THE SLAVES OF THE PADISHAH

THE
Slaves of the Padishah

("The Turks in Hungary," being the Sequel to
"'Midst the Wild Carpathians")

A ROMANCE

BY
Maurus Jókai

Author of "'Midst the Wild Carpathians," "Black Diamonds,"
"Pretty Michal," etc.

Translated from the Sixth Hungarian Edition by
R. Nisbet Bain

LONDON
JARROLD & SONS, 10 & 11, WARWICK LANE, E.C.
[All Rights Reserved]
1903

Authorised Version

Copyright
London: Jarrold & Sons

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

"Török Világ Magyarországon," now englished for the first time, is a sequel to "Az Erdély arany kora," already published by Messrs. Jarrold, under the title of "'Midst the Wild Carpathians." The two tales, though quite distinct, form together one great historical romance, which centres round the weakly, good-natured Michael Apafi, the last independent Prince of Transylvania, his masterful and virtuous consort, Anna Bornemissza, and his machiavellian Minister, Michael Teleki, a sort of pocket-Richelieu, whose genius might have made a great and strong state greater and stronger still, but could not save a little state, already doomed to destruction as much from its geographical position as from its inherent weakness. The whole history of Transylvania, indeed, reads like an old romance of chivalry, cut across by odd episodes out of "The Thousand and One Nights," and the last phase of that history (1674-1690), so vividly depicted in the present volume, is fuller of life, colour, variety, and adventure than any other period of European history. The little mountain principality, lying between two vast aggressive empires, the Ottoman and the German, ever striving with each other for the mastery of central Europe, was throughout this period the football of both. Viewed from a comfortable armchair at a distance of two centuries, the whole era is curiously fascinating: to unfortunate contemporaries it must have been unspeakably terrible. Strange happenings were bound to be the rule, not the exception, when a Turkish Pasha ruled the best part of Hungary from the bastions of Buda. Thus it was quite in the regular order of things for Hungarian gentlemen to join with notorious robber-chieftains to attack Turkish fortresses; for bandits, in the disguise of monks, to plunder lonely monasteries; for simple boors to be snatched from the plough to be set upon a throne; for Christian girls, from every country under heaven, to be sold by auction not fifty miles from Vienna, and for Turkish filibusters to plant fortified harems in the midst of the Carpathians. Jókai, luckier than Dumas, had no need to invent his episodes, though he frequently presents them in a romantic environment. He found his facts duly recorded in contemporary chronicles, and he had no temptation to be unfaithful to them, because the ordinary, humdrum incidents of every-day life in seventeenth century Transylvania outstrip the extravagances of the most unbridled imagination.

No greater praise can be awarded to the workmanship of Jókai than to say that, although written half a century ago (the first edition was published in 1853), "Török Világ Magyarországon" does not strike one as in the least old-fashioned or out of date. Romantic it is, no doubt, in treatment as well as in subject, but a really good romance never grows old, and Jókai's unfailing humour is always—at least, in his masterpieces—a sufficient corrective of the excessive sensibility to which, like all the romanticists, he is, by temperament, sometimes liable.

Most of the characters which delighted us in "'Midst the Wild Carpathians" accompany us through the sequel. The Prince, the Princess, the Minister, Béldi, Kucsuk, Feriz, Azrael, and even such minor personages as the triple renegade, Zülfikar, are all here, and remain true to their original presentment, except Azrael, who is the least convincing of them all. Of the new personages, the most original are the saponaceous Olaj Beg, whose unctuous suavity always conveys a menace, and the heroic figure of the famous Emeric Tököly, who, but for the saving sword of Sobieski, might have wrested the crown of St. Stephen from the House of Hapsburg.

R. Nisbet Bain.

December, 1902.

The Slaves of the Padishah.

CHAPTER I.
THE GOLDEN CAFTAN.

The S—— family was one of the richest in Wallachia, and consequently one of the most famous. The head of the family dictated to twelve boyars, collected hearth-money and tithes from four-and-fifty villages, lived nine months in the year at Stambul, held the Sultan's bridle when he mounted his steed in time of war, contributed two thousand lands-knechts to the host of the Pasha of Macedonia, and had permission to keep on his slippers when he entered the inner court of the Seraglio.

In the year 1600 and something, George was the name of the first-born of the S—— family, but with him we shall not have very much concern. We shall do much better to follow the fortunes of the second born, Michael, whom his family had sent betimes to Bucharest to be brought up as a priest in the Seminary there. The youth had, however, a remarkably thick head, and, so far from making any great progress in the sciences, was becoming quite an ancient classman, when he suddenly married the daughter of a sub-deacon, and buried himself in a little village in Wallachia. There he spent a good many years of his life with scarce sufficient stipend to clothe him decently, and had he not tilled his soil with his own hands, he would have been hard put to it to find maize-cakes enough to live upon.

In the first year of his marriage a little girl was born to him, and for her the worthy man and his wife spared and scraped so that, in case they were to die, she might have some little trifle. So they laid aside a few halfpence out of every shilling in order that when it rose to a good round sum they might purchase for their little girl—a cow.

A cow! That was their very ultimate desire. If only they could get a cow, who would be happier than they? Milk and butter would come to their table in abundance, and they would be able to give some away besides. Her calf they would rear and sell to the butcher for a good price, stipulating for a quarter of it against the Easter festival. Then, too, a cow would give so much pleasure to the whole family. In the morning they would be giving it drink, rubbing it down, leading it out into the field, and its little bell would be sounding all day in the pasture. In the evening it would come into the yard, keeping close to the wall, where the mulberry-tree stood, and poke its head through the kitchen door. It would have a star upon its forehead, and would let you scratch its head and stroke its neck, and would take the piece of maize-cake that little Mariska held out to it. She would be able to lead the cow everywhere. This was the Utopia of the family, its every-day desire, and Papa had already planted a mulberry-tree in the yard in order that Csákó, that was to be the cow's name, might have something to rub his side against, and little Mariska every day broke off a piece of maize-cake and hid it under the window-sill. The little calf would have a fine time of it.

