THE CAVERN OF LUCSIA
Not so very long ago there was in Transylvania a wide-spreading society of coiners which, it is now notorious, had carried on its nefarious business undetected for more than half a century. The science was an inheritance descending from father to son, people married and were born into it. Careful parents trained their children to follow it, and a very lucrative profession it proved to be. That it should have remained undiscovered for so long a time, that it should have been plied successfully for more than fifty years under the very noses of the authorities—all this was capable of a very simple explanation, these men coined gold pieces.
Yes, genuine ducats, of full weight, out of real three-and-twenty carat gold, without any admixture of baser metal, so that they absolutely could not be distinguished from the royal ducats of the authorized minting towns, Körmöcz and Gyulafehervár. If they fell into the hands of a goldsmith, and he melted them, he found that they did not contain half a grain more silver than the genuine ones. Indeed the public lost nothing by their fabrication, though the state treasury suffered considerably.
The whole region, in fact, from Zalathna to Verespatak abounded in that precious metal which some fool or other has called "a mere chimera," and the gold mining was farmed out to private individuals, the yearly output from the shafts being twelve hundredweights. These private diggers are bound to deliver the gold they obtain to the minting towns at Abradbanya or Gyulafehervár and there receive coined money in exchange. Nevertheless, during some fifty years, only about six hundredweights were delivered annually at these places; the rest disappeared, though at first nobody could suspect it. The State pays to the diggers 441 guldens for every pound of gold dust, which quantity when coined is worth 720 guldens. But it occurred to the mountaineers that they also might profitably engage in coining and circulate the money so coined. So they provided themselves with all the necessary implements and machinery (there were skilled workmen among them) and issued false ducats to their very great advantage. Their existence was not even suspected except by the parties interested in the concern, and they had every motive in the world for preserving the secret.
Travelling from Abradbanya up towards Bucsum, one might have seen two riders toiling up the mountain along the stream overshadowed by dark alders; one of them was a grey-haired, gigantic Roumanian, the other a proud-looking young woman. The old man wore a lambskin mantle, on his head he carried a tall pointed cap, also of lambs' wool, drawn down over his eyebrows, his body was carelessly girdled with a golden girdle. His rich grey locks were plaited into two thick pig-tails which reached down to his broad shoulders, and his snow-white moustache hung down from his mouth like two seamew's wings. A coarse sack lay in front of him across his saddle, both ends of which appeared to be full of something heavy; across the sack lay his fowling-piece.
The fair cavalier was sitting on a small, wild, shaggy horse, which constantly evinced a praiseworthy endeavour to overtake the rider in front of him; his mistress with difficulty held him in. She was one of those famous Roumanian beauties. Her features, the cut of her lips, her full chin could have stood as a model beside any antique statue. And then those sparkling eyes, that vividly red complexion, those coal-black eyebrows—they made an ideal beauty of her. And the picturesque Roumanian costume enhanced her charms. Her black hair, twisted into a double plait, was bound round with a flaming-red scarf, and on her head she wore a round hat, trimmed with pearls and garnished in front with a row of gold pieces which reached down to her marble-white forehead. Moreover, her fine cambric shirt embellished with bright flowers and gold ornaments fitted so closely as to betray the outlines of her harmonious figure. Wound ten times round her neck she wore a necklace of gold coins extending down to her bosom. As she rode along (and she sat astride her saddle like a man), every now and then one could catch glimpses beneath her variegated girdle of her red morocco boots and of a Turkish dagger, with a massive silver handle, gleaming forth from their shafts. On each side of her holsters peeped forth a double-barrelled pistol with an ivory handle.
When the old man stopped to water his horse at the spring gushing forth from the black slate rock, he said to the girl: "Anicza, when did you speak last with Fatia Negra?"
"Just a month ago. It was at the time of the full moon, like it is now. He then said that he was going away on a long journey."
"And yet he has already been at home these two days. I saw his sign over against my window."