Black Diamonds: A Novel

by Mór Jókai

On the altar all the candles were lighted, and their light showed with distinctness every incident of the performance, every feature in the faces of the performers.

What a scene!

On one side of the vault ran a long table, round which was seated, eating and drinking, not the countess's ancestors and ancestresses, but all the servants of her household. The maids, who were so strictly guarded, were here in the company of the men who were so rigorously excluded. The countess could, therefore, see that these were flesh-and-blood ghosts which had so long haunted her ancient castle. Each of her handmaidens had a lover in either the steward, bailiff, gamekeeper, or clerk in the neighborhood. The nervous housemaid, who at night was afraid of her own shadow, was now drinking out of the glass of the innkeeper; the virtuous maid was embraced by the mayor's footman; the portress, an elderly virgin, held a jug in her hand, while she executed a clog-dance upon the table. All the rest clapped hands, shrieked, sang at the top of their voices, and beat the table as if it were a big drum. The shepherd, who represented the countess's grandfather, sat upon the monument of the chancellor, his legs round the cross, and played the bagpipes. It was this instrument which at the burlesque of vespers imitated the harmonium. Upon the gravestone of the first archbishop the beer-barrel was set up. The maids were all dressed in the countess's silk dresses, with the exception of the female coachman, who, as usual, wore man's clothes, but by way of symmetry her lover, the coachman of the neighboring brewery, was dressed in woman's clothes. The countess recognized on the head of this bearded fellow her nightcap, and round his body her cloak, trimmed with her best lace. Worst of all, at the top of the table sat Fraulein Emerenzia, on very intimate terms with her neighbor, a young lawyer. She wore the skirt of a favorite dress of Theudelinde's, a flame-colored brocade; the body could not fit her corpulent form, so she had her mistress's best lace shawl wrapped round her. Her face was red; she had a large tumbler of wine before her, and she smoked a pipe. The modest Emerenzia!

The men were all drunk and noisy, the women screamed in an unearthly manner; the bagpipes squealed; the table resounded with thumps and the clatter of the portress's clogs. From the altar came the voice of the mock priest, his arms outstretched in blessing. Through the din the words "Bacchus vobiscum" were heard, and the tinkle of the bell. This mock priest was no other than Michael the sacristan, who brought all the church ornaments confided to his care. He wore the pastor's vestments, and on his head an improvised skull-cap. The acolyte was the parish bell-ringer.

The countess was cut to the heart. The terrible ingratitude, especially of these girls, to whom she had been as a mother—more anxious indeed than their own mothers to keep them pure and innocent—wounded the poor lady who had taught them to sing hymns on Sunday, had fed them from her own table, and had never allowed them to read a novel or hear a bad word. And this was the outcome of her efforts. They insulted the graves of her ancestors, played upon her nervous fears, destroyed her rest, nearly drove her mad with their ghostly noises, wore her clothes at their orgies, and, worse insult of all, she, a high-born lady and a pure woman, had the degradation of wearing these same garments, defiled as they were with the smell of wine and stale tobacco.

Bitter as such ingratitude was, it counted as nothing in comparison with the profanation of using the holiest things of religion, the sacred ornaments of the Church, to carry out these impious rites. "Woe to them from whom scandal cometh," says the Scripture, and this woe means pain and suffering that no soothing balsam can alleviate.

A mortal terror still filled the countess's heart. She was in the presence of those who had no control over their already besotted senses. If these drunken savages, these unsexed women, found their revels were discovered, what was to hinder them tearing her to pieces? There was only one man between her and them. Theudelinde looked at her solitary protector. His eyes gleamed with such apostolic anger that her timid soul grew fearful of the consequences, both to him and to herself, of his just wrath. She seized both his hands, to hold him from venturing among such demons. The abbé easily freed himself from the clasp of her weak fingers. In one bound he sprang down the steps, fell upon the false priest as he was in the act of pronouncing his final stramen; with the butt-end of his rhinoceros whip he gave him two blows.

What the countess now witnessed was truly no vision. She saw how one man, armed with no more formidable weapon than a horsewhip, ventured into the midst of the hellish assembly, with one hand seized the table and overturned it and all that was on it of dishes, glasses, and wine-cups, with the other cracked his whip in the faces of the guests, who sprang to their feet in all the terror of detection, like to the profaners of the Temple. They were driven towards the door of the vault, the abbé's whip descending on their shoulders with impartial justice. They went tumbling over one another, howling and screaming, pressing onwards and pursued by the flagellation of the abbé. The bagpipe player in his haste missed his footing, those behind stumbled over him, and so lay all in a heap together. Not one went without carrying a remembrance of the abbé's strong arm, for he spared no one. No effort was made at reprisals; the criminal who is caught seldom shows fight. These last were, moreover, taken by surprise, and the clergyman was possessed of extraordinary strength; one man who tried to drag the horsewhip from his hand was dealt such a blow in his face that he was glad to relinquish his hold and take to his heels without loss of time.

"Give it to them! give it to them!" cried the countess, who had no pity for her former servants, who had to pass her as they made their way pell-mell to the door. Emerenzia covered her head, not from shame, but fearing her face might get a blow. Almost the last was the sacristan, whose clerical dress hindered his speed, and whose back was so battered by the abbé that the vestment he wore hung in ribbons.

After the last guest had departed, the abbé closed the heavy door of the vault and returned to where the countess was standing. His face wore an almost glorified expression; it was the consciousness of having asserted his strength. As he approached the countess fell on her knees, and made as if she would kiss his feet, but the abbé raised her.