"Treshi, my soul!" said he at length, turning to his wife, "Treshi, I am a wretch!"
Lady Kishlaki sighed, and her husband went on.
"I know, Treshi, you will not love me as you used to do, and it's the same with Kalman. When you see me you'll think: he might have saved the poor fellow's life, and he wouldn't do it!"
Lady Kishlaki said a few words of comfort; but the old man shook his head, and continued:
"No, Treshi! that man's life was in my hands, and I killed him. His blood is on my soul."
The good woman's heart yielded to the sincerity of his sorrow, and instead of reproaching him, as she intended, she sought to comfort him, by protesting that the responsibility, if there was any, lay equally with the other judges. "Besides," added she, "how frequently have you not sat in a common court, without feeling remorse and sorrow!"
"Oh, that's a very different thing," replied Kishlaki. "In a common court a man is allowed to vote after his conscience, and the sentence is found by a majority. There is no idea of the life of the prisoner depending upon a single vote; the sentence is sent to the upper court, and to the king's government, and if it is executed, I need not reproach myself with being the sole cause of the prisoner's death. But to think that nothing was wanted to-day but my single simple word of 'non content;' that I did not say the word, and that it was I who killed that fellow,—goodness gracious! it breaks my heart. I hate myself, and I feel that others cannot love me."
"But if that is your view of the case," said his wife, with tears in her eyes; "why, for God's sake, did you vote as you did?"
"Why, indeed?" cried Kishlaki, pacing the room in a state of great excitement; "because I am a poor weak fool; because I was afraid of them when they told me my conduct was ridiculous; because Mr. Catspaw, and the whole lot of them, called out, that the Retys would never forgive me if Viola's depositions were taken down; and because I thought of Kalman's love to Etelka. And Völgyeshy walked away and left me by myself——"
"I cannot think that the Retys should be guilty of such infamous conduct——"