Ciprianu's house was, as is usual among the Wallachian nobility, well fitted for the reception of guests. Everything savoured of the householder's nationality, but comfort and abundance were everywhere manifest. Canopied beds were provided for all, only the master of the house, according to established custom, lay down before the kitchen door, wrapped in his sheepskin, and with his double-barrelled musket by his side. In an adjoining room stood two beds for Blanka and Zenobia. Aaron and Manasseh were likewise given a chamber in common.
Curiously enough, one is often most wakeful when most in need of sleep. All her surroundings were so strange to Blanka that she found herself wide awake and listening to the barking of the dogs, the occasional crowing of the cocks, the snoring of the master of the house, and his frequent mutterings as he dreamed of fighting with thieves and housebreakers. Then her companion began to moan and sob in her sleep, and to utter disjointed sentences in Hungarian, of which she had so studiously feigned ignorance a few hours before. "Oh, dear Jonathan," she whispered, passionately, "do not leave me! Kiss me!" Then she moaned as if in anguish.
Blanka could not compose herself to sleep. Only a wooden partition separated her from the room in which the two brothers slept. She could hear Manasseh turning restlessly on his couch and muttering in his sleep as if in dispute with some one.
"No, I will not let you go!" she heard him exclaim. "You may plunge my whole country in blood, you may baptise my countrymen with a baptism of fire, but I will never despair of my dear fatherland. Your hand has girt it round about with cliffs and peopled it with a peaceful race. It is my last refuge, and thither I am carrying my bride. With your strong arm restore me to my beloved home. I will wrestle with you, fight with you; you cannot shake me off. I will not let you go until you have blessed me."
The fisticuffs and elbow-thrusts that followed must have all spent themselves on poor Aaron's unoffending person. At length the elder brother wearied of this diversion and aroused his bedfellow.
"With whom are you wrestling, brother?" he cried in the sleeper's ear.
"With God," returned Manasseh.
"Like Jacob at Peniel?"
"Yes, and I will not let him go until he blesses me—like Jacob at Peniel."
"Take care, or he will put your thigh out of joint, as he did Jacob's."