"His Excellency Monsieur l'Abbé Reverend, the French Envoy, desires an audience."
This announcement again filled Apafi with embarrassment. He drew Teleki aside and whispered in his ear—
"I will not, I cannot receive him. Go out and speak to him yourself, and explain how matters stand." And with that he hastily quitted the reception-room, delighted at having this time shifted the difficulty on to Teleki's shoulders; but he remained listening at the door to find out whether there would be any violent explosion behind his back.
And an explosion there certainly was, though not of a particularly terrifying character.
The Prince heard Teleki burst into a jovial peal of laughter, whereupon all the gentlemen present with one accord followed his example, just as if they were taking part in some intensely amusing diversion.
"It must indeed be a very peculiar phenomenon which extorts such extravagant merriment from these sour-faced gentry," thought Apafi, and he half opened the door—he could not quite open it, because learned Master Passai, ordinarily a miracle of gravity, had so given himself up to mirth that he was forced to lean back against the Prince's cabinet.
"Let me come in, Master Passai!" cried the inquisitive Prince, and succeeding shortly afterwards in opening the door, the cause of the general mirth was immediately obvious to him.
The Abbé Reverend stood in the centre of the room in full Hungarian costume. A more comical figure was scarcely conceivable.
The worthy gentleman, who rejoiced in the possession of a really redoubtable corporation, standing there, clean shaven and benignly smiling, presented an amiably ludicrous figure, of which only an Hungarian, or one who knows what a severe criterion of the human figure the tight-fitting Magyar costume really is, can form any idea. Add to this that the worthy Frenchman, in his stiff hose and spurred jack-boots, moved about as gingerly as if he feared every moment to fall on his nose. He had also forgotten to buckle on his girdle, which lent a peculiar quaintness to his general get-up, and his long bag-wig, in which he looked like a lion, was surmounted by a tiny round cap from which waved a gigantic heron plume.
Apafi did not see why he too should not smile when the others laughed.