"Does your Excellency desire any favour from me?" asked Csaky presently, with insulting commiseration.
"None from your Excellency. I came here of my own free will, and have been arrested I know not why. My wife, therefore, can now be set free."
"So at last we begin to whine for our wife, eh?"
"On the contrary. So far from wishing to meet her, I desire that as soon as I am put in prison she should be let go."
"It shall be as you desire, my lord!" replied Csaky, with ironical benevolence.
Banfi requited him with a look of the most withering contempt, and turning to the jailers entered into conversation with them: the magnates he no longer regarded.
When Teleki heard of the capture of Banfi, he ordered him to be sent at once to Bethlen Castle, to make the world believe that the anti-Banfi faction was headed, not by him, but by Beldi, to whom the castle belonged.
On his way thither, the captive magnate learnt that his consort had already been released, and thus relieved of his one remaining anxiety, cared little for the rest.
On reaching Bethlen Castle he was received by the Rev. Stephen Pataky, Rector of Klausenburg, to whom he cried jocosely—