'You are too good, but I would not take it. Let it go to Hohenszalras.'
'Why would you not take it?
'I would take nothing from you.'
He spoke abruptly, and with some sternness.
'I think there is such a thing as being too proud? she said, with hesitation.
'Your ancestors would not say so,' he answered, with an effort; she understood the meaning that underlay the words. He turned away and closed the lid of the harpsichord, where little painted cupids wantoned in a border of metal scroll-work.
All the men and women well enough to stand crowded on the water-stairs to see her departure; little children were held up in their mother's arms and bidden remember her for evermore; all feeble creatures lifted up their voices to praise her; Jew and Christian blessed her; the water-gate was cumbered with sobbing people, trying to see her face, to kiss her skirt for the last time. She could not be wholly unmoved before that unaffected, irrepressible emotion. Their poor lives were not worth much, but such as they were she, under Heaven, had saved them.
'I will return and see you again,' she said to them, as she made a slow way through the eager crowd. 'Thank Heaven, my people, not me. And I leave my friend with you, who did much more for you than I. Respect him and obey him.'
They raised with their thin trembling voices a loud Eljén! of homage and promise, and she passed away from their sight into the evening shadows on the wide river.
Sabran accompanied her to the vessel, which was to take her to the town of Mohacs, thence to make her journey home by railway.