Three thousand six hundred feet above the sea-level, on a height of the Carpathian mountain range, a convivial party, consisting mostly of army officers, was enjoying itself with wine and music. A splendid view lay spread out before the merrymakers,—a wide-reaching landscape lighted by the slanting beams of the western sun as it sank in golden radiance beneath the horizon.
"Look there," Rideghváry was saying, as he named, one after another, the cities and villages that lay before them; "yonder lies the way to Constantinople."
His words were greeted with a shout: "Hurrah! Long live the Czar!" Glasses clinked, and the company struck up the Russian national anthem. Rideghváry joined in, and all uncovered during the singing.
"Don't you sing with us, Zebulon?" asked Rideghváry, turning to his friend, who sat silent and melancholy.
"No more voice than a peacock," was Zebulon's curt reply.
The crags about them gave back the tuneful notes, while far below the long line of Russian cavalry regiments, on their march from the north, caught up the song.
"See there!" cried Rideghváry to Zebulon, pointing to the troops as they wound their way southward toward the heart of Hungary; "now comes our triumph; now we shall tread our foes under our feet. No power on earth can withstand our might." His face beamed with exultation as he spoke.
Zebulon Tallérossy was out of humour. His present part had pleased him so long as he had nothing to do but travel about with his patron, make the acquaintance of foreign celebrities, and receive honours and attentions wherever he went. That, he thought, was the fitting occupation of a great statesman, and he had looked to this same kind of statesmanship to bring everything to a quiet and orderly conclusion. But when he saw that matters were not destined to flow on so harmoniously much longer, he fell out of conceit with his rôle of statesman.
Returning with Rideghváry to the town that lay beneath them in the valley, he gave his friend and patron a hint of his dissatisfaction. "Yes," said he, "she is a mighty power,—Russia; I don't know who could withstand her. But what will be the fate of the conquered?"
"Væ victis—woe to the vanquished!" returned the other sententiously.