'Tis a good old custom which requires that every ceremony should end with a feast, and so the boisterous Diet was succeeded by a still more boisterous banquet, whereat Michael Apafi also presided; and here he was in his proper place, for the chronicles tell us that a skin of wine at a sitting was a mere nothing to his Highness.
Wine inflames hate as well as love. When ladies are at table, we must look to our hearts; but when only men sit down together, our heads are often in danger.
After dinner, according to Transylvanian custom, the guests stood up to drink. Conversation flows more easily thus, and the Prince, going the round of his guests, presented to them an overflowing beaker with his own hand, challenging them one by one to drain it—"Come, a toast—my health, the welfare of the realm, and whatever else you like!"
The gentlemen were in high good-humour, and kept falling out with each other and making it up again from sheer lightness of heart. Only one man was quite sober—Michael Teleki, who never drank at all.
Beware of the man who keeps sober while every one else is in his cups.
Teleki went about among the wrangling roysterers, and lingered for a long time round Banfi's chair. When the magnate caught sight of him, creeping about like a cat, he turned sharply round upon him.
"Why, how sad you look!" he cried, with a mocking laugh; "just like a man whose coveted palatinate falls into the dust before his eyes."
That was all Teleki wanted.
With a smile, beneath which there lurked a deadly sting, he replied—
"That is no merit of yours. If Paul Beldi had not been present, you would have been left all alone with your vote. But I must confess that we all bow before such a distinguished man as Paul Beldi. The whole nation cries Amen! to whatever he says."