"Did you touch this book?" he asked the Fool.
"No, not if you were to give me this castle, and its handsome mistress with it, would I open that book; it opened itself."
The red and blue letters were oh, so enticing! It was no sealed secret now that they contained; for they were all familiar. The monk leaned back in his chair and read the leaves of the secret writing until he had read them to the end. And the farther he read, the more intense grew that expression of unquenchable thirst, like that of a sick man who dreams that he is in a desert and longs for a cataract to drink. Every leaf of the book was a new catastrophe, the whole one unbroken delirium; he did not look up until he had finished the last line of the last page. Then he called to the Fool: "Bring me a whole bucket of wine."
The morning sun, which streamed in through the painted window, found them both in the same place; the Fool was under the table: the monk sat before his book, his head on his hands, his eyes wide open:—he did not read, he did not sleep, but yet he dreamed.
In Yaw Derevocsid Eht was no cabalistic writing. The writer at the very first gave his reasons for employing this device. He had chosen the Arabic letters so that all would try to read it from right to left, and so fail to discover its meaning. In case it occurred to anybody to read it from left to right, still, as the people of that vicinity rarely knew more than Hungarian, no meaning would appear. In case anybody understood English, it was hardly probable the Arabic text would be familiar too. Only by rare chance could this mysterious book be deciphered. What it contained was the description of a secret passage or tunnel that led from the Madocsany Castle to the turreted walls of Mitosin. Midway was the river Waag, which was here quite wide, but the tunnel passed under the river bed, thus anticipating the Thames tunnel by about four hundred years. If any one shakes his head at this, and begins to doubt that our story is true, we will point out to such a doubter the secret way that leads from a certain castle to a distant village, a veritable catacomb which in a straight line would be fully a mile long, a work of the Hussites. The vaulted passage-way is covered with mould, from which in one place shines out two memorial tablets; one of stone bears the symbol of the cooper's trade, as peculiar to the Hussite monks as the trowel and the triangle to the Freemasons. In the stone vaulting, above is seen a goose, the Hussite symbol; what purpose this tunnel served the Hussites is yet to be discovered; but the object for which the Madocsany-Mitosin tunnel was made, was clearly set forth in this Yaw Derevocsid Eht. Both castles belonged to Czech robbers and bandits in the days when the Hungarian regent, John Hunyadi, with all the military forces of the land, wore himself out trying to drive back the monstrous host of the Turkish Sultan. He who fights with a bear has no time to brush wasps from his face. The Czech could ravage the country at pleasure, and when sometimes bands of noblemen, led by Hungarian Counts, rose up against them to take vengeance for their plundering and reckless deeds, suddenly every trace of the pursued would be lost. The larger robber-hordes would withdraw to their strongholds and defy every attack; the lesser ones, led by impecunious noblemen, left their drawbridges down before the pursuing bands, and let them seek at will what they so eagerly pursued. The enemy searched everywhere, in every corner, cellar, loft, chapel, and crypt; and when they could find nothing more, still lingered on, days and weeks, and then cleared out the storehouses, and withdrew in unsatisfied rage. The entire robber-band meantime, with all their stolen wealth and beautiful Slavic maidens, passed down into this secret tunnel, and made their way to the other castle. And the freebooters who guarded the Waag was ready to swear that not one of them had passed over the river. It was true; they had gone under. But once Mathias Corvinus ordered the two castles attacked at one and the same time; the robbers fled first from Mitosin through the tunnel, only to find themselves surrounded in Madocsany. It was at this time that the monk wrote Yaw Derevocsid Eht. He described in detail to whom the two castles belonged, and where the entrances and exits of the tunnel were. The book was intended to be a guide to the treasure which the robbers had concealed in a chamber in the tunnel. Every point of the chamber was clearly defined, all the small bags of gold and silver coin were numbered, there were also given names of human beings, or beautiful women as precious as jewels; the name of each individual was given, and the families were enumerated from which they had been stolen. A description was set down of the coat, cap, and even the finger-rings that each one wore; who were of the Catholic, and who of the Lutheran faith. If any one ten or twenty years later should discover them in the subterranean dungeon, where, together with the stolen treasure, they had been hidden away, he would know at once in which consecrated ground to bury each one, what name to inscribe on each cross, what prayer to have said for each soul's weal. The monk had faithfully cared for all, and left the book in the archives of the convent. What happened to the robbers, the chronicles do not tell: probably the same that happened to the bandits of Dzuela. In a night attack, they were cut down by the royal troops and any who were taken alive were at once hung. The victors probably carried off enough gold with them so that they were satisfied no more remained. The two entrances of the tunnel were so well concealed, that six generations followed each other in both castles without anybody's having a suspicion of the common mystery that bound them. The Yaw Derevocsid Eht, said everybody who looked at the writing. But no one understood the words until they came to Father Peter.
