When everybody was in a boisterous good-humour—except the two Vranics, for strong drink only rendered them peevish and quarrelsome—the subject of the visit was broached.
Josko Vranic, the elder of the two brothers, would at first not listen to Bellacic's request.
"What!" exclaimed he, in the flowery style of Eastern mourners, "do you ask me to come to terms with Radonic, who cruelly murdered my brother? Do you wish me to press to my heart the viper from whose teeth we still smart? Do you think I have no soul, no faith? Oh! my poor brother"—(he hated him in his lifetime)—"my poor brother, murdered in the morning of his life, in the spring of his youth, a star of beauty, a lion of strength and courage; had the murderer's hand but spared him, what great things might he not have done! Oh, my brother, my beloved brother! No; blood alone can avenge blood, and his soul can never rest in peace till my dagger is sheathed in his murderer's heart. No, Radonic must die; blood for blood; life for life. I must find out the foul dog and strangle him as he strangled my beloved brother, or I am no true Slav. Tell me where he is, if you know, that I may tear him to pieces; for nothing can arrest my arm!"
Josko Vranic was a tailor, and a very peaceful kind of a tailor into the bargain. It is true that, when his brain was fuddled with drink, he was occasionally blood-thirsty; but his rage expended itself far more in words than in deeds. For the present, he was simply trying to act his part well, and was only repeating hackneyed phrases often uttered in houses of mourning, at funerals, and at wakes.
All his thoughts were bent on the sum of money he might obtain for karvarina, and he, therefore, thought that the more he magnified his grief, the greater would be the sum he might ask for blood-money.
Bellacic and Markovic, as well as the other friends of both parties gathered in the house, deemed it advisable to leave him to give utterance to his grief. Then, when he had said his say and the children were quieted, Radonic's friends began to persuade him to forego all ideas of vengeance, and—after much useless talking—many prayers from the women, and threats from the babes to begin shrieking again, Vranic agreed that he would try and smother his grief, nay, for their sakes, forget his resentment; therefore, after much cogitation, he named a jury of twenty-four men to act as arbitrators between him and the murderer, and settle the price that was to be paid for the blood. This jury was, of course, composed of persons that he thought hated Radonic, and who would at least demand a sum equivalent to £200 or £300. He little knew how much his own brother had been disliked, and the low price that was set on his life.
These twenty-four persons having been appointed, Radonic called upon all of them, and got them to meet at Bellacic's house the day before the ceremony of the karvarina; he sent there some small barrels of choice wine, and provisions of all kinds for the feast of that day, as well as for the banquet of the morrow, for he knew quite well that the gall of a bitter enemy is less acrid after a good dinner, and that an indifferent person becomes a friend when he is chewing the cud of the dainty things you have provided for him.
As soon as supper was over, and while the bucara of sweet muscato wine was being handed round, Bellacic submitted the case to the twenty-four arbiters, expatiated like a lawyer on the heinous way Vranic had acted, how like a real snake he had crept between husband and wife, trying to put enmity between them, and how he had succeeded in his treachery, doing all this to seduce a poor distracted woman.
"Now," continued Bellacic, "put yourselves in Radonic's place and tell me how you yourselves would have acted. If you have the right to shoot the burglar who, in the dead of night, breaks into your house to rob you of your purse, is it not natural that you should throttle the ruffian who, under the mantle of friendship, sneaks into your bedroom to rob you of your honour? Is the life of such a man worth more than that of the scorpion you crush under your heel? Vranic was neither my friend nor my enemy; therefore, I have no earthly reason to set you against him, nor to induce you to be friendly towards Radonic. I only ask you to be just, and to tell me the worth of the blood he has spilt."
Bellacic stopped for a moment to see the effect of his speech on his listeners. All seemed to approve his words no less than they did the sweet wine of the bucara; then after a slight pause, he again went on.