"Then, if that woman is holding him by one hand, I shall seize the other and we shall see which of us will be the stronger."
Márton gave me a sound slap on the back, saying "Teufelskerl.[48] What are you thinking of?—would other children mind, if a beautiful woman ran away with their brother? But this one wishes to stand between them. Excellent. Well, shall we look for Master Lorand? How will you begin?"
[48] Devil's fellow: i. e., devil of a fellow.
"I don't know."
"Let me see; what have you learned at school? What can you do, if you are suddenly thrown back on your own resources? Which way will you start? Right or left: will you cry in the street, 'Who has seen my brother?'"
Indeed I did not know how to begin.
"Well,—you shall see that you can at times make use of that old fellow Márton. Trust yourself to me. Listen to me now, as if I were Mr. Brodfresser. If two of them ran away together, surely they must have taken a carriage. The carriage was a fiacre. Madame has always the same coachman, number 7. I know him well. So first of all we must find Móczli: that is coachman No. 7. He lives in the Zuckermandel. It's a cursed long way, but that's all the better, for by the time we get to his house we shall be all the surer to find him at home."
"If he was the one who took them."
"Don't play the fool now, sir studiosus. I know what cab-horses are. They could not take anyone as far as the border; at most as far as some wayside inn, where speedy country horses can be found: there the runaways are waiting while the fiacre is returning."
In astonishment I asked what made him surmise all this: when it seemed to me that with speedy country horses they might already be far beyond the frontier.