On reaching the door, he fumbled for his sword, and perceiving when he touched it that the hilt was missing, he suddenly turned back again, and exclaimed in a low whisper:
"Think not that it will rust in its sheath. The time will come when I shall again draw it, and it will drink its fill of blood. When those who now urge us on to war shall turn against us, when those who now stand in line with us shall face us with hostile banners, then also will I return, though then ye will no longer be present. But ye shall look on from Paradise above. So it will be: ye shall look on ... Poor young Sultan!"
Having whispered these prophetic words, the mad youth withdrew, and the gentlemen in the Diván were so much disturbed by his words that, with faces bent to the earth, they prayed Allah that He would turn aside from them the evil prophesy and not suffer to be broken asunder the weapons they had drawn for the increase of His glory.
CHAPTER XXIX.
PLEASANT SURPRISES.
All the chief generals, all the border pashas, had received the Sultan's orders to gather their hosts together and lead them against the armies of the King of the Romans, and besiege the places which were the pretext of the rupture—to wit, the fortresses of Fülek, Böszörmény, and Nagy Kallá.
At the same time the Government of Transylvania also received permission to attack Hungary with its armies, as had already been decided at the Diet of Szamosújvár.
Vast preparations were everywhere made. The Magyar race is very hard to move to war, but once in a quarrel it does not waste very much time in splitting straws.
Teleki, too, had attained at last to the dream of his life and the object of all his endeavours, for which he had knowingly sacrificed his own peace of mind, and the lives of so many good patriots—he was the generalissimo of the armies of Transylvania.
The Hungarian exiles in Transylvania hailed him as their deliverer, and he saw himself a good big step nearer to the place of Esterházy—the place of Palatine of Hungary. And why not? Why should he not stand among the foremost statesmen of his age?