The fellow representing the carnival rose in his bier, distended his broad mouth, and grinned in the superrector's face. He was an honest brushmaker's apprentice. The whole crowd burst into roars of laughter and derisive yells. Everyone instantly guessed that the superrector had sought for Valentine Kalondai in the carnival's coffin.
Old Zwirina was very angry and ashamed.
"You may take him to hell, if you like!" cried he to the crowd of revelers, and, by way of jocose emphasis, he gave the backward part of the carnival horse a spanking thump, but received a kick in return which sent him sprawling into the mud. The horse, which lost one of the red slippers of its hind feet in consequence, then bolted off like mad, while Simplex yelled like a cockney horseman on a runaway nag, tugged at the reins, and implored the laughing crowd to stop the beast. But the mob only chivied the horse all the more, till it had far outdistanced its panting escort. When at last he arrived in the neighborhood of the churchyard, Simplex blew his trumpet with all his might, and at the shrill sound two stout lads leaped up out of the cemetery ditch, leading after them a horse saddled and bridled.
"Valentine!" cried Simplex, "ecce tuum Bucephalum!"
Then the man forming the hinder part of the carnival steed sprang quickly forth from beneath the horsecloth. It was not the Turk Ali, but Valentine Kalondai.
The condemned convict threw himself upon the horse and galloped off.
Simplex and the comrades who had assisted him in the execution of this stratagem threw their masquerading costumes into the churchyard ditch, and after making a wide circuit of the town, returned to it by the Leutschau gate as if they knew nothing at all about it.
The Turk Ali had exchanged rôles with Valentine in the gates of the cloister.