And lo and behold! when the halfpennies and farthings had mounted up to such a heap that they already began to think of going to the very next market to bring home the cow; when every day they could talk of nothing else, and kept wondering what the cow would be like, brindled, or brown, or white, or spotted; when they had already given it its name beforehand, and had prepared a leafy bed for it close to the house—it came to pass that a certain vagabond Turkish Sheikh shot dead the elder brother, who was living in Stambul, because he accidentally touched the edge of the holy man's garment in the street. So the poor priest received one day a long letter from Adrianople, in which he was informed that he had succeeded his brother as head of the family, and, from that hour, was the happy possessor of an annual income of 70,000 ducats.

I wonder whether they wept for that cow, which they never brought home after all?

Mr. Michael immediately left his old dwelling, travelled with his family all the way to Bucharest in a carriage (it was the first time in his life he had ever enjoyed that dignity), went through the family archives, and entered into possession of his immense domain, of whose extent he had had no idea before.

The old family mansion was near Rumnik, whither Mr. Michael also repaired. The house was dilapidated and neglected, its former possessors having lived constantly abroad, only popping in occasionally to see how things were going on. Nevertheless, it was a palace to the new heir, who, after the experience of his narrow hovel, could hardly accommodate himself to the large, barrack-like rooms, and finally contented himself with one half of it, leaving the other wing quite empty, as he didn't know what to do with it.

Having been accustomed throughout the prime of his life to deprivation and the hardest of hard work, that state of things had become such a second nature to him, that, when he became a millionaire, he had not much taste for anything better than maize-cakes, and it was high festival with him when puliszka[1] was put upon the table.

[1] A sort of maize pottage.

On the death of his wife, he sent his daughter on foot to the neighbouring village to learn her alphabet from the cantor, and two heydukes accompanied her lest the dogs should worry her on the way. When his daughter grew up, he entrusted her with the housekeeping and the care of the kitchen. Very often some young and flighty boyar would pass through the place from the neighbouring village, and very much would he have liked to have taken the girl off with him, if only her father would give her away. And all this time Mr. Michael's capital began to increase so outrageously that he himself began to be afraid of it. It had come to this, that he could not spend even a thousandth part of his annual income, and, puzzle his head as he might, he could not turn it over quickly enough. He had now whole herds of cows, he bought pigs by the thousand, but everything he touched turned to money, and the capital that he invested came back to him in the course of the year with compound interest. The worthy man was downright desperate when he thought upon his treasure-heaps multiplying beyond all his expectations. How to enjoy them he knew not, and yet he did not wish to pitch them away.

He would have liked to have played the grand seignior, if only thereby to get rid of some of his money, but the rôle did not suit him at all. If, for instance, he wanted to build a palace, there was so much calculating how, in what manner, and by whom it could be built most cheaply, that it scarce cost him anything at all, but then it never turned out a palace. Or if he wanted to give a feast, it was easy enough to select the handsomest of the boyars for his guests. Whatever was necessary for the feast—wine, meat, bread, honey, and sack-pipers—was supplied in such abundance from his own magazines and villages, that he absolutely despaired to think how it was that his ancestors had not only devoured their immense estates, but had even piled up debts upon them. To him this remained an insoluble problem, and after bothering his head for a long time as to what he should do with his eternally accumulating capital, he at last hit upon a good idea. The spacious garden surrounding his crazy castle had, by his especial command, been planted with all sorts of rare and pleasant plants—like basil, lavender, wild saffron, hops, and gourds—over whom a tenant had been promoted as gardener to look after them. One year the garden produced such gigantic gourds, that each one was as big as a pitcher. The astonished neighbours came in crowds to gaze at them, and the promoted ex-boyar swore a hundred times that such gourds as these the Turkish Sultan himself had not seen all his life long.

This gave Master Michael an idea. He made up his mind that he would send one of these gourds to the Sultan as a present. So he selected the finest and roundest of them, of a beautiful flesh-coloured rind, encircled by dark-green stripes, with a turban-shaped cap at the top of it, and, boring a little hole through it, drew out the pulp and filled it instead with good solid ducats of the finest stamp, and placing it on his best six-oxened wagon, he selected his wisest tenant, and, dinning well into his head where to go, what to say, and to whom to say it, sent him off with the great gourd to the Sublime Porte at Stambul.

It took the cart three weeks to get to Constantinople.

The good, worthy farmer, upon declaring that he brought gifts for the Grand Seignior, was readily admitted into the presence, and after kissing the hem of the Padishah's robe, drew the bright cloth away from the presented pumpkin and deposited it in front of the Diván.

The Sultan flew into a violent rage at the sight of the gift.

"Dost thou take me for a swine, thou unbelieving dog, that thou bringest me a gourd?" cried he.

And straightway he commanded the Kiaja Beg to remove both the gourd and the man. The gourd he was to dash to pieces on the ground, the bringer of the gourd was to have dealt unto him a hundred stripes on the soles of his feet, but the sender of the gourd was to lose his head.

The Kiaja Beg did as he was commanded. He banged the gourd down in the courtyard outside, and behold! a stream of shining ducats gushed out of it instead of the pulp. Nevertheless, faithful above all things to his orders, he had the poor farmer flung down on his face, and gave him such a sound hundred stripes on the soles of his feet that he had no wish for any more.

Immediately afterwards he hastened to inform the Sultan that the gourd had been dashed to the ground, the hundred blows with the stick duly paid, the silken cord ready packed, but that the gourd was full of ducats.

