"Wasn't it! But you haven't heard the end of it yet. After the repulse of the second assault, Muki began to carry on the war in grim earnest. One evening, our maid, who had been sent out as a spy, came back with the terrifying news that his honour had sent out orders that on the following day all his tenants were to assemble in the courtyard of the castle armed with cudgels, flails, and pitchforks; to his huntsmen and heydukes also he had distributed guns and ammunition. The whole of this host was to advance upon us in battle array on the morrow. It would have been well, perhaps, to have fled before them while there was yet time. But we did not fly."
"Then what was the end of it all?"
"A very droll ending indeed. When the danger was greatest, good luck sent a deliverer, a good friend, just as usually happens in happily-constructed dramas, who intervened with a mighty hand and diverted the stroke from our heads."
"And who was this good friend?"
"Why, who else but the bearer of this fine blonde beard!" cried she, with an ironical smile, caressing my chin.
"I? Why, I was not in that part of the country at all."
"Ah! but poets have long arms, you know. At the very moment when Muki was placing firearms in the hands of his peasants, freedom was proclaimed at Pest. The rumour spread throughout the kingdom like wildfire—the Revolution had broken out. They say in Pressburg that Petöfi and you were on the Rákos[40] at the head of 40,000 peasants, and that a new Dózsa[41] war had begun. The retainers of Muki also thronged up to his castle, not to carry me off by force, but to demand their liberties. 'We'll work no more!' they cried; 'we'll pay no more tithes, and no more hearth-money.'[42] Freedom had broken out with a vengeance! Muki was thereupon so terrified that he fled incontinently through the back door in the clothes of his lackey, and never stopped till he was safely out of the kingdom. I have heard nothing of him since. So you see your mighty hand turned aside the danger that was hovering over our heads. We drank your health afterwards in big bumpers."
[40] A plain to the east of Pest, where, from the earliest times, elective assemblies were held.
[41] George Dózsa, the leader of the Hungarian jacquerie of 1514, who was finally captured and executed after truly infernal torments.
[42] Füstpenz—lit., smoke money, so much on each chimney.