For two weeks this phenomenon stood in the sky, rising late one day and early the next. Sometimes it appeared with the bright sun, and in the solar brightness it looked like a huge streak of blue enamel in the sky and spread around it a sort of febrile pallor as if the atmosphere itself were sick: on bright afternoons the sun could be regarded with the naked eye.
The people were in fear and terror at this extraordinary phenomenon, and when the blind masses are in an unconscious panic then a storm is close at hand, then they are capable of anything to escape from their fear.
In those days the priests of every faith could give strange testimony of the general consternation which prevailed in Transylvania. The churches were kept open all day long, and the indefatigable curers of souls spoke words of consolation to the assembled hosts of the faithful. Magyari, the Prince's chaplain, preached four sermons every day in the cathedral, which was so crowded at such times that half the people could not get in at all but remained standing outside the doors.
One evening the church was so filled with faithful worshippers that the very steps were covered with them, and all sorts of Klausenberg burgesses intermingled with travelling Szeklers in a group before the principal door, and after the hymn was finished they clapped to their clasped psalm-books and began to talk to each other while the sermon was going on inside.
"We live in evil times," said an old master-tanner, shaking his big cap.
"We can say a word about that too," interrupted a Szekler, who was up in town about a law-suit, and who seized the opportunity of saying what he knew because he had come from far.
"Then you also have seen the sword of God?" inquired a young man.
"Not only have we seen it, my little brother, but we have felt it also. Not a single evening do we lay down to rest without reciting the prayers for the dead and dying, and scarce a night passes but what we see the sky a fiery red colour, either on the right hand or to the left."
"What would that be?"
"Some village or town burning to ashes. They say the whole kingdom is full of destroying angels; one never knows whose roof will be fired over his head next."