At these words the countenance of the Grand Seignior grew serene once more, like the smiling summer sky, and after ordering that the silken cord should be put back in its place, he commanded that the most magnificent of caftans should be distributed both to the bastinadoed farmer and to the boyar who had sent the gift, and that they should both be assured of the gracious favour of the Padishah.

The former had sufficient sense when he arrived at Bucharest to sell the gay garment he had received to a huckster in the bazaar, but his master's present he carefully brought home, and, after informing him of the unpleasant incident concerning himself, delivered to him his present, together with a gracious letter from the Sultan.

Master Michael was delighted with the return gift. He put on the long caftan, which reached to his heels, and was made of fine dark-red Thibetan stuff, embroidered with gold and silken flowers. Gold lace and galloon, as broad as your hand, were piled up on the sleeves, shoulder, and back, to such an extent that the original cloth was scarcely visible, and the hem of the caftan was most wondrously embroidered with splendid tulips, green, blue, and lilac roses, and all sorts of tinsel and precious stones.

Master Michael felt himself quite another man in this caftan. The Sultan had sent him a letter. The Sultan had plainly written to him that he was to wear this caftan. This, therefore, was a command, and it was possible that the Sultan might turn up to-morrow or the next day to see whether he was wearing this caftan, and would be angry if he hadn't got it on. He must needs therefore wear it continually.

But this golden caftan did not go at all well with his coarse fur jacket, nor with his wooden sandals and lambskin cap. He was therefore obliged to send to Tergoviste for a tailor who should make him a silk dolman, vest, and embroidered stockings to match the golden caftan. He also sent to Kronstadt for a tasselled girdle, to Braila for shoes and morocco slippers, and to Tekas for an ermine kalpag with a heron's plume in it.

Of course, now that he was so handsomely dressed, it was quite out of the question for him to sit in a ramshackle old carriage, or to bestride a fifty-thaler nag. He therefore ordered splendid chargers to be sent to him from Bessarabia, and had a gilded coach made for him in Transylvania; and when the carriage and the horses were there, he could not put them into the muddy wagon-shed and the sparrow-frequented, rush-thatched stable, but had to make good stone coach-houses and stables expressly for them. Now, it would have looked very singular, and, in fact, disgusting, if the stable and coach-house had been better than the castle, whose shingle roof was a mass of variegated patches and gaping holes where the mortar had fallen out and left the bricks bare; so there was nothing for it but to pull down the old castle, and to order his steward to build up a new one in its place, and make it as beautiful and splendid as his fancy could suggest.

Thus the whole order of the world he lived in was transformed by a golden caftan.

The steward embellished the castle with golden lattices, turrets, ornamental porches and winding staircases; put conservatories in the garden, planted projecting rondelles and soaring belvederes at the corners of the castle and a regular tower in the middle of it, and painted all the walls and ceilings inside with green forests and crooked-beaked birds.

Of course, he couldn't put inside such a place as this the old rustic furniture and frippery, so he had to purchase the large, high, shining hump-backed arm-chairs, the gold-stamped leather sofas, and the lion-legged marble tables which were then at the height of fashion.

Of course, Turkey carpets had to be laid on the floor, and silver candelabra and beakers placed upon the magnificent tables; and in order that these same Turkey carpets might not be soiled by the muddy boots of farmyard hinds, a whole series of new servants had to be invented, such as footmen to stand behind the new carriage, cooks for the kitchen, and a special gardener for the conservatories, who, instead of looking after the honest, straightforward citron-trees and pumpkins, had gingerly to plant out cactuses and Egyptian thistles like dry stalks, in pots, whence, also, it came about that as there was now a regular gardener and a regular cook, pretty Mariska had no longer any occasion to concern herself either with garden or kitchen, nor did she go any more to the village rector to learn reading or writing, but they had to get her a French governess from whom she learnt good taste, elegant manners, embroidery, and harp-strumming.

And all these things were the work of the golden caftan!

CHAPTER II.
MAIDENS THREE.

The family banner had scarce been hoisted on to the high tower of the new castle, the rumour of Mariska's loveliness and her father's millions had scarce been spread abroad, when the courtyard began to be all ablaze with the retinues and equipages of the most eminent zhupans,[2] voivodes,[3] and princes; but Master Michael had resolved within himself beforehand that nobody less than the reigning Prince of Moldavia should ever receive his daughter's hand, and stolidly he kept to his resolution.

[2] A Servian Prince.

[3] A Roumanian Prince.

Now the reigning Prince of Moldavia no doubt had an illustrious name enough, but he also had inherited a very considerable load of debt, and what with the eternal exactions of the Tartars, and the presents expected by all the leading Pashas, and other disturbing causes, he saw his people growing poorer and poorer, and his own position becoming more and more precarious every year. He therefore did not keep worthy Master Michael waiting very long when he heard, on excellent authority, that there was being reserved for him in Wallachia a beautiful and accomplished virgin, who would bring to her husband a dowry of a couple of millions, in addition to an uncorrupted heart and an old ancestral title.

So, gathering together all the boyars, retainers, and officers of his court, he set off a-wooing to Rumnik, where he was well received by the father, satisfied himself as to the young lady's good graces, demanded her hand in marriage, and, allowing an adequate delay for the preliminaries of the wedding, fixed the glad event for the first week after Easter.

Master Michael, meantime, could think of nothing else but how he could cut as magnificent a figure as possible on the occasion. He invited to the banquet all the celebrities in Moldavia, Servia, Bosnia, and Transylvania. He did not even hesitate to hire from Versailles one of Louis XIV.'s cooks, to regulate the order and quality of the dishes. On the day of the banquet the good gentleman was visible everywhere, and saw to everything himself. Quite early, arrayed in the golden caftan, the heron-plumed kalpag, and the tasselled girdle, he strutted about the courtyard, corridors and chambers, distributing his orders and receiving his guests; and his heart fluttered when he beheld the courtyard filling with carriages, each one more brilliant than its predecessor, escorted by gold-bedizened cavaliers, from which silver-laced heydukes assisted noble ladies, in splendid pearl-embroidered costumes, to descend. There was such a rustling of silk dresses, such a rattling of swords, and such an endless procession of elegant and magnificent forms up the staircase, as to make the heart of the beholder rejoice.

