The worshipful town council had a very hard time of it that day. In the early morning, two squadrons of Walloon cuirassiers had marched into the town, blowing, not the Hungarian farogato whose richly varying melodies so much delighted the people, but those shrill trumpets which were only invented for the annoyance of mankind. And between the two squadrons of cavalry, sitting on mules and chanting discordant hymns, the Jesuit fathers also came back to the town.
The colonel of the foreign soldiers and the superior of the Jesuits hastened together to the townhall, and a great dispute arose between them in the council-chamber as to which of them should have the precedence. General Löffelholz asserted that, by virtue of his rank, he was entitled to settle military matters with the magistrates first of all. Prior Hieronymus, on the other hand, appealed to the privileges of his order, which placed him above every temporal authority.
Neither the soldier nor the monk would give way, and the pair of them kept their heads covered, the one with his plumed hat, the other with his hood. At that moment the sound of clanking spurs was heard coming along the corridor, and now both the contending parties gave way before the third comer.
The man who now entered also wore a plumed biretta on his head, but it was scarlet. His powerful body was dressed in a scarlet coat, and over it he wore a long scarlet mantle.
The clergyman and the soldier instantly made way for him. They were careful not to come into contact with so much as the hem of his garment.
It was the headsman.
Henry Catsrider's face had very much altered since he had laid aside his priestly garb. His former long fair hair was now clipped short, and his beard flowed down in two long reddish wisps. His face was puffy from much drinking, and his large eyes, that had once been so sparkling, now gleamed out of his coppery, swollen countenance like smoldering embers. His large, coarse mouth was all awry. The humanized wild beast had relapsed again into its original savagery. Even if he had worn no hangman's weeds, all the world might have read his frightful profession from his face. As he approached, everyone timidly made way for him.
And if there was anyone who had as much cause to shudder at the appearance of this shape, as if the skeleton with the scythe had suddenly sprung up out of the ground before him, it was certainly Valentine Kalondai. To him this creature was not only the man of blood, but the man whom he had robbed of his wife.
Even at the time when passion had led him to this step—a step to which a whole host of concurring circumstances, hot blood, and the force of fate had constrained him—even then he had thought that he might one day fall in with him whom he had made a widower, but he had then said, "I will rather get together a robber band than surrender my beloved to destruction!" That would have been a very different kind of meeting. A meeting like this was more than human foresight could have foreseen.
All eyes turned to him who was the head of the city, the president of the town council.