"'If what the world whispers turns out to be true, and you have in the meantime been to Vienna—but no! I will not believe it.'
"His magnanimity offended me even more than his indictment.
"'What is it to you whence I come or whither I go?' I replied, turning my back upon him and beginning to talk to the young officers, like one who has nothing to be ashamed of.
"Shortly afterwards I quitted the banqueting-room. I hadn't reached the end of the long pavilion corridor in the fortress when Rengetegi came running after me.
"'What on earth possessed you to calumniate and accuse me before the whole company,' I said to him, 'just as if I were a traitor, or I don't know what?'
"'Tsitt! Zenobia, my Queen. Let us understand each other. It was in your own interest that I had to feign jealousy and rage. Let us go into my room and I'll explain everything.'
"When we were alone together he locked the door and then explained things nicely.
"'Aha!'
"'Amidst all this laudation, appreciation, and ovation, and all the other flummery, I did not lose sight of the main chance. I told the Governor privately that if he wished to reward me in any way, he might do me the favour not to give to the flames the property deposited in the bank to the credit of the damsel who was so near to my heart, but allow me to bring it back to her. The austere patriot was as inexorable as Brutus. "Never!" said he. "We will burn what we have laid hands upon, even though it were the property of my own father. We can make no exception. What would those poor devils say whose paltry ten or twenty florins we surrender to the flames of the auto-da-fé if we allowed the forty or fifty thousand florins of the rich to fly away? Burn they shall!" This he said with a very wrathful voice. Then he added in a milder tone: "However, I'll confide the burning of them to you."'