Master Michael rushed hither and thither, and pride and humility were strangely blended on his face. He assured all he welcomed how happy they made him by honouring his poor dwelling with their presence; but the voice with which he said this betrayed the conviction that not one of his guests had quitted a home as splendid as his own poor dwelling.

Then he plunged into the robing-chamber of the bride, where tire-women, fetched all the way from Vienna, had been decking out Mariska from early dawn. It gave them no end of trouble to adjust her jewels and her gewgaws, and if they had heaped upon the fair bride all that her father had purchased for her, she would have been unable to move beneath the weight of her gems.

Thence the good man rushed off to the banqueting-room, where his domestics had been busy making ready two rows of tables in five long halls.

"Here shall sit the bride! That arm-chair to the right of her is for the Patriarch—it is his proper place. On the left will sit Prince Michael Apafi. He is to have the green-embossed chair, with the golden cherubim. The bridegroom will sit on the right hand of the Patriarch. You must give him that round, armless seat, so that he cannot lean back, but must hold himself proudly erect. Over there you must place Paul Béldi and his spouse, for they are always wont to sit together. Their daughter Aranka will also be there, and she must sit between them on that little blue velvet stool. Opposite to them the silk sofa is for Achmed Pasha and Feriz Beg, recollect that they won't want knife or fork. The Dean must have that painted stone bench, for a wooden bench would break beneath him, and no chair will hold him. The three-and-thirty priests must be placed all together over there—you must put none else beside them, or they would be ashamed to eat. Don't forget to pile up wreaths of flowers on the silver salvers; and remember there are peculiar reasons for not placing a pitcher of wine before Michael Teleki. Achmed Pasha must have a sherbet-bowl placed beside the can from which he drinks his wine, and then folks will fancy he is not transgressing the Koran. Place goblets of Venetian crystal before the ladies, and golden beakers before the gentlemen, the handsomest before Teleki and Bethlen, the commoner sort before the others, as they are wont to dash them against the walls. The bridegroom should have the slenderest beaker of all, for he'll have to pledge everyone, and I want no harm to befall him. Mind what I say!"

Nearly all the wedding guests had now assembled. Only two families were still expected, the Apafis and the Telekis, whom Master Michael in his pride wished to see at his table most of all. He glanced impatiently into the courtyard every time he heard the roll of a carriage, and the staircase lacqueys had strict injunctions to let him know as soon as they saw the Prince's carriage approaching.

At last the rumbling of wheels was heard. Master Michael went all the way to the gate to receive his guests, shoving aside all the vehicles in his way, and bawling to the sentinels on the tower to blow the trumpets as soon as ever they beheld the carriage on the road. The goodly host of guests also thronged the balconies, the turrets, and the rondelles, to catch a glance at the new arrivals, and before very long two carriages, each drawn by four horses, turned the corner of the well-wooded road, carriages supported on each side by footmen, lest they should topple over, and escorted by a brilliant banderium of prancing horsemen.

They were instantly recognised as the carriages of the Prince and his Prime Minister, and the voices of the trumpets never ceased till the splendid, gilded, silk-curtained vehicles had lumbered into the courtyard, although the master of the castle was already awaiting them at the outer, sculptured gate, and himself hastened to open the carriage door, doffing first of all his ermine kalpag. But he popped it on again, considerably nonplussed, when, on opening the carriage, a beardless bit of a boy, to all appearance, leapt out of it all alone, and there was not a trace of the Prince to be seen in the carriage. Perhaps he had dismounted at the foot of the hill in order to complete the journey on foot, as Master Michael himself was in the habit of doing every time he took a drive in his coach, for fear of an accident.

But the youthful jack-in-the-box lost no time in dispelling all rising suspicions by quickly introducing himself.

"I am Emeric Tököly," said he, "whom his Highness the Prince has sent to your Worship as his representative to take part in the festivities, and at the same time to express his regret that he was not able to appear personally, but only to send his hearty congratulations, inasmuch as her Highness the Princess is just now in good hopes, by the grace of God, of presenting her consort with an heir, and consequently his Highness does not feel himself capable of enduring the amenities which under these circumstances Ali Pasha might at such a time think fit to force upon him. Nevertheless he wishes your Worship, with God's will, all imaginable felicity."

Master Michael did not exactly know whether to say "I am very glad" or "I am very sorry;" and in the meanwhile, to gain time, was turning towards the second carriage, when Emeric Tököly suddenly intercepted him.

"I was also to inform your Worship that his Excellency Michael Teleki, having unexpectedly received the command to invade Hungary with all the forces of Transylvania, has sent, instead of himself, his daughter Flora to do honour to your Worship, much regretting that, because of the command aforesaid, which will brook neither objection nor delay, he has been obliged to deny himself the pleasure personally to press your Worship's hand and exchange the warm kiss of kinsmanship; but if your Worship will entrust me with both the handshake and the kiss, I will give your Worship his and take back to him your Worship's."

The good old gentleman was absolutely delighted with the young man's patriarchal idea, forgot the sour and solemn countenance which he had expressly put on in honour of the Prince, and, falling on the neck of the graceful young gentleman, hugged and kissed him so emphatically that the latter could scarcely free himself from his embraces; then, taking Flora Teleki, the youth's reported fiancée, on one arm, and Emeric himself on the other, he conducted them in this guise among his other guests, and they were the first to whom he introduced his daughter in all her bridal array.

