One day Mr. Kordé had drunk himself into an unusual state of fuddle.
When I say unusual, I mean, that as early as midnight he did not know whether he was boy or girl, and took the starry firmament for a bass-viol.
He had made a little excursion with his friend the magistrate, Mr. Martin Csicseri, to a little tavern in the outlying vineyards to taste the new vintages, and there the two gentlemen got so drunk that they would have found it difficult to explain in what language they were conversing.
Finally they set off homewards, leaning heavily for support on each other's shoulders. His honour, Mr. Csicseri suddenly caught sight of a broad ditch by the roadside. He swore by heaven and earth that it was a nicely quilted bed, and there and then laid himself down in it and fell asleep.
For some time Mr. Kordé kept on pulling and tugging at him to get him out, first by an arm and then by a leg. However, so far from giving his friend any encouragement, Mr. Csicseri only rebuked his wife for putting such a low pillow beneath his head, and then, without pursuing the subject further, went off as sound asleep as a humming top.
So the cantor found himself all alone in a strange world.
In front of him lay the high road, and the village was only three hundred yards further on; but wine is a bad compass in a man's noddle, and never points north in the same direction two minutes together.
He resolved, therefore, to return to the inn among the vineyards. Acting straightway upon this noble resolve, he stumbled along totally unknown paths up hill and down dale; plunged through field after field of Indian corn; pursued his endless way through hemp grounds and fallow lands; scrambled on all fours through hedges and ditches, and finally forced his way through a vast morass in which he wallowed freely. In a sober condition he would have come to grief twenty times over, but Fate always protects the toper.
Then he strayed into a vast forest; zig-zagged through fens and coppices like an old dog-wolf; tore himself almost to ribbons among the sloe and blackberry bushes, and emerged at last at a ramshackle forest-keeper's hut, the door of which stood wide open.
By this time he bore not the slightest resemblance to man or beast.