What could be in this box? The guests laid their heads together about it, but not one of them could guess.
Suddenly all four clamps burst asunder, the four sides of the box fell aside in four different directions, and there on the table stood—a covered coffin!
A cry of indignation resounded from every corner of the room.
A pretty present for a seventieth birthday! A black coffin covered with a velvet pall; at the head of it the ancient escutcheon of the Kárpáthy family, and on the side, picked out with large silver nails, the name—J-o-h-n K-á-r-p-á-t-h-y.
Horror sealed every mouth, only a wail of grief was audible—a heavy, sobbing cry, like that of a wild beast stricken to the heart. It came from the lips of old John Kárpáthy, who had thus been so cruelly derided. When he beheld the coffin, when he read his own name upon it, he had leaped from his chair, stretched out his arms, his face the while distorted by a hideous grin, and those who watched him beheld his features gradually turning a dreadful blue. It was plain, from the trembling of his lips, that he wanted to say something; but the only sound that came from them was a long-drawn-out, painful rattle. Then he raised his hands to heaven, and suddenly striking his forehead with his two fists, sank back into his chair with wide-open, staring eyes.
The blood froze in the veins of all who saw this sight. For a few moments nobody stirred. But then a wild hubbub arose among the guests, and while some of them rushed towards the magnate and helped to carry him to bed, others went to
fetch the doctors. The coffin had already been removed from the table.
The terrified army of guests was not long in scattering in every direction. Late that night all the roads leading from the castle of Kárpáthy were thronged with coaches speeding onwards at a gallop. Terror and Hope were the only guests left behind in the castle itself. But the rockets still continued to mount aloft from the blazing firework and write the name "Kárpáthy" in the sky in gigantic fiery letters visible from afar.
Now, what more natural than that the mob of breathless, departing guests should lose no time in presenting their respects, and paying their court to the heir-presumptive of the vast possessions of the Kárpáthy family, his Honour Abellino Kárpáthy?