A stately, slender brunette was Mariska, her face as pale as a lily, her eyes timidly cast down, as, leaning on her lady companion's arm, and tricked out in her festal costume, she appeared before the expectant multitude. The beauty of her rich black velvet tresses was enhanced by interwoven strings of real pearls; her figure, whose tender charms were insinuated rather than indicated by her splendid oriental dress, would not have been out of place among a group of Naiads; and that superb carriage, those haughty eyebrows, those lips of hers full of the promise of pleasure, suited very well with her bashful looks and timid movements.

Amongst the army of guests there was one man who towered above the others—tall, muscular, with broad shoulders, dome-like breast, and head proudly erect, whose long locks, like a rich black pavilion, flowed right down over his shoulders. His thick dark eyebrows and his coal-black moustache gave an emphatically resolute expression to his dark olive-coloured face, whose profile had an air of old Roman distinction.

This was the bridegroom, Prince Ghyka.

When the father of the bride introduced the new arrivals to the other guests, his first action was to present them to Prince Ghyka, not forgetting to relate how courteously the young Count had executed his commission as to the transfer of the kisses, which, having been received with general hilarity, suggested a peculiarly bold idea to the flighty young man.

While he was being embraced by one after the other, and passed on from hand to hand so to speak, he suddenly stood before the trembling bride, who scarce dared to cast a single furtive look upon him, and, greeting her in the style of the most chivalrous French courtesy, at the same time turning towards the bystanders with a proud, not to say haughty smile, pardonable in him alone, said, with an amiable abandon: "Inasmuch as I have been solemnly authorised to be the bearer of kisses, I imagine I shall be well within my rights if I deliver personally the kisses which my kinswomen, Princess Apafi and Dame Teleki have charged me to convey to the bride."

And before anyone had quite taken in the meaning of his concluding words, the handsome youth, with that fascinating impertinence with which he was wont to subdue men and women alike, bent over the charming bride, and while her face blushed for a moment scarlet red, imprinted a noiseless kiss upon her pure marble forehead. And this he did with such grace, with such tender sprightliness, that nothing worse than a light smile appeared upon the most rigorous faces present.

Then, turning to the company with a proud smile of self-confidence on his face: "I hope," said he, tucking Flora Teleki's hand under his arm, "that the presence of my fiancée is a sufficient guarantee of the respect with which I have accomplished this item of my mission."

At this there was a general outburst of laughter amongst the guests. Any sort of absurdity could be forgiven Emeric, for he managed even his most practical jokes so amiably that it was impossible to be angry with him.

But the cheeks of two damsels remained rosy-red—Mariska's and Flora's. Women don't understand that sort of joke.

The bridegroom, half-smiling, half-angry, stroked his fine moustache. "Come, come, my lad," said he, "you have been quicker in kissing my bride than I have been myself."

But now the reverend gentlemen intervened, the bells rang, the bridesmaids and the best men took possession of the bride and bridegroom, the ceremony began, and nobody thought any more of the circumstance, except, perhaps, two damsels, whose hearts had been pricked by the thoughtless pleasantry, one of them as by the thorn of a rose, the other as by the sting of a serpent.

And now, while for the next hour and a half the marriage ceremony, with the assistance of the Most Reverend Patriarch, the Venerable Archdeacon, three-and-thirty reverend gentlemen of the lower clergy, and just as many secular dignitaries, is solemnly and religiously proceeding, we will remain behind in the ante-chamber, and be indiscreet enough to worm out the contents of the two well-sealed letters which have just been brought in hot haste from Kronstadt for Emeric Tököly by a special courier, who stamped his foot angrily when he was told that he must wait till the Count came out of church.

One of the letters was from Michael Teleki, and its contents pretty much as follows:—

"My dear Sir and Son,

"Our affairs are in the best possible order. During the last few days our army, 9,000 strong, quitting Gyulafehervár, has gone to await Achmed Pasha's forces near Déva, and will thence proceed to unite with Kiuprile's host. War, indeed, is inevitable; and Transylvania must be gloriously in the forefront of it. Do not linger where you are, but try and overtake us. It would be superfluous for me to remind you to take charge of my daughter Flora on the way. God bless you.

"Michael Teleki.

"Datum Albæ Juliæ.

"P.S.—Her Highness the Princess awaits a safe delivery from the mercy of God. His Highness the Prince has just finished a very learned dissertation on the orbits of the planets."

The second letter was in a fine feminine script, but one might judge from it that that hand knew how to handle a sword as well as a pen.

It was to the following effect:—

"My dear Friend,

"I have received your letter, and this is my answer to it. I can give you no very credible news in writing, either about myself or the affairs of the realm. A lover can do everything and sacrifice everything, even to life itself, for his love. (You will understand that this reference to love refers not to me, a mournful widow, but to another mournful widow, who is also your mother.) I do not judge men by what they say, but by what they do. All the same, I have every reason to think well of you, and I shall be delighted if the future should justify my good opinion of you.

"Your faithful servant,

"Ilona.

"P.S.—I shall spend midsummer at the baths of Mehadia."

The noble bridal retinue, merrily conversing, now returned from the chapel to the castle, the very sensible arrangement obtaining, that when the guests sat down to table each damsel was to be escorted to her seat by a selected cavalier known to be not displeasing to her. The only exceptions to this rule were the right reverend brigade, and Achmed Pasha and Feriz Beg, the two Turkish magnates present, whose grave dignity restrained them from participating in this innocent species of gallantry.

First of all, as the representative of the Prince of Transylvania, came Emeric Tököly, conducting the aged mother of the bridegroom, the Princess Ghyka; after him came Paul Béldi, leading the bride by the hand. Béldi's wife was escorted by the master of the house, and her pretty little golden-haired daughter Aranka hung upon her left arm.

