Clement the Clerk stuck his pen behind his ear and recited to himself the elegant verses which he had just composed, two hundred strophes in all, almost every line of which ended in fuerat, with a sporadic fuisset in between.
Michael Apafi used regularly to repent whenever he had offended any one, and he therefore could not rest till he had compensated the itinerant scholar Clement for the snub he had administered to him, and this he did by making the unsophisticated poet his——Patrol-officer.
In those days many agreeable duties were connected with this office—duties which Clement simply left alone, devoting himself instead to the composition of epics and chronicles, which he manufactured in great abundance.
At that moment he was casting his eyes over a great epic, in which he recorded how his Highness, Prince Michael Apafi, had gone out against Érsekújvár to besiege it; how with splendid valour he had arrived there; how, on beholding the foe, he had drawn his sword; how, after mature deliberation, he had turned back again; and how, finally, he and all his heroes had returned home again safe and sound.
Poetic distraction had so completely absorbed the faculties of Clement the Clerk, that a week had already elapsed since his servant had made off with his master's spurred jack-boots, without the latter, in his capacity of Patrol-officer, thinking of pursuing the runaway; but in fact he was confined within a vicious circle, inasmuch as every time he thought of inquiring for his boots, it occurred to him that his servant had stolen them; and every time he thought of going out and inquiring for his servant, it occurred to him that he had no boots. What could he do then under such circumstances but sit down again, and write poems in absolutely endless quantities?
His room had not been swept out for weeks, naturally therefore there was no lack of dust and cobwebs; but, by way of contrast, the deal floor all around the solitary table was mottled with ink-blots. The table itself had only two legs, the place of the others being supplied by layers of bricks.
The poet scribbles, erases, and nibbles at his pen; on the window-sill lies a piece of bread and some cheese; it occurs to the poet that it has been put there for him to eat; but first he must use up the ink still remaining in his pen, and in doing so another idea occurs to him, and after that a third, and then a fourth; meanwhile mice come skipping out of a hole beneath the window-sill, frisk about the bread and cheese, nibble away at it till not a morsel remains, and then skip back into their holes again. The poet having wearied out his Pegasus, starts up, looks for his bread and cheese, and perceiving that only the crumbs remain on the window-sill, concludes that he has already eaten his fill, so sits him down again and goes on writing.
While he is thus plaguing himself for the benefit of posterity, somebody begins scratching at the door, and after groping about the door-hinge in search of the door-latch, finds it at last, and shakes it to and fro as if he does not know what to do with it. This disturbance disagreeably awakens Clement the Clerk out of his poetic reveries, who, after vainly exclaiming in a loud and angry voice that the door is not bolted, finds himself at last obliged to rise from his seat and open the door himself, lest the importunate visitor should break off the latch or lift the door bodily from its hinges.
Before him, with a sealed letter in his hand, stands a gaping Wallach peasant, who appears extraordinarily terrified to see the door open, though that was the very thing he had been aiming at all along.
"Well, what is it?" snapped Clement the Clerk, horribly angry. "Why don't you speak?"