Midst the Wild Carpathians Part 23

"What!" cried Apafi; "is this really true?"

"Pray let your Highness look at his own writing," and he drew the letter in question out of his leather knapsack. "He is said to have concealed the girl somewhere in his forests at Banfi-Hunyad."

Apafi turned scarlet with rage.

"'Tis monstrous!" cried he. "This fellow possesses a virtuous and lovely wife of his own--my consort's own sister--and yet he can so far forget his duty as a husband! I'll not put up with it!"

"Pardon me, your Highness; I have nothing more to do with Banfi now. My complaint is against one Kapi, who had the usufruct of my Transylvanian property. Not wis.h.i.+ng, then, to have anything more to do with Banfi, I took up my quarters with Kapi at Aranyosi Castle. Your Highness, the pomp which that man displays exceeds anything that I have ever seen, and I have seen many princely and palatinal courts in my day. His wife never uses her feet at all. Even if she wants to get to the door, she is carried thither in a gilded sedan-chair, and she never wears a dress more than once!"

"But what have I to do with the frippery of Dame Kapi?"

"I'm coming to that. Her love of display costs money, and has compelled her husband to resort to fraudulent practices. And besides, such extravagance concerns your Highness also, as tending to emphasize the contrast already apparent between the frugal simplicity of your Highness's court and the dazzling pomp of these petty kings--a contrast which has already made a pretty deep impression upon our foreign visitors. Thus, quite recently, the Bavarian minister, who had come from a banquet at Ebesfalva to Aranyosi, remarked in a flattering tone to Dame Kapi, in my hearing, that she was the real Princess of Transylvania."

"He said that, did he?" cried the Prince, becoming much interested. "Go on with your narrative. So he said that Kapi's wife was the real Princess, eh?"

"Yet strip from off her her costly pearls and diamonds, and you will see that in regard to beauty and majesty she is not fit to lace the shoes of her Highness the Princess Apafi."

"Go on! go on!"

"Well, one fine day this same Kapi came to me, and told me that your Highness had been commanded by the Palatine to arrest and deliver me over to him."

"I receive a command! I know absolutely nothing about it."

"Unfortunately I believed his words, and imagining myself caught between two fires, I made over my Transylvanian property to Kapi to save it from confiscation, he at the same time delivering to me an undertaking to re-transfer the estates as soon as possible. Meanwhile I resolved to fly to Poland, and stay there till the storm blew over. Kapi gave me two guides, who were to conduct me through the mountain-pa.s.ses to the frontier; but at the same time he secretly informed the frontier sentinels that I was a spy sent by the Emperor to explore Transylvania, and was now desirous of returning un.o.bserved. So the rogues waylaid me, robbed me of all my money and papers, and dragged me to Fehervar, where my innocence came to light, but my money and papers were of course hopelessly lost. And now this Kapi actually maintains that I sold him all my property, and I've nothing in the world but this leather knapsack round my neck, with which I must now beg my way about."

"Be of good cheer. I will give you the most exemplary satisfaction,"

returned the enraged Prince.

"It is a matter which also concerns your Highness's own dignity,"

replied Bala.s.sa. "These great lords behave in as high-handed a fas.h.i.+on as if they had absolutely no superior."

"Be easy. I will very soon show them who is the real Prince of Transylvania."

Apafi, full of indignation, then left the audience-chamber.

A storm was gathering over the heads of two great men who stood in Teleki's way.

BOOK II.

THE DEVIL'S GARDEN.

CHAPTER I.

THE PATROL.

Clement the Clerk stuck his pen behind his ear and recited to himself the elegant verses which he had just composed, two hundred strophes in all, almost every line of which ended in _fuerat_, with a sporadic _fuisset_ in between.

Michael Apafi used regularly to repent whenever he had offended any one, and he therefore could not rest till he had compensated the itinerant scholar Clement for the snub he had administered to him, and this he did by making the unsophisticated poet his----Patrol-officer.

In those days many agreeable duties were connected with this office--duties which Clement simply left alone, devoting himself instead to the composition of epics and chronicles, which he manufactured in great abundance.

