"You impertinent dog!" cried Mr. Skinner; "how dare you insinuate? how dare you say? how dare you—— I am insulted; I insist on the court giving me satisfaction."
"I am in the hands of the court," said the prisoner. "Beat me, kick me, torture me; but give me the papers!"
"I am sure it's a plot," whispered Mr. Catspaw to the assessor. "Tengelyi declares that his diplomas are gone. Who knows but he may be a patron of this fellow?"
"Nothing is more likely," replied the assessor.
"What, fellow! what, dog! do you mean to say that I stole the papers?"
"All I say is, that I had the papers in my hands, and that some person took them away. I wish the court would please to examine the Pandurs, who will tell you that nobody was near me but the justice and Mr. Catspaw."
"This is indeed strange," murmured Mr. Kishlaki. Mr. Skinner pushed his chair back, and cried,—
"The court cannot possibly suffer one of its members to be accused of theft!"
"Yes, too much is too much," said Zatonyi, with a burst of generous indignation: "if you do not revoke your words, and if you do not ask their worships' pardon, we will send you to the yard and have you whipped!"
Viola answered quietly, that he was in their worships' power, but that he would repeat what he had said to the last moment of his life; and Zatonyi was just about to send the prisoner away to be whipped, when Völgyeshy reminded him in Latin that the Sixth Chapter of the Articles made not only prohibition of what the assessor had been pleased to term "wheedling," but also of threats and ill-treatment.