Midst the Wild Carpathians Part 41

"Prettily or not, it strikes me that he is just the man you seek."

"A King of Hungary, eh?"[54]

[Footnote 54: Tokoli (Emerich), the most extraordinary Hungarian of his day, famous for his marvellous courage and beauty, his adventures and vicissitudes. In 1682 the Turks proclaimed him Prince of Hungary, and for the next five years he disputed possession of that country with the Emperor. After being twice thrown in prison by the Sultan, he was released and proclaimed Prince of Transylvania, but, after many successes, was finally obliged to fly to Turkey. He was excluded by name from the general amnesty at the Peace of Lovicz, 1697, between the Turks and the Emperor; but the Sultan made him Count of Widdin and one of his chief counsellors.

He died in 1705 at Nicomedia in Bithynia. He married Helen Zrinyi, who accompanied him everywhere with heroic fidelity.]

"Either that or an outlaw. Fate will decide."

CHAPTER VII.

THE JUS LIGATUM.[55]

[Footnote 55: _Jus ligatum._ The right of conspiring secretly against an offender unreachable by the ordinary law.]

'Tis a good old custom which requires that every ceremony should end with a feast, and so the boisterous Diet was succeeded by a still more boisterous banquet, whereat Michael Apafi also presided; and here he was in his proper place, for the chronicles tell us that a skin of wine at a sitting was a mere nothing to his Highness.

Wine inflames hate as well as love. When ladies are at table, we must look to our hearts; but when only men sit down together, our heads are often in danger.

After dinner, according to Transylvanian custom, the guests stood up to drink. Conversation flows more easily thus, and the Prince, going the round of his guests, presented to them an overflowing beaker with his own hand, challenging them one by one to drain it--"Come, a toast--my health, the welfare of the realm, and whatever else you like!"

The gentlemen were in high good-humour, and kept falling out with each other and making it up again from sheer lightness of heart. Only one man was quite sober--Michael Teleki, who never drank at all.

Beware of the man who keeps sober while every one else is in his cups.

Teleki went about among the wrangling roysterers, and lingered for a long time round Banfi's chair. When the magnate caught sight of him, creeping about like a cat, he turned sharply round upon him.

"Why, how sad you look!" he cried, with a mocking laugh; "just like a man whose coveted palatinate falls into the dust before his eyes."

That was all Teleki wanted.

With a smile, beneath which there lurked a deadly sting, he replied--

"That is no merit of yours. If Paul Beldi had not been present, you would have been left all alone with your vote. But I must confess that we all bow before such a distinguished man as Paul Beldi. The whole nation cries Amen! to whatever he says."

Teleki then bowed low, with a semblance of deep respect, well aware that he had sent a venomous shaft into the proud magnate's heart, for nothing wounded Banfi so much as to see some one honoured above himself, especially some one who really deserved it.

Teleki next turned to Beldi, drew him into a window-niche, and thus began in his suavest manner--

"I had always held your Excellency for a very magnanimous man, but to-day I learnt to recognize you as doubly such, though it was to my own detriment. The Diet only knows that in voting for peace you sacrificed your fatherly affection; but _I_ know that at the same time you sacrificed your hatred of Banfi."

"I?--I have never hated Banfi."

"I know why you conceal your hatred. You fancy that no one knows your secret reasons for it. My friend, we men know well that a sword-thrust may be forgiven, but a _kiss_ never."

Beldi started. He knew not what reply to make to this man, who, after planting the sting of jealousy in his heart, quitted him with a smiling countenance, leaving the wound to rankle.

At that moment Banfi appeared behind Beldi's back with his haughtiest air. He was burning to make Beldi feel his haughtiness, and was thinking how he could best pick a quarrel with him.

Beldi at first did not perceive him, and when the Prince, chancing to stray into that part of the room, holding a costly pocal set with turquoises, which he affably extended, saying familiarly--"Drink, my cousin!" Beldi, fancying that the invitation was meant for him, and never suspecting that any one was behind him, took the cup out of the Prince's hand, and drained it to his Highness's health, at the very moment when Banfi also held out his hand towards it.

Banfi, purple with rage, turned furiously upon Beldi, and said in his most insulting tone--

"Not so fast, Szekler. You might, I think, have a little more respect for the Marshal of the Diet, and not s.n.a.t.c.h away the cup from beneath my very nose. Let me tell you, sir, that if you persist in such courses, you and I shall fall out!"

Beldi was anything but a quarrelsome man. Had he been in another frame of mind, he would simply have apologized for his mistake. But now he too was in a pugnacious mood, so, calmly measuring Banfi from head to foot, he replied with suppressed rage--

"Yes, Denis, I am a Szekler, as you say, and a tough one too; and if it came to a bout between us, and I fell uppermost, I'd give you such a squeeze that you'd never raise your head again in this world."

"Come, come! What's all this nonsense about?" cried the Prince, intervening. "I'm surprised at you, gentlemen! _Inter pocula non sunt seria tractanda._" And, with that, Apafi compelled the two magnates to shake hands with each other, and then pa.s.sed on, thinking that the whole affair was a mere drunken brawl, and that he had put it right.

But it did not escape Teleki that, immediately after this scene, both the magnates quitted the room, and he learnt soon afterwards that they had suddenly left Fehervar, thus leaving the field clear for him.

Teleki and his satellites remained alone with the half-besotted Prince.

"Drink, gentlemen! drink! be merry!" cried Apafi. "Don't drop off one by one! Who last went out there?"

"Beldi!" cried several voices.

"Ah, I understand! The poor fellow has not seen his wife for a long time. Let him go. And who else has gone?"

"Banfi!"

"What? Banfi too? What's the meaning of that?"

"He has gone to lord it at home?" sneered Szekely, one of Teleki's creatures.

"He can't endure to be anywhere where there is a greater than he," put in Nalaczi.

"I certainly shall not resign the princely diadem to please his Excellency!" cried Apafi.

"That is not necessary!" insinuated Teleki. "He knows how to rule in Transylvania without an _athname_. When he commands the country must obey, and what the country commands he contemptuously rejects."

"I should like to see him do it!" murmured Apafi angrily.

"But is it not so? We want war, he doesn't, and we must give way. We want peace, and he is immediately up and waging war against our allies on his own account. The throne is ours, the realm is his!"

"Don't say that, Master Michael Teleki!"

"I appeal to you, Nalaczi! What answer did he give in the Zolyomi affair?"

"He said that if the country wished him to surrender the Gyulai property to Zolyomi, it must give him in exchange the domain of Szamos-Ujvar."

"What!" cried the Prince, "the property which the Estates gave to me for my maintenance! My princely domains! The man must be mad!"