By this time we had started at a brisk pace along the banks of the Danube. I wasn't dressed for such a dismal night, and old Márton was doing his best to shield me with the wing of his coat against the chilling gusts that rushed against us from the river. At the same time he made every effort to make me believe that what we were engaged in was one of the finest jokes he had ever taken a hand in, and that our recollections of it will afford us no end of amusement in the future. At the foot of the castle-hill, along the banks of the Danube was a group of tottering houses; tottering because in spring, when the ice broke up, the Danube roared and dashed among them. Here lived the fiacre drivers. Here were the cab-horses in tumble-down stables.
It was a ball-night: in the windows of the tumble-down houses candles were burning, for the cabmen were waiting till midnight, when they would again harness their horses and return to fetch their patrons from the ball-room.
Márton looked in at one window so lighted; he had to climb up on something to do so, for the ground floor was built high, in order that the water might not enter at the windows.
"He is at home," he remarked, as he stepped down, "but he is evidently preparing to go out again, for he has his top-coat on."
The gate was open; the carriage was in the courtyard, the horses in the shafts, covered with rugs.
Their harness had not even been taken off: they must have just arrived and had to start again at once.
Márton motioned to me to follow him at his heels while he made his way into the house.
The door we ran up against could not be opened unless one knew the tricks that made it yield. Márton seemed to be well acquainted with the peculiarities of the entrance to Móczli's den: first he pressed down on the door knob and raised the whole door bracing against it with his shoulder, then turning the knob and giving the door a severe kick it flew open and in the next moment we found ourselves in a dingy, narrow hole of a room smelling horribly of axle-grease, tallow and tobacco-smoke.
On a table, which was leaning against the wall with the side where a leg was broken, stood a burning tallow-dip stuck into the mouth of an empty beer-jug, and by its dim light Móczli was seated eating—no, devouring his supper. With incredible rapidity he was piling in and ramming down, as it were, enormous slices of blood-sausage in turn with huger chunks of salted bread.
His many-collared coat was thrown over his huge frame, and his broad-brimmed hat that was pressed over his eyes was still covered with hoar-frost that had no chance of thawing in that cold, damp room, the wall of which glistened like the sides of some dripping cave.