The Village Notary: A Romance of Hungarian Life

by báró József Eötvös

When his predecessor, the late commissioner, died,—the worthy man was notorious for killing pheasants and larks with the same sized shot, and drugging all his patients with the same modicum of pills,—the lord-lieutenant and the Estates of Takshony had a tussle on the appointment of a medical officer. The lord-lieutenant promised the place to a distinguished young man of excellent conservative principles. He was a Roman Catholic; he had a diploma; he had been tutor to a magnate, and he had written several poems and charades. But the Estates of the county of Takshony laughed at his Excellency's recommendation, and, insisting on their right of election, they chose another man, and one of whose abilities the county was utterly ignorant. But it was said of him that he knew French, English, and the breeding of silkworms, that he was an honorary member of sundry foreign agricultural societies, that he had studied medicine and law at the university of Sharosh-Patak, and that he was a Calvinist. But the election was annulled; the county was divided into two hostile camps, and the contest lasted above a twelvemonth, when the rival candidates were forced to withdraw from the field, and the hostile factions united in favour of a third party; the reigning medical commissioner of the county. He was a Lutheran, and as such he was agreeable to his Excellency, who hated the Calvinists, and to the Estates, who bore an equal hate to the Romanists. The successful candidate was not of the conservative nor indeed of any other party; he had never been a tutor; he was ignorant of foreign languages, and of the breeding of silkworms; he was not a member of any learned society either at home or abroad; and he was therefore agreeable to all parties, and (as Kriver said) a born angel of peace for the county of Takshony.

Dr. Letemdy, the medical commissioner, was a great man. He treated every one of his patients according to the very system which that individual patient preferred to all others. This accommodating temper of his was, like virtue, its own reward. If the patients had the worst of it, the fault was their own; and besides, Dr. Letemdy had a number of champions on his side. The homœopathists said it served the patient right, for the fool insisted on being treated allopathically; and when the patient refused to be bled, the allopathists raved about the fatal theories of the homœopathists. Add to this that he advised the old bachelors to marry and the young ladies to dance; that he sent the married ladies to the watering-places, and that he indulged his male patients with tobacco, gulyashus, tarhonya, and wine; and it is but natural that Dr. Letemdy was held in great veneration, not only in his own county, but also in the districts and "demesnes that there adjacent lay."

An epidemic disease is the touchstone of a physician. It is here he has to prove not only his skill, but also his courage, his devotion, his philanthropy. The typhus fever which raged in the Dustbury gaol gave Dr. Letemdy a favourable opportunity to display his brilliant qualities; and candour compels us to state that he did display them to a most dazzling extent; for, considering that the great duty of a medical commissioner consists in preventing the extension of an infectious disease, and considering that he was in daily communication with the first families of Dustbury: he made an heroic sacrifice of his feelings, as a physician and a man of science, by never once crossing the threshold of the infected place. The prisoners were thus left to their fate and to Nature; the druggist's bill was remarkably moderate, and Dr. Letemdy could not, in justice, be accused of having adopted a false treatment in the case of any of the many deaths which were daily reported to him, and which he, excellent man! entered, though with a bleeding heart, on the register.

The majority of the Dustbury prisoners were not generally discontented with their involuntary place of residence. Cheerful society, wine, brandy, gambling, singing and laughing, indemnified them, especially in winter, for the pleasures of liberty; and, indeed, there were some of the noble and ignoble inmates of the place who strove hard in autumn, and would not be satisfied till they were safely housed in what they considered their winter quarters.

But in the month of March of the year 18— the Dustbury gaol was a place of howling and gnashing of teeth.

There was a sick ward in the prison. The Estates of the county, obedient to superior orders, had one room and six beds prepared for the sick among the prisoners. And although there were only five hundred people in the gaol, it so happened that the sick ward was always full; nor was it possible, during the prevalence of the epidemic, to separate the infected from those who were in health; each remained on the spot where the hand of disease struck him. The upper rooms had from thirty to eighty prisoners, and from two to three corpses daily. Many of the vaults were absolutely emptied by the death of their inhabitants.

