Pretty Michal

by Mór Jókai

But Simplex had something else to say to Valentine, of which Dame Sarah knew nothing.

Two days of the respite had already elapsed; the third was Shrove Tuesday, the day of fools.

Valentine had as yet not declared his resolution, but he had now only till vespers to do so. If he still remained silent, then it would be taken as a sign that he preferred to submit to the sentence of death.

Henry Catsrider had had the scaffold reërected. Valentine could see it from the cloister window.

No one else, however, troubled himself about it, for it was the last day of carnival, and all the world was thinking of the carnival frolics. All day long boisterous masks paraded the streets—men disguised as women, all sorts of guys dressed up on horseback; and in the evening, they all met together to carry out the carnival and bury him. The lads vied with one another as to who should make the greatest fools of themselves. One lengthened his legs with stilts, another made himself up as a giant. There were some who stuck themselves all over with feathers, and strutted about like birds, while others stuffed themselves out till they were as big as barrels. One trumpeted, another rattled, a third drummed away on a huge frying-pan.

The most attractive mask of all, however, was the carnival horse, which consisted of two men. The first man made up the fore part of the horse; he wore the horse's head, which was true to nature and as large as life, while the other, who planted his head in the middle of the first man's body, composed the rear part of the horse; both were covered with a large horsecloth, on which lay a saddle with the dependent stirrups, and the whole thing looked exactly like a real horse. The man in front had all the fun of the thing. He could trumpet whenever he felt inclined, he drank whatever people liked to give him, and he held a large whip in his hand, with which he struck at everyone who came too near him. But the poor fellow who formed the rear part of the horse had a much harder billet. He saw nothing and heard nothing, and was obliged to scramble along in a stooping position wherever the man in front chose to lead him; and if his leader did not look well after him, he got from everyone of the passers-by a sounding thump on the hindermost part of his person. It was not easy, therefore, to find someone willing to accept this rôle, and generally some lubber of an apprentice, who had failed in everything else, was pitchforked into it.

Now just at that time there was no such apprentice in all the guilds of Kassa, so that there was absolutely no one to take up this unpleasant rôle but the poor, good-natured Turk Ali, who could be persuaded to do anything, and everyone could see his red slippers peeping out from under the horsecloth as the carnival steed pranced along. It was an open secret that the carnival horseman who rode this steed was Simplex himself.

Behind the carnival steed came the carnival himself in a cart drawn by two oxen. He lay in a red coffin, which was covered all over with fools' caps, bells, and masks. Giants with heads as large as barrels and gigantic storks walked alongside of him, carrying his escutcheon on a pole, and behind the coffin marched a roystering band of apprentices made up as buxom wenches, who offered their tankards to everyone who passed and would absolutely take no denial.

The carnival's funeral procession stopped before the dwelling of every guildmaster and every clergyman. The leader of the procession pronounced a loud eulogium on every notability, to which the notability in question responded by refilling the empty tankards with wine or beer. On each such occasion the fool's sacristan awoke the carnival in his coffin, lifted up the pall and gave him a drink. The carnival was also an apprentice, and he certainly had one of the very best billets, for all he had to do was to lie still and drink.

When the carnival's funeral procession arrived in front of the cloister of the Jesuits, the two armed watchmen, the drabant and the headsman's assistant, were still standing there, one on each side of the door.