Feriz Beg was standing in the vestibule with a grave countenance till Aranka appeared. The little girl, on perceiving the youth, greeted him kindly, whereupon Feriz sighed deeply, and followed her. The bridegroom led the beautiful Flora Teleki by the hand.

On reaching the great hall, the company broke up into groups, the merriest of which was that which included Flora, Mariska, and Aranka.

"Be seated, ladies and gentlemen! be seated!" cried the strident voice of the host, who, full of proud self-satisfaction, ran hither and thither to see that all the guests were in the places assigned to them. Tököly was by the side of Mariska, opposite to them sat the bridegroom, with Flora Teleki by his side. Aranka was the vis-à-vis of Feriz Beg.

The banquet began. The endless loving-cup went round, the faces of the guests grew ever cheerier, the bride conversed in whispers with her handsome neighbour. Opposite to them the bridegroom, with equal courtesy, exchanged from time to time a word with the fair Flora, but the conversation thus begun broke down continually, and yet both the lady and the prince were persons of culture, and had no lack of mother-wit. But their minds were far away. Their lips spoke unconsciously, and the Prince grew ever gloomier as he saw his bride plunging ever more deeply into the merry chatter of her gay companion, and try as he might to entertain his own partner, the resounding laughter of the happy pair opposite drove the smile from his face, especially when Flora also grew absolutely silent, so that the bridegroom was obliged, at last, to turn to the Patriarch, who was sitting on his right, and converse with him about terribly dull matters.

Meanwhile, a couple of Servian musicians began, to the accompaniment of a zithern, to sing one of their sad, monotonous, heroic songs. All this time Achmed Pasha had never spoken a word, but now, fired by the juice of the grape mediatized by his sherbet-bowl, he turned towards the singers and, beckoning them towards him, said in a voice not unlike a growl:

"Drop all that martial jumble and sing us instead something from one of our poets, something from Hariri the amorous, something from Gulestan!"

At these words the face of Feriz Beg, who sat beside him, suddenly went a fiery red—why, he could not have told for the life of him.

"Do you know 'The Lover's Complaint,' for instance?" inquired the Pasha of the musician.

"I know the tune, but the verses have quite gone out of my head."

"Oh! as to that, Feriz Beg here will supply you with the words quickly enough if you give him a piece of parchment and a pen."

Feriz Beg was preparing to object, with the sole result that all the women were down upon him immediately, and begged and implored him for the beautiful song. So he surrendered, and, tucking up the long sleeve of his dolman, set the writing materials before him and began to write.

They who drink no wine are nevertheless wont to be intoxicated by the glances of bright eyes, and Feriz, as he wrote, glanced from time to time at the fair face of Aranka, who cast down her forget-me-not eyes shamefacedly at his friendly smile. So Feriz Beg wrote the verses and handed them to the musicians, and then everyone bade his neighbour hush and listen with all his ears.

The musician ran his fingers across the strings of his zithern, and then began to sing the song of the Turkish poet:

"Three lovely maidens I see, three maidens embracing each other;
Gentle, and burning, and bright—Sun, Moon, and Star I declare them.
Let others adore Sun and Moon, but give me my Star, my belovéd!"

"When the Sun leaves the heavens, her adorers are whelméd in slumber;
When the Moon quits the sky, sleep falls on the eyes of her lovers.
But the fall of the Star is the death of the man who adores her—
And oh! if my load-star doth fall, Machallah! I cease from the living!"

General applause rewarded the song, which it was difficult to believe had not been made expressly for the occasion.

"Who would think," said Paul Béldi to the Pasha, "that your people not only cut darts from reeds, but pens also, pens worthy of the poets of love?"

"Oh!" replied Achmed, "in the hands of our poets, blades and harps are equally good weapons; and if they bound the laurel-wreath round the brows of Hariri it was only to conceal the wounds which he received in battle."

When the banquet was over, Tököly, with courteous affability, parted from his fair neighbour, whom he immediately saw disappear in a window recess, arm-in-arm with Flora. He himself made the circuit of the table in order that he might meet the fair Aranka, but was stopped in mid-career by his host, who was so full of compliments that by the time Tököly reached the girl, he found her leaning on her mother's arm engaged in conversation with the Prince. Aranka, feeling herself out of danger when she had only a married man to deal with, had quite regained her childish gaiety, and was making merry with the bridegroom.

Tököly, with insinuating grace, wormed his way into the group, and gradually succeeded in so cornering the Prince, that he was obliged to confine his conversation to Dame Béldi, while Tököly himself was fortunate enough to make Aranka laugh again and again at his droll sallies.

The Prince was boiling over with venom, and was on the verge of forgetting himself and exploding with rage. Fortunately, Dame Béldi, observing in time the tension between the two men, curtseyed low to them both, and withdrew from the room with her daughter. Whereupon, the Prince seized Tököly's hand, and said to him with choleric jocosity: "If your Excellency's own bride is not sufficient for you, will you at least be satisfied with throwing in mine, and do not try to sweep every girl you see into your butterfly-net?"

Tököly quite understood the bitter irony of these words, and replied, with a soft but offensively condescending smile: "My dear friend, your theory of life is erroneous. I see, from your face, that you are suffering from an overflow of bile. You have not had a purge lately, or been blooded for a long time."

The Prince's face darkened. He squeezed Tököly's hand convulsively, and murmured between his teeth:

"One way is as good as another. When shall we settle this little affair?"

Tököly shrugged his shoulders. "To-morrow morning, if you like."

"Very well, we'll meet by the cross."

The two men had spoken so low that nobody in the whole company had noticed them, except Feriz Beg, who, although standing at the extreme end of the room with folded arms, had followed with his eagle eyes every play of feature, every motion of the lips of the whole group, including Dame Béldi and the girl, and who now, on observing the two men grasp each other's hands, and part from each other with significant looks, suddenly planted himself before them, and said simply: "Do you want to fight a duel because of Aranka?"