At that moment he was casting his eyes over a great epic, in which he recorded how his Highness, Prince Michael Apafi, had gone out against ersekujvar to besiege it; how with splendid valour he had arrived there; how, on beholding the foe, he had drawn his sword; how, after mature deliberation, he had turned back again; and how, finally, he and all his heroes had returned home again safe and sound.

Poetic distraction had so completely absorbed the faculties of Clement the Clerk, that a week had already elapsed since his servant had made off with his master's spurred jack-boots, without the latter, in his capacity of Patrol-officer, thinking of pursuing the runaway; but in fact he was confined within a vicious circle, inasmuch as every time he thought of inquiring for his boots, it occurred to him that his servant had stolen them; and every time he thought of going out and inquiring for his servant, it occurred to him that he had no boots. What could he do then under such circ.u.mstances but sit down again, and write poems in absolutely endless quant.i.ties?

His room had not been swept out for weeks, naturally therefore there was no lack of dust and cobwebs; but, by way of contrast, the deal floor all around the solitary table was mottled with ink-blots. The table itself had only two legs, the place of the others being supplied by layers of bricks.

The poet scribbles, erases, and nibbles at his pen; on the window-sill lies a piece of bread and some cheese; it occurs to the poet that it has been put there for him to eat; but first he must use up the ink still remaining in his pen, and in doing so another idea occurs to him, and after that a third, and then a fourth; meanwhile mice come skipping out of a hole beneath the window-sill, frisk about the bread and cheese, nibble away at it till not a morsel remains, and then skip back into their holes again. The poet having wearied out his Pegasus, starts up, looks for his bread and cheese, and perceiving that only the crumbs remain on the window-sill, concludes that he has already eaten his fill, so sits him down again and goes on writing.

While he is thus plaguing himself for the benefit of posterity, somebody begins scratching at the door, and after groping about the door-hinge in search of the door-latch, finds it at last, and shakes it to and fro as if he does not know what to do with it. This disturbance disagreeably awakens Clement the Clerk out of his poetic reveries, who, after vainly exclaiming in a loud and angry voice that the door is not bolted, finds himself at last obliged to rise from his seat and open the door himself, lest the importunate visitor should break off the latch or lift the door bodily from its hinges.

Before him, with a sealed letter in his hand, stands a gaping Wallach peasant, who appears extraordinarily terrified to see the door open, though that was the very thing he had been aiming at all along.

"Well, what is it?" snapped Clement the Clerk, horribly angry. "Why don't you speak?"

The Wallach raised his round eyebrows, which looked, for all the world, like a charcoal smear extending from his nostrils to his temples, and which also served him as a kind of propeller for shoving backwards and forwards the lamb's-wool cap that he wore half over his face, looked at the poet with wide-open eyes, and asked him--

"Are you he whom they pay to tell lies?"

The Wallach meant no offence by this terminology. It was only his roundabout way of describing Clement the Clerk's sphere of activity.

The poet was almost choking with rage.

"And whose ox are you?" he exclaimed furiously.

"The ox of his Excellency who sent this letter," he answered with perfect simplicity.

"What is your master's name?" cried Clement, angrily s.n.a.t.c.hing the letter out of the Wallach's hand.

"They call him Excellency."

Clement tore open the letter and read as follows--"I want a word or two with you; follow the bearer whithersoever he leads you."

Clement was wroth enough already, but the reflection that he was summoned away on important business, and had no boots to go in, was the last straw. He was quite beside himself.

"Go," cried he to the Wallach, "and tell your master, whoever he may be, that he is as near to me as I am to him; if he wants to speak to me, let him take the trouble to come hither. Do you understand?"

"I understand, Dumni Macska" (Mister p.u.s.s.y), returned the Wallach, involuntarily using in his fright the nickname secretly given by the Roumanian peasants to the Patrol-officer when he is making his rounds; and with that he slouched out of the room.

Meanwhile Clement, with a great muscular effort, had climbed on to his high-backed chair again, and placed two huge folios upright on the floor in front of him, so that his coming visitor might not see that he was bare-footed.