[57] Great Pipe.
[58] "One keeps silence, the other listens to him."
This observant individual was no other than the humane Master Janos, Police-corporal, and vice-jailer of the noble city of Pesth; and when we inform our readers that he occupied this post during Metternich's time, and that, notwithstanding that minister's overthrow, he still retained his position, unlike the usual fate of the adherents of a fallen ministry, they will surely admit that the favourite of fortune could not be better personified than by the same Master Janos; nor can it be denied that the individual opposite was no less persecuted by the fickle goddess, not only because he was the object of honest Master Janos's suspicious glances; but more especially because a nailsmith's apprentice from Vienna could think of coming to Hungary of all places on earth—a country where the craft is carried on wholesale at the corner of every village, by the Wallachian gipsies.
Master Janos had not studied Lavater, but long experience had led him to conclude, after minute examination of the man's countenance, that some counter-revolutionary scheme was turning in his head.
Consequently he drew his chair nearer, and determined to break the silence.
"Where do you come from, sir? if I may presume to ask," he inquired, with a wily glance at his companion.
"Hyay! from Vienna," sighed the stranger, looking into the bottom of his glass.
"And what news from that city?"
"Hyaee! nothing good."
"Eh, what? nothing good!—what bad, then?"