"And I have Mathias Ráby to thank for this," groaned his Excellency.
"Possibly," said Lievenkopp drily, "for his Majesty has entrusted me with a patent for the Pesth magistracy, whereby he demands the instant release of Mr. Mathias Ráby; in the case of non-obedience, by ten o'clock to-morrow, I am ordered to enforce its execution by a battery and a corresponding number of soldiers, and if the prisoner is not brought out, to storm the Assembly House forthwith, and release Mr. Ráby from captivity."
"Storm the Assembly House?" stammered the magnate, dazed with the suggestion. "Stir up civil war just for the sake of one miserable culprit. Oh, that fellow will be the death of me!"
And the wretched man staggered as with a sudden blow, and blindly clung to a chair for support to prevent him from falling. He was blue in the face, his clenched hand still grasping the letter; it was the beginning of an apoplectic fit.
Lievenkopp hastened to send one of the secretaries for a doctor, but it was already too late; when the surgeon arrived to bleed him, the governor was beyond such help. Thus passed one more actor in this memorable tragedy of Rab Ráby.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
It is time to return to Frau Fruzsinka, and to explain how she had come to be a prisoner under the same roof as her husband.
When Fruzsinka found that Ráby was, in spite of the efforts she had made to save him, a prisoner in Pesth, her rage and disgust knew no bounds. The abandoned woman still carried on her miserable masquerade in man's attire, and as a pretended highwayman, continued to strike terror into the hearts of the countryside.
One night, however, she was taken with what seemed a sudden faintness, and seeking shelter in a peasant's hut, was betrayed by the owner to the heydukes, and carried off by her captors to the prison in Pesth. By the time she arrived there, she was evidently seriously ill, and appeared to be in a high fever, although it never occurred to the prison authorities that her malady might be infectious.