"He has gone to lord it at home?" sneered Szekely, one of Teleki's creatures.
"He can't endure to be anywhere where there is a greater than he," put in Nalaczi.
"I certainly shall not resign the princely diadem to please his Excellency!" cried Apafi.
"That is not necessary!" insinuated Teleki. "He knows how to rule in Transylvania without an athname. When he commands the country must obey, and what the country commands he contemptuously rejects."
"I should like to see him do it!" murmured Apafi angrily.
"But is it not so? We want war, he doesn't, and we must give way. We want peace, and he is immediately up and waging war against our allies on his own account. The throne is ours, the realm is his!"
"Don't say that, Master Michael Teleki!"
"I appeal to you, Nalaczi! What answer did he give in the Zolyomi affair?"
"He said that if the country wished him to surrender the Gyulai property to Zolyomi, it must give him in exchange the domain of Szamos-Ujvar."
"What!" cried the Prince, "the property which the Estates gave to me for my maintenance! My princely domains! The man must be mad!"