Pretty Michal

by Mór Jókai

From this time forth, Valentine, by virtue of his new office, daily visited the commandant's house, where he was always a welcome guest. In the townhall also, he was held in high honor.

The land, just then, was in very difficult circumstances. A town like Kassa, shut in between three distinct masters and anxious to please all three, without giving such a preference to any one of them as might offend the other two, had a very hard time of it. By virtue of the pacification putting an end to the late religious wars, Kassa fell within the jurisdiction of George Rakoczy, Prince of Transylvania, whose Suzerain was the Turkish Sultan. But the pashas of Eger and Grosswardein often took it into their heads to make predatory raids on their own account as far as Kassa and Tokay, and then the good people of Kassa could not wait, as it is the fashion nowadays, till the English had held indignation meetings to protest against the Turkish atrocities; but they forthwith mounted their steeds, seized their weapons, and smote the troops of their own Prince's Suzerain; and this they often did, moreover, in concert with their adversaries the Hungarians of that portion of the kingdom of Hungary which belonged to the Kaiser. In those days, therefore, it required no small discrimination to judge accurately which of the many strangers passing to and fro were to be reckoned with as friends, and which as foes; which could be put off with promises, and which had really to be sent away with presents; which might merely be threatened with stripes, and which ought really to get them.

Now at this very time, there came from that part of the land which both Hungary and Transylvania claimed as their own, a person of great distinction, Belisarius Zurdoki by name. One of his ancestors had returned to Hungary from Wallachia with great treasures, and this his descendant had also the reputation of being a very rich man.

Zurdoki made a great display at Kassa. He said he had come to visit Count Hommonai, with whom he was distantly connected on his mother's side. He brought quite a court with him, equerries, pages, a secretary, a chaplain, a huntsman, a master of the hounds, a jester, gypsy musicians, a falconer, heydukes, couriers, domestics, lackeys, coachmen—in fact, there was no counting the multitude he brought in his train. He took up so much space in Count Hommonai's castle that there was no room left for its lawful owners.

And all the time he resided at Kassa, he did nothing but give splendid entertainments. There was absolutely no end to them.

Belisarius Zurdoki was already over sixty, but though his age was venerable, he had no very extraordinary reputation for morality. He had had so many wives, morganatic and otherwise, to say nothing of those from whom he had been separated, that he himself no longer recollected their proper sequence. He had little respect for the sex, and held that there was not a woman in the world who could not be bought with gifts, only some were more highly priced than others.

He himself, however, had not been in the way when beauty was being served out. He had a broad, satyr face, with a red nose sinking right down upon his mustache; his head, after the prevailing Turkish fashion, was clean shaved, with the exception of a single gray lock over his brows which bobbed up and down whenever he wagged his head. His mustache hung down limp on both sides in the Turkish style, and his stomach was not unlike a large beer barrel.

And yet he tried to make the world believe that he was such an amiable man that the woman was yet to be born who could resist him, be she never so young, beautiful, and accomplished.

That he was also smelling and purring around the Countess Isabella Hommonai was patent to everyone, but the count would not for the world have taken any notice of it. Yet he heartily laughed over it all in secret with the countess, who made sport of the old rake, and told her husband everything he said.

One day Zurdoki gave a great banquet at the castle, on which occasion he brought out all his silver plate to make a goodly show, and invited the whole of the civic notabilities. Pretty Michal was there too, the prettiest of the whole company, and as she was dressed very simply her beauty was, of course, all the more striking. She was even lovelier than the countess herself. Her natural refinement and smiling coyness could not be imitated by those who did not possess those graces. With proud humility, she wore over her wondrously beautiful tresses the matron's coif, which showed that all this loveliness already had a master.