Thereupon, with much fear and trembling, he clambered down the rock-hewn way by which he had ascended, not forgetting to shout a good-morning into the hole of the mother bear as he passed.
He naturally omitted to return to the kopanitscha and deliver Janko's message to the pretty hostess; but he did tell an oil-merchant, whom he met on the way, the frightful things which had happened to him and bade him deliver the message at the kopanitscha, as it was all on his way. The oil-merchant, on the other hand, gave him a piece of good advice; to wit, that when he came to the town of Saros he should hand over the bundle which he was carrying on his back to the mayor, for the plundered merchants had advertised their wares broadcast, and if people saw and recognized their stolen cloth on his person they would measure him a jacket which he would not get rid of his whole life long.
And worthy Simplex followed the advice which was given him. No sooner had he arrived at Saros than he handed over the costly cloth stuffs to the town authorities, and the merchants rewarded him with a ducat and let him go on his way unmolested, as he himself in his extant memoirs modestly informs us.
CHAPTER XV.
Valentine really becomes one of those who work in blood.
Valentine's mother had become a widow in her first youth. Her husband, an eminent citizen of Kassa and sheriff there, had been detained as a hostage by the Turks at Buda, whither he had gone on a diplomatic mission, and, succumbing to an attack of the Oriental plague, died in captivity, leaving behind him a widow and a little orphan son. He could only make his will orally, in the presence of two other hostages as witnesses, but it was on that very account all the more religiously adhered to. It prescribed that his widow should retain possession of the whole of his property so long as it pleased God to preserve her in the flesh, so that she might bring up her little son in the fear of the Lord, in all pious ways, in the true Christian Calvinistic faith, and, "quantum potest," in all knowledge and learning.
These testamentary dispositions were most rigorously observed. Dame Kalondai herself carried on the business of her late husband, who had been butcher and ham-curer as well as sheriff, and she never gave her son a stepfather, though in her day she must have been a very pretty woman. Even now she was so buxom and blooming that she looked like a gigantic edition of a swaddling babe. She had taken particular care that Valentine should be properly educated. He always had nice clothes and well-bound books, and when the proper time came she sent him to Keszmár, though it was with a very heavy heart that she consented to part from her little son for so long a time.
So worthy Dame Sarah did not see her little son again for three full years, and when at last he did appear before her she could scarcely recognize him.
She could not get it into her head that the man with the big mustache was really her own little son. His father at his age had had no sign of one.