"What a question?" said the Prince evasively.

"It will not be a duel," said Feriz, "for there will be three of us there," and, with that, he turned away and departed.

"How foolish these solemn men are," said Tököly to himself, "they are always seeking sorrow for themselves. It would require only a single word to make them merry, and, in spite of all I do, they will go and spoil a joke. Why, such a duel as this—all three against each other, and each one against the other two—was unknown even to the famous Round Table and to the Courts of Love. It will be splendid."

At that moment the courier, who had brought the letters, forced his way right up to Tököly, and said that he had got two important despatches for him.

"All right, keep them for me, I'll read them to-morrow. I won't spoil the day with tiresome business."

And so he kept it up till late at night with the merriest of the topers. Only after midnight did he return to his room, and ordered the soldier who had brought the letters to wake him as soon as he saw the red dawn.

CHAPTER III.
THREE MEN.

Tököly's servant durst not go to sleep on the off-chance of awaking at dawn in order to arouse his master, and so the sky had scarcely begun to grow grey when he routed him up. Emeric hastily dressed himself. A sort of ill-humour on his pale face was the sole reminder of the previous night's debauch.

"Here are the letters, sir," said the soldier.

"Leave me in peace with your letters," returned Emeric roughly, "I have no time now to read your scribble. Go down and saddle my horse for me, and tell the coachman to make haste and get the carriage ready, and have it waiting for me near the cross at the slope of the hill, and find out on your way down whether the old master of the house is up yet."

The soldier pocketed the letter once more, and went down grumbling greatly, while Emeric buckled on his sword and threw his pelisse over his shoulders. Soon after the soldier returned and announced that Master Michael had been up long ago, because many of his guests had to depart before dawn, amongst them the Prince, also the Turkish gentleman; the bride was to follow them in the afternoon.

"Good," said Emeric; "let the coachman wait for me in front of the Dragmuili csarda.[4] You had better bring with you some cold meat and wine, and we'll have breakfast on the way." And with that he hastened to the father of the bride, who, after embracing him heartily and repeatedly, with a great flux of tears, and kissing him again and again, and sending innumerable greetings through him to every eminent Transylvanian gentleman, took an affectionate leave of him.

[4] An inn.

Tököly hastened to bestride his horse on hearing that his adversaries had been a little beforehand with him, and, putting spurs to his horse, galloped rapidly away. Master Michael looked after him in amazement so long as he could see him racing along the steep, hilly way, till he disappeared among the woods. A soldier followed him at a considerable distance.

Emeric, on reaching the cross, found his adversaries there already. Feriz Beg had brought with him Achmed Pasha's field-surgeon. Tököly had only thought of breakfast, the Prince had thought of nothing.

"Good morning," cried the Count, leaping from his horse. The Beg returned his salute with a solemn obeisance; the Prince turned his back upon him.

"Let us go into the forest to find a nice clear space," said Tököly; and off he set in silence, leading the way, while the soldiers followed at some distance, leading the horses by the bridles.

After going about a hundred yards they came to a clear space, surrounded by some fine ash-trees. The Prince signified to the soldiers to stop here, and, without a word, began to take off his dolman and mantle and tuck up his sleeves.

It was a fine sight to behold these men—all three of them were remarkably handsome fellows. The Prince was one of those vigorous, muscular shapes, whom Nature herself seems specially to have created to head a host. As he rolled up the flapping sleeves of his gold-embroidered, calf-skin shirt, he displayed muscles capable of holding their own single-handed against a whole brigade, and the defiant look of his eye testified to his confidence in the strength of his arms, whose every muscle stood out like a hard tumour, while his fists were worthy of the heavy broadsword, whose blade was broadest towards its point.

Feriz Beg, on discarding his dolman, rolled up the sleeves of his fine shirt of Turkish linen to his shoulders, and drew from its sheath his fine Damascus scimitar, which was scarce two inches broad, and so flexible that you could have bent it double in every direction like a watch-spring. His arms did not seem to be over-encumbered with muscles, but at the first movement he made, as he lightly tested his blade, a whole array of steel springs and stone-hard sinews, or so they seemed to be, suddenly started up upon his arm, revealing a whole network of highly-developed sinews and muscles. His face was fixed and grave.

Only Emeric seemed to take the whole affair as a light joke. With a smile he drew up his lace-embroidered shirt of holland linen, bound up his hair beneath his kalpag, and folded his well-rounded arms, whose feminine whiteness, plastic, regular symmetry, and slender proportions, gave no promise whatever of anything like manly strength. His sword came from a famous Newcastle arms manufactory, and was made of a certain dark, lilac-coloured steel, somewhat bent, and with a very fine point.

"My friends," said Emeric, turning towards his opponents, "as there are three of us in this contest, and each one of the three must fight the other two, let us lay down some rule to regulate the encounter."

"I'll fight the pair of you together," said the Prince haughtily.

"I'll also fight one against two," retorted Feriz.

"Then each one for himself and everybody against everybody else," explained Tököly. "That will certainly be amusing enough; in fact, a new sort of encounter altogether, though hardly what gentlemen are used to. Now, I should consider it much nobler if we fought against each other singly, and when one of us falls, the victor can renew the combat with the man in reserve."

"I don't mind, only the sooner the better," said the Prince impatiently, and took up his position on the ground.

"Stop, my friend; don't you know that we cannot commence this contest without Feriz?"

"Pooh! I didn't come here as a spectator," cried the Prince passionately; "besides, I have nothing to do with the Beg."

"But I have to do with you," interrupted Feriz.

"Well," said Tököly, "I myself do not know what has offended him, but he chose to intervene, and such challenges as his are wont to be accepted without asking the reason why. No doubt he has private reasons of his own."

