Apafi immediately threw his attila over his shoulders, girded on his sword, and stepped into the reception-room.
"Good-day! good-day!" he cried hastily to those assembled there. He wished to cut short their long ceremonious greetings, and looked about among them with inquiring eyes.
"Where is the emir?"
The Tartar envoy at once stepped forward. He was a truculent, swarthy fellow, with small sparkling eyes. A heron's plume as long as the shaft of a lance waved from his large turban. He wore a red, richly-fringed jacket, and the gold inlaid hilt of his scimitar peeped forth from his broad girdle. Defiantly he placed himself in front of the Prince and stuck out his chest.
"Salem alek! What do you want?" asked Apafi curtly.
The emir measured the Prince from head to foot twice or thrice with his piercing eyes, threw back his head, and said—
"My master, the gracious Kuban Khan, bids me say to thee, O Prince of the Giaours, that thou art a perjured, false, and faithless man. Thou didst swear by thy honour that we should be good neighbours, and how hast thou kept thy word? It chanced last year that we traversed the Saxon[26] land, and visited those towns whose names no true believer can pronounce, to collect the usual yearly tribute. They were ever good payers, but some among them chancing to lag behind with their contributions were, by the order of the most gracious Khan, instantly reduced to ashes that they might learn to behave better another time. And perchance thou dost fancy that they amended their evil ways? Not at all. For when we visited them again this year, we found the charred and naked walls as we had left them the year before: the unbelieving dogs had traitorously fled away. Wherefore my gracious master, the mighty Kuban Khan, bids me ask thee what manner of prince thou art that dost suffer these unbelieving dogs to so forsake their towns and make fools of us. When we came at other times, the hay was housed, the corn thrashed, the cattle stalled—and this time we find nought but weeds, and therein hares and other unclean beasts which ye unbelievers delight to eat, and none of the towns built up again, so that we could take no vengeance. Look to it, then, if thou wouldst not draw down upon thy head the wrath of the mighty Khan, look to it that thou commandest this runaway people to return to its towns that we may reckon with them; and in the meantime bid the remaining Saxon towns, which have faithlessly environed their houses with impregnable walls, that they open their gates to us, otherwise we will visit thee in Klausenburg itself with fire and sword, and will not leave thee one stone upon another."
[26] Saxons. Geza II. (1141-1161) planted in Transylvania a German colony to clear the forests and till the lands. These so-called Saxons have survived to the present day, and reside chiefly at Hermannstadt.
Apafi, during the course of this speech, had frequently laid his hand on his sword, but he evidently thought better of it, for it was with the utmost tranquillity that he thus replied—
"Go back! Greet thy master, and say that we will give him satisfaction."