"I cry your Excellency's pardon, but his property is a liber baronatus, where my jurisdiction ceases."
"Don't be so stupid, Clement," said Csaky. "I never said you were to repair thither vi et armis: the whole expedition must remain a secret. You have only to follow the wild beast's track. We have it, on the best authority, that the beast is somewhere in the neighbourhood, and we trust to your dexterity to spot it. The rest will be done by more enterprising people than yourself."
Clement regarded the mission as altogether odd and risky, but he dared not raise any objection, so he simply bowed low and sighed deeply.
"Above all things we must have dexterity, expedition, and secrecy. Keep that constantly in mind."
"I will go at once," cried Clement desperately; "but first I must borrow me a horse from some one or other, for I should not like to utterly ruin these beautiful boots by walking in them."
"That too would be a little too slow for our purpose. But don't bother your head about a horse. One of my heydukes will give you his, which you must mount at once. Remember however to give him oats occasionally, as I don't want him to come back all skin and bone."
Clement the Clerk, quite confounded by so much graciousness, hastily shouldered his shabby knapsack, fastened his rusty sword to his side, and after placing in his knapsack a roll of parchment, a goose-quill, and a wooden ink-horn, declared himself ready to depart.
"You have a very light equipment," remarked Csaky.
"Integer vitae, scelerisque purus, non eget Mauri jaculis neque arcu," returned the philosopher with a classical flourish, and when the reins had been placed in his hands, he prepared to mount. But the aristocratic charger, as soon as he perceived that the clerk had one foot in the stirrups, began to plunge, buck, and run round and round, thereby compelling the aspiring poet to hop along with him on one foot, till the laughing heydukes seized the horse by the bridle, and helped the unpractised horseman into the saddle. As however he had very long legs, and the wicked heydukes had lashed the stirrups up very high, he was obliged to squat upon the horse as if it had been a camel.
Ladislaus Csaky bawled after him once more not to forget what he had told him, whereupon the poet, quite unintentionally, gave his horse the spur, and dashed madly off at full tilt over stock and stone. Mantle, sabre, and knapsack flew about the ears of the unfortunate horseman, who held on to his saddle with both hands in mortal agony, to the intense delight of the whole population of Toroczko, who were sitting in groups outside their houses on their beard-driers, as the benches used to be called in those days.