The prisoners were moody and desponding. Even the boldest shrunk from the sight of death in its ghastliest form; and the very haiduks who did the service of the prison, spoke of the scenes which they witnessed with pity and even with tears. The cells which once resounded with riotous laughter and wild songs, were now silent as the grave; but when night came on, the slow measure and the lugubrious sound of hymns was heard to rise from the loopholes which led to the streets. The sound was like the groaning of a vast multitude. And at night, too, the sentinel on his lonely post listened to the prayers of the prisoners, to the confused and earnest murmur which rose on the air and was hushed in silence. The prisoners conversed but little, and always in whispers. When the haiduks entered the gaol in the morning, to take them to their usual exercise in the yard, they found the wretches clinging to the iron railings of their cells, each crying out and entreating them to open his cell first, that he might not lose any of the precious moments of air and sunshine. Some who were struggling with the disease, and who could not stand or walk, crept up the steps and lay on the pavement of the yard, happy to breathe the fresh air of the morning and to see the bright sun before they died.

Among the prisoners in the cell next to the steps were two brothers. They were herdsmen, and the sons of honest parents. An hour of youthful frolic had brought them into the hands of the justice, and from thence to gaol. The younger of the two, a mere child, was the first to fall ill, and his brother tended him as a mother would her infant. It was he who had persuaded his younger brother to do the deed for which they were imprisoned; and was he to see that brother die? He implored the haiduks to send for a doctor, or to procure his brother's release. He said he would willingly suffer the punishment for both. "Let them keep me here two years instead of one! let them keep me here for ever, but let that poor boy go! He is innocent! I told him to do it!" cried he, wringing his hands, and entreating the corporal of the haiduks. Even the eyes of that hardened man filled with tears as he replied, that the entreaties of the prisoner were of no avail, the county having resolved to confine all the inmates of the prison to its precincts to prevent the disease from spreading. As the days wore on, and when there was no hope of the lad's recovery, the unfortunate young man spoke to no one. At the hour of recreation he seized his brother's wasted form, took him to the yard, sat down by his side, and taking the poor boy's head in his arms, remained quietly sitting there during the short half-hour which they were allowed to stay out. One day a haiduk said to him: "Why do you drag him about with you? Don't you see he is dead?" The prisoner shuddered. He looked at the body which lay by his side. He kissed it—but there was no breath! He put his hand to its heart: it had ceased to beat! He stared into its eyes, they were fixed and glazed! its limbs were stiff and cold. "He is dead!" cried the prisoner, with a broken voice, as he reeled and fell. They took him back to the cell, but he never regained his consciousness. He, too, fell a victim to the epidemic.

In a cell adjoining his there was a man who moved even his fellow-prisoners to compassion. He had passed ten years in gaol: his hair was turning grey; his body had lost its former strength; but the term of his punishment was all but over. Only a few weeks were wanting to the day to which he looked for his return to the world, broken in health, but rid of his chains. Nobody expected him. Nobody was to receive him and greet him; but he was to be free! That one thought made up for all he had suffered. When the fever broke out in the gaol, he grew anxious and restless: he asked his fellow-prisoners how they did? he asked the haiduks whether there were any deaths? For the first time in his life, he was afraid of death; for the first time in his life, he had an earnest hope. Two days before his liberation he was taken ill. His despair was fearful to behold. He told the bystanders that he expected to be a free man in forty-eight hours: he talked of his native village and of his plans for the future, and that he intended to live an honest life, if, indeed, his life were spared. He prayed and wept. He cursed the hour of his birth; he hurled his maledictions against God, who had kept him alive all these long years to deprive him of the fruits of his hopes and his patience. He doted on life; after ten years' absence, the world seemed a paradise to him; there was a deep yearning in his soul for the fresh green meadow, the glassy expanse of the river, and the wide and boundless view over the Puszta. He had dreamed of these things during the long weary nights of his captivity; and now, when there was but the space of one single step between him and this longed-for bliss, now, now he was to die! Now, even before he was free! even before the chains were off his hands! There was the glow of fever in his brain, turning, whirling, and distorting the things of this earth before his burning eyes: but that one thought was uppermost even in the wild ravings of fever; and his wailing voice was heard to lament the fate which robbed him of liberty.

At length death set him free! And many were there in that prison who gasped for freedom, and found it in the grave.