Evening came, and still Teleki had not quitted his tent. Then the Prince went to see him. Teleki wanted to hear nothing, but the Prince told him everything.
"Hearken, Mr. Michael Teleki! The Hungarian gentlemen have not come back to us, but remain with Tököly. And Tököly also, it appears, doesn't want to have much to do with us, for instead of encamping with us he has withdrawn to the furthest end of the Turkish army, and has pitched his tents there."
Teleki groaned beneath the pain which the distilled venom of these words poured into his heart.
"Apparently, Mr. Michael Teleki, we have been building castles in the air," continued Apafi with jovial frankness. "We are evidently not of the stuff of which Kings and Palatines of Hungary are made. I cannot but think of the cat in the fable, who pulled the chestnuts out of the fire with the claws of others."
Teleki shivered as if with an ague.
Apafi continued in his own peculiar vein of cynicism: "Really, my dear Mr. Michael Teleki, I should like it much better if we were sitting at home, and Denis Banfy and Paul Béldi and the other wise gentlemen were sitting beside me, and I were listening to what they might advise."
Teleki clenched his fists and stamped his feet, as much as to say: "I would not allow that."
Then with a bitter smile he watched the Prince as he paced up and down the tent, and said with a cold, metallic voice:
"One swallow does not make a summer. If ten or twelve worthless fellows desert to Tököly, much good may it do him! The army of the real Hungarian heroes will not follow their example, and when it can fight beneath the banner of a Prince it will not fling itself into the arms of a homeless adventurer."
"Then it would be as well if your Excellency spoke to them at once, for methinks that this night the whole lot of them may turn tail."