"Love, indeed!—what nonsense!" cried Mistress Kata; "as if a peasant would go mad for love! Bless your soul! only great folks can do that—peasants have something else to do."
"And were you not yourself madly in love with me, eh?" interrupted her husband, putting his arm round her waist.
"Get along!" cried his wife, striking his hand and blushing to the eyes; "I'd like to know for what?"
The old peasant meanwhile pulled my cloak, and whispered, "I don't like speaking here, sir, for they only laugh at me; but if you would like to hear, come this evening. I will be standing in the porch, and there I can tell you. It is a sad story enough, and may interest you to hear it."
Mistress Kata reverted frequently to the subject, exclaiming ever and anon, as the bread baked, and she took each loaf out of the oven and turned up its shining crust, "Well, that is an idea!—go mad for love of you, forsooth, as if you were worth going mad for!"
I did not forget my evening tryst, and found the old man in the porch. I greeted him with "Adjon Isten,"[33] and placed myself beside him on the bench.
[33] Adjon Isten, God give—an abbreviation for, God give good day, &c.
The old man returned my salutation, and, emptying his pipe, began striking fire with a flint. "Permit me, sir, to light my pipe again; for I cannot now think much unless I see the smoke before me;" then, drawing his cap far over his brow, he began his tale:—
"Nobody remembers anything about it now, for full sixty years have passed since it happened; I was myself a barefooted boy, and it is only a wonder that I have not forgotten it too. That poor idiot whom you saw there, that wrinkled old creature, was then a beautiful young girl, and that Joska bacsi of whom she always speaks was—my own brother! There was not a handsomer pair among all the peasants than those two; I have seen many a rising generation since, but never any like them! Our parents were mutually sponsors. Marcsa's mother held my brother and me at our baptism, and my mother held Marcsa. We played together, we went to school together, and to the Lord's Table on Easter Sunday. Hej! that was a good priest who christened and catechized us; he has been long since preaching in heaven; and the worthy chanter who instructed us too, is up striking time among the angels!
"The lad and the young girl had been so attached from their childhood, that they never dreamed they could live otherwise than together. Our mother always called Marcsa her little daughter-in-law; and when she and my brother were each nineteen years old, their parents decided that if God pleased to preserve us all till the next Carnival, they should be married. My brother often entreated them not to wait till the Carnival, 'for who knows,' he said, 'what may happen before then?' and with reason did his heart misgive him, poor fellow! for at the vintage Marcsa's father and ours went to the cellars to make the wine, and the deadly air[34] struck them—we found them both dead!