Tales From Jókai

by Mór Jókai

And now the two accomplished young men were summoned back to Lithuania.

All the way to the boundary hillock of the Bialystok domain they travelled in a peasant's cart; but there a noble cavalcade awaited them, with the Major Domo of the Starosta at their head.

The great gilded carriage of the Starosta, which was only used on the greatest occasions of State, was sent to meet the young men, and to it the four most reliable nags from the Starosta's stables were harnessed, which went at a slow, dignified, parade step. On the box sat a coachman in the national costume, and a couple of heydukes clung on to the straps behind.

The Major Domo ought to have pronounced a solemn greeting; but he never had the opportunity, for no sooner had the two youths leaped from the cart, than a rush was made upon them by the mounted Szlachta, who took possession of them uproariously, every one who could pressing up to, embracing, and kissing them. Besides the youths, there leaped from the cart a huge mastiff, the indispensable attribute of University students, who seemed to be greatly attracted by the Major Domo, and kept taking vigorous leaps at him. The gentleman in question was wearing a bear-skin kaczagány, which the noble beast had evidently determined to tear from his shoulder by hook or by crook, and in the mean time the fine oration the poor Major Domo had prepared for the occasion escaped him altogether.

The new arrivals were really two very nice young fellows—both of them heroic-looking figures, though entirely different from each other.

Casimir was dark, with fiery-black eyes. His head was entirely covered with curly hair, he had a luxuriant forelock hanging over his forehead, and such a thick, luxuriant crop of hair that it would have blunted the edge of a descending sword. His thick eyebrows drew near to each other like bushy-headed serpents—perhaps, also, they would have seized each other had they not been separated by the powerful authoritative nose, which was the characteristic feature of the Moskowski family. Such an aquiline nose you would not have met with in the whole Sarmatian race, and it was fitly accompanied by the protuberant red mouth and the pronounced double chin, which were also hereditary peculiarities. He was his father's own son, though of a somewhat higher type.

Heinrich, on the other hand, was an excellent specimen of the type of masculine beauty peculiar to the German race. His thick, leonine, dark-red hair rolled over his shoulders in luxuriant masses. His face was ruddy, his forehead white, he had a small and delicate nose, with sensitive nostrils, large bright-blue eyes, above which the thin straight eyebrows seemed to have been added by a painter's brush. His mouth was large, but his lips were finely chiselled, and a large brown mole at the corner of the lips gave a peculiar expression to the mouth.

There was no fear of mistaking one of them for the other.

And the dog, too, was a fine dog. He belonged to that race of mastiffs which in the Hungarian Corpus Juris bears the name of "sinkorán," the keeping of which is forbidden in Hungary by a special paragraph of the code.

When the fêted gentlemen had been released from the embraces of the young cavaliers, and the Major Domo from the jaws of the sinkorán, the next thing was for them to take their places in the State carriage. The noble youths carried Casimir on their shoulders to the carriage, and set him down on the back seat. Heinrich also was carried on men's shoulders to the carriage—only in his case it was not the cavaliers, but the heydukes who performed that office, and they placed him in the front seat face to face with Casimir.