"What Magyar lords?" cried the Grand Vizier.
"Those whom the Prince has sent."
"They're in good time!" said the Vizier, "show them in;" and he at once fell into a proper pose, reserving for them his most venomous expression.
The curtains were parted, and the Prince's embassy appeared, bedizened courtly folks in velvet with amiable, simpering faces. Their spokesman, Farkas Bethlen, stood in the very place where Paul Béldi had stood an hour before, in a velvet mantle trimmed with swan's-down, a bejewelled girdle worthy of a hero, and a sword studded with turquoises, the magnificence of his appointments oddly contrasting with his look of abject humility.
"Well! what do ye want? Out with it quickly!" snapped the Grand Vizier, with an ominous air of impatience.
Farkas Bethlen bent his head to his very knees, and then he began to orate in the roundabout rhetoric of those days, touching upon everything imaginable except the case in point.
"Most gracious and mighty, glorious and victorious Lords, dignified Grand Vizier, unconquerable Pashas, mighty Begs and Agas, most potent pillars of the State, lords of the three worlds, famous and widely-known heroes by land and sea, my peculiarly benevolent Lords!"
All this was merely prefatory!
Kiuprile began to perspire; Kucsuk Pasha twirled his sword upon his knee; Feriz Beg turned round and contemplated the fountains of the Seraglio through the window.
"Make haste, do!" interrupted Maurocordato impatiently; whereupon Farkas Bethlen, imagining that he had offended the interpreter by omitting him from the exordium, turned towards him with a supplementary compliment: