"Gracious Lady, treat him as your child." With these words he leaned forward, and enveloped him in his robe and the child sought refuge in the arm of his protector, and began to cry bitterly. "Do not cry, my little one, have confidence in your mother; she loves you. A mother's chastisement brings blessing to the child. Now take the book, and carry it to the room designed for me."
This commission so surprised the child that he forgot to cry. Curiosity overcame sorrow. He was delighted to take into his hand the wonderful book whose contents the devils themselves feared, as if they had themselves to spell it out, or take a whipping. Off he ran with his book, and the three fools after him. As soon as they could, they stopped to study the strange characters painted in gay colors on the parchment.
CHAPTER III.
THE LORDS OF MADOCSANY.
When they were left alone, the Lady began to laugh. Her pleasure was as passionately violent as her anger; she clapped her hands and pressed them to her head.
"Aha! So you're here, are you? At last! You are not dead! You did not go out into the wild world! You have come to me! A hundred times I have called you; a thousand times I have waited for you; but always in vain. When I did not expect you, you are before me! Ha ha! And in what a masquerade have you slunk in, Tihamer Csorbai!"
And with that she laid both hands on the monk's shoulders, rested her dimpled chin on her arm, and laughed in his face with her sparkling eyes.
"My name is Father Peter," said the monk calmly. And without change of countenance, he suffered the Lady to press him to her breast with all her might.
"That's not true!" she cried, seizing violently the monk's rough garment over his breast. "It's only a disguise," and she tore open the coarse cowl on his breast, expecting to see a gold-trimmed, buckled cloak of velvet. In its stead was a coarse shirt of unbleached linen, such as all Jesuits wore, down to the humblest begging monk; and where this coarse shirt parted on his breast, could be seen around his neck a chain of steel with iron cross. The points on the links of the chain and the sharp edges of the cross had left bloody prints on his neck, from her violent embrace. But he endured both the embrace and the torture without a smile, without a word.