Teleki scratched his head, and whispered:
"It may happen to me likewise, but that makes no difference."
Shortly afterwards another hymn was sung, the two magnates put on their kalpags and withdrew, and the emerging crowd of people flowed along all around them, among whom the Szekler, as recently mentioned, followed hard upon the heels of the two gentlemen with singular persistency, lauding to the skies before everyone, in a loud voice, the sermon he had just heard, so as to insult the two gentlemen walking in front of him as much as possible.
"That was something like a sermon," he cried, "that is just how our masters ought to have their heads washed—without too much soap. And quite right too! Why saddle the realm with war at all? Why should Transylvania put on a mustard plaster because Hungary has a pain in its stomach? What has all this coming and going of foreigners to do with us? Why should we poor Transylvanians suffer for the sake of the lean foreigners among us?"
Ladislaus Vajda could put up with this no longer, and turning round, shouted at the Szekler:
"Keep your distance, you rascal, speak like a man at any rate; don't bark here like some mad beast when it sees a better man than itself."
At these words the Szekler thrust his neck forward, stuck his face beneath the very nose of the gentleman who had spoken to him, looked him straight in the face with bright eyes that pricked like pins, and said, twisting his moustaches fiercely:
"Don't you try to fix any of your bastard names on me, sir, for if I go home for my sword I will pretty soon make you a present of a head, and that head shall be your own."
Ladislaus Vajda would have made some reply, but Teleki pulled him by the arm and dragged him away.
"Nothing aggravates your Excellency," said the offended gentleman.