After the feasting, in true Transylvanian fashion the drinking was continued standing. The entertainment took on a livelier cast and the Prince turned to each one of the lords as they stood, holding out a full beaker to them and challenging them to drink.
"Drink! to my health! to the welfare of the country—or to whatever else you please!" The men were all in good spirits, quarreling with each other good-naturedly and becoming reconciled again. One man only who never drank, Michael Teleki, remained sober.
Beware of those who remain sober when everybody gets drunk! Teleki went round among the lords who were drinking together on a wager and joking, and had for some time been moving stealthily about Banfy, when Banfy noticed him and turned toward him jestingly.
"How sad you are!" he said, with a pitying laugh; "just like a man who has lost a palatinate."
This remark came very aptly for Teleki. With a smile out of which gleamed a deadly dagger, he replied:
"No thanks to you! If Paul Beldi had not been present you would have been alone with your vote. But it has happened once more, in the presence of so influential a man as Paul Beldi we must all bow. His words are for all the country like the amen in the prayer."
Teleki bowed with a show of deep respect as he thrust this poisoned steel into the great lord's heart, for there was nothing could so touch him as to have somebody considered greater than himself, especially when it was a man who deserved it. Teleki now turned to Beldi, drew him into the recess of a window and gently demanded speech with him.
"I have always regarded you as a very noble-hearted man; to-day I learned, although to my own disadvantage, to recognize you as doubly so. The Diet knows only that you sacrificed your love for your daughter when you voted for peace. I know besides that you sacrificed at the same time your hatred for Banfy."
"I—I never hated Banfy!"
"I know why you have concealed this hatred. You think that your reasons for it are not known to anybody. Oh my friend, we who are men know well that one may pardon a dagger thrust but never a kiss!"