Amongst his executioners shaggy Hanák particularly distinguished himself by his fiendish ingenuity, but the squire only remarked to him in a gentle voice:
"Do you recollect, Hanák, how last year, you were bedridden, and I supported your whole family? And when your biggest lad was taken by the recruiting sergeant, did I not buy him out? And when the hail destroyed your crops, did I not give you the corn on which you and your whole family lived comfortably during the winter?"
But at this mild reproach, stubbly Hanák only wiped his bloody mouth, and bellowed with bestial pride:
"There's no Hanák here! I'm Hanák no longer. I'm a rebel patriot, that's what I am!"
The poor Leather-bell was quite unable to help his master. He could only implore the rioters to torture him if they liked rather than Hétfalusy. He knew he was the cause of it all because he had talked about the poison. He wished now that he had eaten of the poison and died.
Dame Zudár, meanwhile, had been regarding the sufferings of her mortal foe with devilish enjoyment.
There she stood, her arms folded across her breast, facing her enemy, whose warm blood frequently spurted over her face.
"'Tis no good hurting him that way," she murmured to herself. "A boor howls if you nip him, this sort only holds his tongue just as if he had a soul different from the others...."
"This was the very spot where you made my father bleed," she cried. "Do you recollect Dudoky, eh? There he lay, where you lie now, and you stood beside him, as I now stand beside you, and revelled in it. But my father wept and howled beneath his torments while you only keep silent. I could not bear to look on, I ran away and hid myself in my room, but there also I kept on hearing his shrieks. I heard them through two thick walls. Twenty years have passed since then, and through those twenty years I still hear him. I want to hear you weep too, and not mock your executioners by putting on a stone-cold face like that. Yes, you shall weep, you shall entreat. I will not be happy till I see your eyes full of tears."
Hétfalusy regarded the fury contemptuously, and knitted his lips.