Told by the death's head

by Mór Jókai

"We shall see about it—if the time ever comes when sentence shall be passed on you!" observed the chair.

To out-drink me, resumed the prisoner, after this digression, was impossible, though they tried their best to do so. Had they succeeded in stupefying me with wine, I am quite certain they would have robbed me of the note for two-thousand thalers, which I always carried with me. I suspected that the series of drinking-bouts had been arranged to enable Rupert to steal the note; had he succeeded, Master Meyer would have been relieved of paying what he owed me. But my secret enabled me to frustrate their plans.

Nor did they succeed in getting hold of any of my doubloons. The first time we engaged in a game of dice, I detected their scheme to cheat me; the dice were loaded. As I had played that sort of game before, I astonished and discomfited my companions by the frequency with which the sixes always came on top when I threw. They, and not I, lost money. If they attempted to quarrel with me about my good fortune, they found that, skilled though they were in the pugilistic art, I could take care of myself. I learned some wrestling tricks while I was with the haidemaken, and they served me well in my bouts with those notorious fighting-cocks. I was not the one to get worsted. But, no matter how angry I might be, I always took good care not to injure any of them seriously; had I done so, they would very soon have had me behind prison bars.

I was also extremely careful in my intercourse with the women I met. My white dove accompanied me wherever I went, but I never spoke of her to anyone. I would tell my companions, after they had dragged me from one den to another without succeeding in attaching me to any of the alluring nymphs, that I had no eyes for any woman but my charming betrothed, to whom I had vowed eternal fidelity; and that I was obliged to adhere all the more rigidly to my vow, because Rupert, being the brother of my sweetheart, might betray me to her were he to see me paying attention to another girl.

Then the student would swear that a "whole ditch full of devils" might fetch him (a favorite oath in Hamberger Berg polite society) if he so much as mentioned my name to his sister. I might flirt with whomsoever I chose, he would not betray me. But, I persisted in turning a deaf ear to the fascinating damsels I continued to meet night after night in the various drinking shops we frequented. I knew very well that a tidy wench would be more apt to get hold of my carefully guarded note of hand than would any of my brawling comrades.

I wasn't going to let anyone steal it; I had decided that I would take the money home to my poor old parents. The two-thousand thalers would make of them real gentle folk; father could buy a little fruit farm; and a fur coat for himself; and the old mother might promenade to church in a silk mantle, bought with the money her son had given her—

"And which he obtained by selling stolen church property," sarcastically interjected the chair.

"The end justified the means," quickly, but with due respect, retorted the prisoner, whereupon the prince laughed heartily.

The mayor's face became crimson; he said in a tone of reprimand: "That phrase was not devised by the pious Jesuits to excuse the man who steals church property, and sells it to obtain money for his family. The prisoner will continue his confession."

In this manner I passed three months. The day before the one on which my note fell due, I spent in my lodgings sleeping quietly. That night I accompanied my friends, as usual, on a round of the different taverns we were wont to frequent. We scattered the night patrol; smeared the windows of several professors' houses with wagon grease; sang rollicking ditties in front of the houses in which we knew there were pretty girls; belabored all the Jews we found abroad at that hour, and kept the entire "Berg" in a state of excitement, until long after midnight. We marched arm in arm, forming a line across the street that reached from house to house, to the "Three Apples"—a famous tavern at that time—where, for a wager, we drank all the liquid medicines in the store of an itinerant quack doctor, who had stopped there for the night.