Midst the Wild Carpathians

by Mór Jókai

"What! Just say that again! I should like to hear it once more. Do you know, gossip, to whom you are speaking? My name is Firi Firtos, and if you speak a single word more, I'll chuck you over the house, so that you will fall to the ground in half-a-dozen pieces."

"Why bandy words with him?" cried a voice from the crowd. "Let us pitch the fellow out of the window."

The Szeklers did not wait to be told twice, but instantly raised the castellan into the air and threw him, despite his frantic struggles, out of the window. Luckily he fell on his feet, and took to his heels, to the great indignation of Firi Firtos, who seized all the cactus and hortensia plants that stood in the windows, and hurled them after him, pots and all, after which the whole mob rushed bellowing down to the cellars. Finding it impossible to open the large iron doors, they dragged forward huge casks, filled them with big stones, and sent them flying down the cellar steps, till at last the iron doors fell in with a tremendous crash.

The vast cellar was fitted with huge butts and barrels of every size and shape, and the Szeklers forthwith fell upon them and knocked the tops off with their morning-stars to see what was inside them. The costly wine poured out into the cellar. The Szeklers drank as only Szeklers can drink, and what they could not drink was simply wasted.

When they had all drunk as much as they could hold, the mob stormed up-stairs again, and while another batch took their place below, they forced their way into the state-rooms, rolled about on the costly divans and oriental carpets, hustled one another against the furniture and mirrors, and indulged in many other like pleasantries. Firi Firtos climbed on to a round ebony table in order to paint a moustache on the portrait of a mediæval lady with a piece of charcoal, but some one else jerked the table from under him, and the merry wag fell crashing down into a glass chest containing the family treasures. Mad with rage, he immediately began pitching about everything which came to hand: gorgeous gold pocals, silver plates, enamelled snuff-boxes, flew one after another at the heads of the Szeklers, who, entering into the joke, flung them all back at him with great spirit.

This was the signal for a general devastation. The mania for destruction is contagious. It needs but one to begin it, and the mob, as if rejoicing at the sight, is never so ready as when there is something to be pulled, torn, or smashed to bits. In an instant every piece of furniture was broken up and every bit of tapestry torn down. Splendid costumes, costly, fur-trimmed pelisses, gala-mantles—everything was torn to pieces. They ripped open the feather-beds, scattered the eider-down out of the windows, and bellowed to those who stood below—"It is snowing! it is snowing!" whereupon all the others came rushing up to tear and pull to pieces what still remained whole.

They pulled up the fragrant jasmines by the roots to make posies of them, and cut up into neckties the delicate tapestries which Lady Banfi had worked with her own hands. Stealing gave the Szeklers no pleasure, it was destruction for its own sake that they found so delightful. Thus they threw to the ground a rare and costly clock which needed winding only once a year, broke it up, distributed the wheels and chains as buckles for their shoes, and melted the silver keys into bullets, which they fired off into the air.

Here too it was edifying to see how Firi Firtos tried to get at the bottom of everything. He took down an antique urn and stuck it on his head upside down by way of a helmet. A clock chain he wound round his loins as a girdle, and he danced about hugging in his arms a huge statue of Gutenberg, declaring that it would make an excellent scarecrow for the Somlyo vineyards.

The fragments of the broken furniture they piled up on the hearth, and made a great fire of the priceless ebony, mahogany, and palisander woods. The conflagration of a whole village would not have been half so costly.

Over this fire they hung, on a silver chain, a Corinthian amphora of exquisite workmanship by way of a kettle, filled it with finely-chopped mutton, and sent Firi Firtos out for beans, salt, and onions. He brought them instead green coffee beans, white powdered sugar, and the most costly tulip, amaryllis, and hyacinth bulbs, all of which they threw pell-mell into the kettle, with the natural consequence that the mess, when finished, was very nearly the death of them all, and the end of it was that they pitched Firi Firtos neck and crop into the courtyard.