"'My lady, I beg pardon! I know what honour is. I was once a soldier. I know my duty. What won't match can't match. A horse and an ox won't draw together. A peasant woman's meet for a peasant, a lady's meet for a gentleman. Now did I ever so much as raise my little finger to your ladyship? You know I didn't. And yet how many times haven't you ruined the butter? You never moistened the maize. The pigs wouldn't eat it because it set their teeth on edge, for you threw them hard raw grain. This won't do, you know! When the cows calve, who'll be there to see to them? And who is there to clean out the furnace? The mice have gnawed away the sleeves of my jacket, it's all in rags. Besides that, I have got into the way of saying, "Hie, you Jutka! d'ye hear?" and then she knows very well what her duty is; and when I strike her she makes no bones about it, either. I couldn't live without thrashing her occasionally; it does my back good, which would else grow double; and she always knows how to come round me again.'"
I threw my sketch-book and my palette out of my hand, and flung myself down on my back, I laughed so much. How could I help laughing? Bessy laughed too.
"I can laugh mightily at it now, but situated as I was then, his words were so many lashes. At last I flew into a rage and attacked Peter.
"'Can't you say straight out that Muki Bagotay has bribed you to take back your wife, whom you drove away on his account?'
"'Oh, I humbly beg your pardon, you must not say that I am bribed. I am an upright man. His honour, my lord Bagotay, gave me ten head of oxen as a gift, but he didn't bribe me.'
"My heart was ready to break at these words.
"Ten head of oxen indeed! For the sake of this peasant I had sacrificed my whole existence, the world in which I had hitherto lived, the respect of my acquaintances, my ease and comfort. I had made the earnest resolve to become a peasant woman for his sake, to work, do without things, suffer penury, and when once I had recovered my property, to give it all to him, make him a gentleman according to his notion of a gentleman, and the wretched creature had bartered me for ten oxen!"
I hastened to explain to Bessy that this was really the legally appointed fine for adultery in case the affair came to be settled. Verböczy[74] says: "Raptor solvat decem juvencos."—"The seducer must pay ten oxen."
[74] The great Hungarian jurist (1460-1541), and one of the most eminent statesmen of his day. His opus magnum, entitled "Tripartitum opus juris consultudinarii inclyti regni Hungariæ," was first published in 1517.—Tr.
Bessy then proceeded:—