"Oh, sir! how can such accusations affect us who have always been willing faithfully to fulfil your wishes? We pay tribute, we give gifts, and now also our worthy Prince hath not sent us to you empty-handed, having commanded Master Michael Teleki not to neglect to provide us with suitable gifts, who has, moreover, sent to your Excellencies through me two hundred purses of money,[20] as a token of his respect and homage, beseeching your Excellencies to accept this little gift from us your humble servants."
[20] Equivalent to 100,000 thalers.
With these words the orator beckoned to one of the deputation, at whose summons, four porters appeared carrying between them, suspended on two poles, a large iron chest, which Farkas Bethlen opened, discharging its contents at the feet of the Grand Vizier.
The jingling thalers fell in heaps around the Diván, and the sound of the rolling coins filled the room. The features of the Grand Vizier suddenly changed. Maurocordato stepped back. Bethlen's last words had needed no interpreter; the Vizier could not keep back from his face a hideous smile, the grin of the devil of covetousness. His eyes grew large and round, he no longer clenched his teeth together, he was rather like a wild beast eager to pounce upon his prey.
Farkas Bethlen humbly withdrew among his colleagues; the Vizier could not resist the temptation, he descended from the Diván, rubbing his hands, tapping the shoulders of the last speaker, smiling at all the deputies, and even going so far as to extend his hand to one or two of them, which those fortunate beings hastened to kiss, and spoke something to them in Turkish, to which they felt bound to reply with profound obeisances.
During this scene Maurocordato had quitted the Diván, and as in default of an interpreter the envoys were unable to understand the words of the Vizier, and could only bow repeatedly, Kiuprile, who had learnt Hungarian while he was Pasha of Eger, arose and roared at them in a voice which made the very ceiling shake:
"The Vizier bids you go to hell, ye dogs of Giaours, and if we want you again we will send for you!" Whereupon he gave a vicious kick at a thaler which had rolled to his feet, while the deputies, after innumerable salutations, left the Diván.
On the departure of the Prince's envoys, the Grand Vizier immediately sent for Béldi and his comrades. When the refugees entered the Diván, not one of them yet knew that the envoys of the Prince had been there and brought the money which they saw piled up before them, though they could not for the life of them understand what the Grand Vizier and themselves had to do with all that money; and inasmuch as Maurocordato had also departed, and the cavasses sent after him could not find him anywhere, the Hungarians, in the absence of an interpreter, stood there for some time in the utmost doubt, striving to explain as best they could the signification of the peculiar signs which the Grand Vizier kept making to them from time to time, pointing now at the heaps of money and now at them, and expounding his sayings with all ten fingers. Every time he glanced at the money he could not restrain his disgusting, hyæna-like smile.
"Don't you see," whispered Csaky to Béldi, "the Grand Vizier intends all that money for us?"