This was indeed a rare event, for it took a lot to make his Excellency smile! Moreover, he greeted his guest with a dignified cordiality.
"Well met, my friend! I'm glad you've come. You are on the right road. Walk in here, and don't let anyone disturb us," he added, turning to the usher, "as long as his Imperial Majesty's representative is with me. But you," and he turned to the expectant crowd of suppliants, "you can just go to where you came from; you have only got what you deserved."
But those left behind in the ante-room looked at one another, and did not exactly know what to make of it, till his Excellency's secretary told them that the hurts they had received were fully recognised by the law, and that they would have redress later if they now went home quietly.
His Excellency, meanwhile, plunged into the matter straight away.
"Now see here, my worthy sir, you can only obtain satisfaction in Hungary from the Magyar laws themselves. The thing is to know how to profit by them, for we have excellent statutes; there is no need to supplement them. I should like to know if the collective tribunals of Austria itself would settle your affair so thoroughly and effectually, nay and cheaply, as the captain of the Velencze company has done. But you have been to the Emperor again with your denunciations, and even now, I daresay, have your pockets full of imperial instructions. Don't take them out if your case is brought before me, for I warn you, I shall not open them. I wonder if his Majesty knows, by the way, that I never read the instructions he sends me."
"But I now bring other orders from his Majesty," said Ráby, who did not think it worth while to say all he knew. "His Majesty has thought a great deal about his Hungarian subjects, and has great projects for bettering this city."
"What may such projects be, pray?"
"First of all, he is giving permission to the Jewish community in Pesth to build a synagogue."
"A synagogue for the Jews!" cried his Excellency, springing up in horror from his seat. "Impossible! Pesth will not be bettered by that, it will be completely ruined. Why in a hundred years' time, if that is allowed, the Jews will be having all the rights of citizens. Heaven forbid they should be permitted a place in the Assembly, for they will want to get in there. Well, that is enough for a beginning; is there anything else?"
"Of course," pursued Ráby, and since his interlocutor was standing at the window, he too went there and looked out at the view over the Danube and Pesth. "Does your Excellency see the great square plain on the edge of the Pesth woods, that is bordered on one side with willows?"