"Cannot you let these two gentlemen get into the church? don't you see that the lesson is meant for them?"
Teleki meanwhile had forced his way just over the threshold, and taking off his kalpag, exposed his bald, defenceless head in the sight of all the people, with his face turned in the direction indicated by the boisterous Szekler.
Magyari continued his fulminating discourse from the pulpit.
"Nobody dare speak against you now, for your words are very thunderbolts and strike down those with whom you are angry—nay, rather, men bow the knee before you and say, 'Your Excellency! Your Excellency!' but the judgment of the Lord shall descend upon you, the Lord will slay you, and then men will point the finger of scorn at you and say: 'That is the consort of the accursed one who betrayed his country!—these are the children of that godless man!' And your descendants will blush to bear the shameful name you have left them, for then the tongue of every man will wag in his mouth against you, and they will cry after your posterity: 'It was the father of those fellows who betrayed Transylvania and plunged us into slime from which we cannot now withdraw our feet' ..."
"Come away, your Excellency!" said Ladislaus Vajda to Teleki, whom the parson seemed to have seen, for he turned straight towards him as he spoke.
"What are you thinking of?" Teleki whispered back; "the parson is speaking the truth, but it doesn't matter."
"Whither would ye go, ye senseless vacillators!" continued Magyari, "who empowered you to make the men of Transylvania fugitives, their wives widows, and their children orphans? Verily I say to you, ye shall fare like the camel who went to Jupiter for horns and got shorn of his ears instead."
"It may be so," said Teleki to Vajda, "but we shall pursue our course all the same."
The parson saw that the Minister of State was paying attention to his discourse, so he wrinkled his forehead, and thus proceeded:
"When King Louis perished on the field of Mohács, the Turkish Emperor had the dead body brought before him, and recognising at the same time the corpse of an evil Hungarian politician lying there, he struck off its head with his sword, and said: 'If thou hadst not been there, thou dog! this honest child-king would not be lying dead here.' God grant that a foreign nation may not so deal with you."