Apafi took advantage of this momentary fainting fit, plucked up his courage, left his wife, and joined the Aga with streaming eyes.
"Well, sir, let us be off," said the Turk. "But surely you won't go without your sword, just as if you were some poor peasant," continued he fiercely. "Go back, I say; gird on your sword, and tell your wife that she need fear nothing."
Apafi returned to his room, and as he took down his large silver-embossed sword (it was hanging up on the wall right over the bed) he said cheerily to his wife—
"Look, now! there can scarcely be anything unpleasant in store for me, or they would not have bidden me buckle on my sword. Trust in God!"
"I do, I do trust in Him," she replied, convulsively kissing her husband's hand and pressing it to her heaving bosom. Then she broke forth again into bitter lamentations. "Apafi, if I die, do not forget me."
"Alas!" cried Apafi; then bitterly cursing his fate, he tore himself out of his consort's arms, and wishing all Turks, born and to be born, at the bottom of the sea, rushed violently out of the room.
Then he threw himself into his carriage, and looked neither up nor down, but wrestled all the way with the one thought that if his wife were now to die, he would not be able to receive her parting words; and this thought conjured up before him a whole series of images each more lugubrious than the other.
He and his escort had scarcely left Ebesfalva a mile behind them when the Turks caught sight of a horseman dashing after them at full tilt, obviously bent on overtaking them, and they called Apafi's attention to the fact. At first he absolutely refused to listen to them; but when they told him that the horseman came from the direction of Ebesfalva, he made the carriage stop and awaited the messenger.
It was Andy who came galloping up, with waving handkerchief and loosely hanging reins.
"Well, Andrew! what has happened?" cried Apafi with a beating heart to his servant while he was still a long way off.