proper place for an Hungarian Prince is always the fore-front of the battle!"

"That was all very well formerly; but in a general engagement, such precious personages require constant looking after, lest any accident befall them, and are only in the commander's way, and seriously interfere with his tactics. If, however, your Highness expressly desires it, I will surrender my bâton to you at once, and take my place in the ranks. Here there is only room for one generalissimo!"

"Keep your place and take what measures you please, but pray let me choose my own position. That need not interfere with you in the least."

And Kemeny, with a few other gentlemen, remained at table.

Wenzinger had scarcely made the necessary preparations when word was brought to the Prince that the army was in battle array. Then Kemeny stood up with imperturbable _sangfroid_ and buckled on his sword, but refused to wear armour.

"Why should I?" cried he. "Do you suppose that the heart beats more courageously behind a coat of mail?"

So they brought him his most stately charger, whose restive head two stalwart grooms could only hold with difficulty. The coal-black, fiery-eyed steed plunged and reared; its nostrils snorted steam; white frothy flakes fell from its mouth all over its breast; its long waving tail reached almost to the ground.

Kemeny swung himself into the saddle, drew his sword, and galloped to the front. Every one was amazed at his skilful horsemanship; he seemed to have been grafted on to his stallion, so perfectly did all his movements correspond with its gambols. On reaching the front, the stately charger fell into a mincing pace, sharply striking the ground behind it with its prancing hoofs, and nodding its head as if saluting the host, which broke with one accord into a loud shout of "Eljen!" At the same instant the Prince's horse stumbled and plunged violently forward on both knees at once. The silver bit in its mouth snapped in two, and it was only his extraordinary skill and dexterity which saved the Prince from flying headlong.

His suite came hastening to his side.

"That is a bad omen, your Highness!" stammered Alexius Bethlen. "Your Highness should mount another horse."

"'Tis not a bad omen," replied Kemeny, "for my horse has not thrown me."

"Nevertheless, your Highness, it would be well to change your mount. That horse is frightened, and will do nothing but rear."

"I mean to keep my seat, if only to show that omens have neither meaning nor terror for me," said Kemeny defiantly; and he ordered the broken bit to be replaced by another. At the same instant Kucsuk Pasha's trumpets sounded a charge.

* * * * *

The Turkish cavalry formed a half-moon with the horns turned outwards. Kucsuk himself rode in the centre.

The Pasha on this occasion wore an unusually splendid costume. His kaftan was of rich-flowered silk wrought with gold; beneath the kaftan peeped forth a dolman of cloth of gold; a costly oriental shawl encircled his loins; his scimitar, buckled on behind, sparkled with gems; a ger-falcon's plume, fastened by a diamond agraffe, waved from his turban. His charger, a fiery barb with slender head, long, twisted mane, and black flying tail, threw back its head proudly and shook its richly-fringed saddle-cloth. A sort of gold netting surrounded its whole body, from the fringes of which depended numbers of large, jingling, golden half-moons.

As soon as Kucsuk Pasha perceived Kemeny's troops, he dismounted, threw himself with his face to the ground, thrice kissed the earth, thrice raised himself on his knees, uplifted his face devoutly to heaven, and called upon the name of Allah. Then he remounted his horse; sent for his son; tore one of the falcon feathers out of his turban, and sticking it in the youthful hero's, said--"Go now to the left wing of the host, and fight as becomes a man of valour! For 'tis better that thou shouldst fall by the hand of the enemy, and lie dead before me, than that thou shouldst fly, and this my sword" (here he smote the scimitar by his side with his fist) "should slay thee!"

Feriz Beg reverentially bowed his head, kissed the hem of his father's kaftan, and proudly galloped to the post assigned to him, feeling that every eye was fixed upon the falcon's feather which his father had fastened to his turban.

The Pasha now rode along the ranks and addressed these words to his cavalry--

"My brave fellows! the enemy is before you! I say not whether they be many or few--you can see for yourselves. They are indeed many times more numerous than we; but trust in Allah, and fight valiantly! It is more honourable to die here sword in hand than to fly like cowards. We are in the midst of Transylvania. He who flies will fall by the sword of the pursuer ere he reaches the frontier, and he who escapes the pursuer will fall by the bowstring of the Padishah. We have no other choice but victory or death!"

Then he turned to the Wallachs. Them he addressed with harsh and wrathful words.

"You dogs, you! I know right well that you are ready to bolt at the first shot; but know that I have ordered the troops behind you to instantly cut every one of you down who so much as looks backward." Then the Pasha, placing himself at the head of his host, waved his naked sword for the trumpets to blow, and glancing once more along the lines, saw the Moorish troops who stood behind him, with melon-shaped, copper-plated helmets, making ready to fire their long muskets.

"What are you doing?" growled the Pasha. "Away with your muskets! The enemy has more of them than we. We shall only need our swords. Let every one charge boldly upon the foe, ducking his head down over his saddle-bow the moment I give the signal, and then gallop forward without hesitation!"

The host did as it was commanded. The Moors slung their funnel-shaped muskets over their shoulders, drew their broad scimitars, and trotted forward in the footsteps of the Pasha.

Kemeny's troops, like a wall of steel confronted them, the musketeers in the first line, the lanzknechts behind. In the centre stood Wenzinger, on the right wing John Kemeny. The flanking troops were creeping stealthily on behind the mill-dam and among the maize-fields in order to take the foe in the rear.

When the Turkish army had come within gunshot distance of Kemeny's forces, Kucsuk Pasha suddenly turned round and glanced fiercely back, right and left, upon his soldiers, who immediately ducked their heads over their horses' necks, tightly grasped their swords, used their spurs freely, and dashed like a whirlwind upon their opponents.

"Allah! Allah! il-Allah!" thrice sounded from the lips of the charging Turks, and simultaneously John Kemeny's musketeers gave the attacking horsemen a point-blank enfilade, which for a moment enveloped their ranks in smoke. But in those days musketry fire did little harm; it was far more noisy than dangerous. So now too only a couple of Turks or so glided out of their saddles, dragging their horses down with them; the rest galloped forward with a howl of fury.

Wenzinger, perceiving that his arquebusiers had no time to load again, immediately ordered his lanzknechts to advance. Now if these troops could only have kept back the Turkish cavalry till the arquebusiers had managed to reload, or till the flanking squadrons had come up and fallen upon the enemy, Kemeny would no doubt have won the battle. But the ranks of the lanzknechts collapsed at the very first onset, and after (to do them justice) a really desperate resistance, were mostly cut to pieces, whereupon the helpless musketeers took to their heels _en masse_, and threw their whole army into great confusion.

Wenzinger now tried to restore order by commanding the whole line to fall back, and had his command been properly obeyed, the engagement might perhaps have had a different issue. But the cavalry, which the Prince led in person, obeying his proud counter-orders to remain where they were, were left fighting single-handed against the divisions opposed to them, when the rest of the army had already changed its position.

The Pasha immediately