CHAPTER V.
THE LORDS OF MITOSIN.
Opposite the Madocsany Castle gleams forth the Mitosin. Its four towers are covered with tin, and when the setting sun shines on them, all four blaze like sheaves of fire. They are round and dome-topped in Russian style. There is still a fifth tower that would gladly show itself above the silver poplars; this one runs up into a spire and cross, while the others end in a star. What the tower with the cross could find inside the inclosure of the Mitosin Castle, where neither its former lords, the Hussite Knights, nor its present lord, a Lutheran magnate, were of the Catholic faith—this is explained by a curious history that one can learn piecemeal; here and there a fragment is kept back, and only at the very close is the whole truth known. Now one can fully believe that the little church was built in honor of Saint Anthony, though in reality a Hussite church. The purpose of this was to conceal from the Count Von Treuesin, or from Count Von Tipsen, that the builders were Hussites, by pointing to the church with its cross and picture as Roman Catholic. The present lord of the castle, Grazian Likovay, had inherited his estate from his mother, Susanna Szuhoy, a zealous Catholic, who had left this to her son on condition that the church of Mitosin Castle should always be maintained in its present condition: and a legacy had been deposited with the neighboring Dean of Tepla, to insure the reading of mass once a week in this church, whether there was anybody present or not. The lord of the castle was enjoined to maintain the church in good condition, not to coin its bell into counterfeit money, and to allow the sacristan of Tepla to ring the bell at the customary hours; furthermore, he was not to appropriate the church to the Lutherans. If he opposed these conditions, Mitosin with all its appurtenances, was to go to the public treasury. Had the pious lady ever seen the interior of this church, she would not have left this legacy, which was of no use whatever; for while there was a bell in the tower, there was no rope; and there was neither ladder, stairs, nor any other way of reaching the bell. And even if it had been rung by the hour, no honest Christian would have entered the church, on account of the altar picture. Whoever made that had not taken into consideration the temper of these people, or else had purposely set it aside. From an artistic point of view, the picture was a masterpiece. It represented the Temptation of Saint Anthony in the Wilderness, and had been painted by an Italian master.
The ascetic was the true ideal of a holy hermit who withstands all the temptations and seductions of Hell; yet the people of this vicinity could not enjoy the monsters from Hell in such frightful forms as can be conjured up only in the fancy of a melancholy painter. But apart from these terrifying monsters, the temptress, in whose form Satan surprises the pious hermit, had been painted with such striking boldness that at the first sight of the same from the threshold of the door, every good Christian would turn and run. Such may pass in Italy, but in our mountainous highland it is too cold for such a garb, so that even the priest himself took no pleasure in reading the liturgy in the presence of such an altar-picture. If, however, in spite of everything, any one could take pleasure in saying his prayers in this church, if an innocent soul could be found that took exceptions to nothing, that saw only what was godly in this church, and was not conscious of the painted devil, either in the form of a monster or of a beautiful woman; for any such provision was made.