"As if a man could believe everything that Mr. Kordé said!"
CHAPTER VII.
A MAN OF IRON.
General Vértessy had for many years been the commandant of a military station in Hungary. After such a long time as that, men get to be acquainted with one another, and the soldier comes to be regarded as quite a member of the family. The townsfolk, too, begin to speak of him as a member of the upper classes; no great entertainment is considered complete without him, and the ordinary civilian exchanges greetings with him as a man and a brother in all places of public resort. The county makes him a magistrate on account of his numerous distinguished services; he receives the freedom of the city for the same reason; and, finally, the only daughter of a most distinguished patrician family, impressed by the gallant soldier's noble qualities, consents to become his wife; and thus the general, as citizen and magistrate, as husband and landlord, becomes rooted by the strongest ties to the soil which it is his duty as a soldier to defend.
His acquaintances in general have the greatest confidence in him; his tenants allude to him gratefully, for he deals mercifully with them; the citizens regard him with respectful astonishment when, on the outbreak of a fire, he orders out his soldiers, and is himself the first to clamber to the top of the burning roof, distributing his commands in the midst of danger as if his life was worth no more than the life of any broken-down, invalided old soldier; the school children rejoice at the sight of him, for he is always sure to be in his place on the occasion of any public examination, to distribute sixpences and shillings to those scholars who give the best answers, and exhort them to hold up their heads and stand upright like good little men! When then, after this, they meet him in the street, the little fellows throw back their heads and stick out their chests so that it does you good to look at them. For the General dearly loves children. Very frequently they break his windows with their tops and balls, but he never scolds them for it, and always gives them back their playthings. "They are but children, let them play!" says he.
In society, too, he is a most agreeable, amusing man, polite and chivalrous towards ladies, and at public entertainments he distinguishes himself by his neat little speeches, which are always good-natured, very much to the point, and seasoned with attic salt of a piquant but not too pungent quality. He is merciful to the absurdities of his fellow-citizens; it is no business of his to impress them with any affectation of soldierly gravity or stiffness; and if at first sight his stern, clean-shaven face—the regulation countenance of soldiers of those days—keeps a timid stranger somewhat at a distance, he has only to open his mouth, and his beautifully pure Magyar accent and intonation prove to demonstration that, soldier as he is, he has remained a true son of his fatherland—and all hearts open to him at once.
But all this ceases at the gate of the barracks. Within the barrack courtyard there is an end to all friendship, kinsmanship, camaraderie, and patronage. He is no longer either a county magistrate or an honorary citizen. He has done with all those qualities which make up a man's social amiability. Here Vértessy is only a soldier, a rigorous, inexorable commandant, who never overlooks a blunder, and never leaves a fault unpunished.
As regards the good school children, you could give them no better encouragement than to say to them: "The General is coming and will pat you on the shoulder!" but there was nothing so terrible to the bad school children as to be threatened with the General if they did not learn their lessons. "You'll be sent to the General, and he will tap you from the shoulder to the heel and make another man of you in double-quick time," people used to say to them.
At any rate, so much is certain: the most stubborn, pig-headed louts, whom no school would keep at any price, when sent, despite the tears and protests of their fond mothers, to the General's establishment, used to return from thence in a couple of years or so as if transformed. They had become orderly, methodical, manly fellows, courteous, tractable, and as spick and span as if they had just been taken out of a band-box. As to what exactly happened to them during their manipulation in this same military band-box not one of them was ever known to allude in a boastful spirit; but the lay mind had a very strong suspicion that not much time was wasted inside the barracks in fine talking.