Here, on this lonely road, he was not even a soldier. The Austrians regarded him merely as a plotter, an accomplice of the conspirators in Vienna, an instigator of Count Latour's murder, the boon companion of a brigand whose life was forfeit even to Hungarian laws.
Thus the fiat had gone forth that Count Beula, the representative of a noble family, the head of a house celebrated long before the days of Arpad, was to be taken and hanged straightway like the vilest malefactor in the land.
The very thought of this terrible disgrace had, as he admitted, unnerved him; its imminent approach drove him crazy. This, I am fully convinced, was the real reason for his astounding conduct.
The robbers were by this time too far off to render any aid, though several glanced over their shoulders to see what was happening. The hussars had got very close to us.
My horse quivered with excitement, but did not move while I, after several attempts, set the count free.
Exactly what was to be done I had not determined, though it occurred to me that my animal must carry double, or that while Beula rode I must hang on by the stirrups.
In either case, no doubt, I should have been killed or taken prisoner; but the count solved the difficulty in his own way. He looked a strange object as he sprang to his feet. Blood from a wound in the head trickled down his ashy-grey cheeks; his blue eyes stared wildly; he seemed like a man possessed, as I really believe he was.
He glanced at the approaching Austrians and shuddered; then, without a word of warning, he leaped into my saddle and was gone.
It all happened so suddenly that I stood dumfounded. That one of my race and nation could be guilty of such black treachery had never entered my head.
Wild, unreasoning anger succeeded stupor, and I shook my sword at the retreating figure; then anger yielded to pity.