"So it is!" answered the cold and grim superrector; "seven will be branded with infamy for the crime of one. But if we were to pardon him, all the inhabitants of Kassa would be branded for all time."
"I don't ask you to pardon him. Lifelong imprisonment in the treadmill of the civic reservoir, with the sting of conscience in his heart, would be a still greater punishment for him than death."
"Pray don't let us have any mawkish sentiment, good Master Sheriff! If we don't kill, people will kill us. If we pardon the evil-doers we shall leave the good defenseless. This hard-mouthed people requires an example which shall strike its eyes and so frighten it. If we pardon one malefactor, a hundred others will spring up. It is a sad duty, no doubt, but it is a duty none the less, and must be done."
The cold sweat started out on Valentine's forehead like the morning dew on a flower-bed, as he dipped the pen into the inkhorn, and his large powerful hand trembled so much as he wrote his name under the warrant that his signature, ordinarily so bold and energetic, was now scarcely legible.
"Are there any more arrears?"
"One more sentence, only one, a 'harum palczarum.'"
We must linger a little on these words in order to find out what they mean. Both of the German chroniclers whom we here follow write "harum pallizarum," possibly a corrupt contraction with Latin terminations of the Hungarian expression "három pálczára," i. e., "with three staves." But what is the meaning of the expression? In the annals of the Debreczin town council we find this peculiar punishment (reserved for witches found guilty of pimping and seduction) very plainly described. The Debreczin chronicle says, "let them be crowned with three staves!" The German chronicler adds it was very seldom that anyone survived this punishment. The head of the condemned was pressed between three staves, and then the executioner slowly screwed them together, thereby causing the felons truly infernal torments. Very often they swooned away, and then they were beaten with bunches of thorn till they came to again.
This was the horrible sentence which Valentine Kalondai had now to sign.
When he read the name of the condemned, he fancied the whole house was sinking with him.
"Red Barbara!"