Pretty Michal

by Mór Jókai

Both parties therefore thought it worth while to send plenipotentiaries to the Palatine and the Supreme Court of Hungary, petitioning for a decree in their favor.

Meanwhile the gates of the Jesuit cloisters were watched day and night, so that Valentine might not escape.

There were two persons who made it their special business to watch the cloister: Augustus Zwirina, who sent a drabant, and Henry Catsrider, who sent one of his own apprentices.

The headsman had another reason, besides mere personal vengeance, for cutting off Valentine's head. His own neck was in danger. The world is so bad that even the headsman has enemies. Report said that Henry was drunk when he came to execute the law's sentence, and that was why he missed his aim. And the executioner has his own executioner also, who strikes him in the face in the middle of the market place, if he commits a fault sufficiently grievous to carry deprivation from his office along with it.

Therefore Henry bowled up at the windows of the cloister every evening, and threatened to quarter Valentine alive when he got him into his hands.

The watchers allowed no suspicious person to leave the cloister unsearched. It happened once that a servant died at the cloister. As they were carrying the corpse away to be buried, the town council ordered the coffin to be searched to make sure that Valentine was not being smuggled out in that way, and a stringent order was issued forbidding people to go out at night without lanterns, under the penalty of imprisonment.

At last the judgment of the Supreme Tribunal on the asylum question reached Kassa.

The judgment ran as follows: "Whereas the Jesuits have the right of asylum for their cloister, but whereas it is forbidden them to forcibly detain those of another persuasion, it is now hereby declared that the privilege of sanctuary can only be accorded to Valentine Kalondai on condition that he consents to be received into the bosom of the Catholic Church as a priest, but if he remains in his former faith he is to be handed over to justice. Three days' grace, moreover, are allowed to the said Valentine Kalondai, within which time he is to come to a decision."

With this politic document both the Jesuits and the Zwirina faction were very well satisfied. The former calculated that the delinquent who had escaped from the scaffold would much rather submit to the tonsure than lose his whole head, and would rather renounce the friendship of Calvin than dear life itself, and this they thought would be a great triumph for them. But this very thing would have been no small triumph to Zwirina and Co. also, for the whole Hungarian party, which consisted for the most part of Calvinists, would be humbled to the dust by such an apostasy. As a renegade, Valentine Kalondai would be as good as dead and buried.

When Dame Sarah heard of this judgment, she said to Simplex, who since the days of her calamity had been a constant visitor at her house: "Go to my son, and tell him that I would rather see his head severed from his body than his soul separated from my soul. He will understand what I mean."