"You may stop there," interrupted Feriz. "Let Fate decide."

"By all means," observed the Count, drawing forth three pieces of money impressed with the image of King Sigismund—a gold coin, a silver coin, and a copper coin—and handed them to the Turkish leech. "Take these pieces of money, my worthy fellow, and throw them into the air. The gold coin is the Prince, the copper coin is myself. Whichever two of the three coins come down on the same side, their representatives will fight first."

The leech flung the pieces into the air, and the gold and silver pieces came down on the same side.

The Prince beckoned angrily to Feriz.

"Come, the sooner the better. Apparently I must have this little affair off my hands before I can get at Tököly."

Tököly motioned to the leech to keep the pieces of money and have his bandages ready.

"Bandages!" said the Prince ironically. "It's not first blood, but last blood, I'm after."

And now the combatants stood face to face.

For a long time they looked into each other's eyes, as if they would begin the contest with the darts of flashing glances, and then suddenly they fell to.

The Prince's onset was as furious as if he would have crushed his opponent in the twinkling of an eye with the heavy and violent blows which he rained upon him with all his might. But Feriz Beg stood firmly on the self-same spot where he had first planted his feet, and though he was obliged to bend backwards a little to avoid the impact of the terrible blows, yet his slender Damascus scimitar, wove, as it were, a tent of lightning flashes all around him, defending him on every side, and flashing sparks now hither, now thither, whenever it encountered the antagonistic broadsword.

The Prince's face was purple with rage. "Miserable puppy!" he thundered, gnashing his teeth; and, pressing still closer on his opponent, he dealt him two or three such terrible blows that the Beg was beaten down upon one knee, and, the same instant, a jet of blood leaped suddenly from somewhere into the face of the Prince, who thereupon staggered back and let fall his sword. In the heat of the duel he had not noticed that he had been wounded. Whilst raining down a torrent of violent blows upon his antagonist, he incautiously struck his own hand, so to speak, on the sword of Feriz Beg, just below the palm where the arteries are, and the wound which severed the sinews of the wrist constrained him to drop his sword.

Tököly at once rushed forward.

"You are wounded, Prince!" he cried.

The leech hastened forward with the bandages, the dark red blood spurted from the severed arteries like a fountain, and the Prince's face grew pale in an instant. But scarcely had the surgeon bound up his wounded right hand than his eye kindled again, and, turning to Emeric, he cried: "I have still a hand left, and I can fight with it. Put my sword into my left hand, and I'll fight to the last drop of my blood."

"Don't be impatient, Prince," said Emeric courteously; "ill-luck is your enemy to-day, but as soon as you are cured you may command me, and I will be at your service."

The Prince, who was already tottering, leaned heavily on his soldiers, who hastened towards him and conveyed him half unconscious to the carriage awaiting him. His wound was much worse than it had seemed at first, and there was no knowing whether it would not prove mortal.

Only two combatants now remained in the field—Emeric and Feriz. The Beg was still standing in his former place, and beckoned in dumb show to Emeric to come on.

"Pardon me, my worthy comrade," said the Count, "you are a little fatigued, and a combat between us would be unfair if I, who have rested, should fight with you now. Come, plump down on the grass for a little beside me. My man has brought some cold provisions for the journey; let us have a few mouthfuls together first, and then we can fight it out at our ease."

This nonchalant proposal seemed to please Feriz, and, leaning his sword against a tree, he sat down in the grass, whilst Emeric's servant unpacked the cold meat and the fruit which he had brought for his master, together with a silver calabash-shaped flask full of wine.

Emeric returned the flask to the soldier. "Look you, my son," said he, "you can drink the wine, and then fill the flask with spring water, for Feriz Beg does not drink wine, and there are no other drinking utensils; I, therefore, will also drink water, and so we shall be equal." Feriz Beg was pleased with his comrade's free and easy behaviour, took willingly of the food piled up before him, and not only drank out of the same flask, but even answered questions when they were put to him.

A faint scar was visible on the forehead of the young Beg, which the fold of his turban did not quite conceal.

"Did you get that wound from a Magyar?" inquired the Count.

"No, from an Italian, on the isle of Candia."

"I thought so at once. A Magyar does not cut with the point of his sword. I see the hand of an Italian fencing-master in it. I can even tell you the position you were in when you received it. The enemy was beside you, in front of you, on your right hand, and on your left. Now you employed that masterly circular stroke which you have just now displayed, whereby you can defend yourself on all sides at once. Then the foe in front of you suddenly rose in his saddle, and with a blow which you did not completely ward off, scarred your forehead with the point of his sword."

"It was just like that."

"It is one of the master-strokes of Basanella, and very carefully you have to watch it, for there is scarce any defence against it; the sword seems to strike up and down in the same instant, as if it were a sickle, and however high you may hold your own sword, the blow breaks through your defence. There is, indeed, only one defence against it, and that the simplest in the world—dodge back your head."

"You are quite right," said Feriz Beg smiling, and after washing his hands, he again took up his sword, "let us make an end of it."

"I don't mind," said Tököly; and lightly drawing his own sword with his delicate white hand, just as if it were a gewgaw which he was disengaging from its case to present to a lady, he took up his position on the ground.

"Just one word more," said Tököly with friendly candour. "When you fight with a single opponent, do not rush forward as if you were on a battlefield and had to do with ten men at least, for in so doing you expend much force uselessly, and allow your opponent to come up closer; rather elongate your sword and allow only your hand to play freely."

"I thank you for the advice," said Feriz smiling. Had it been anybody else he would probably have thrust back the advice into his face. But Emeric imparted it to him with such a friendly, comrade-like voice as if they had only come there for the fun of the thing.

Then the combat began. Feriz Beg, with his usual impetuosity, pressed upon his adversary as if he would pay him back his amicable counsels in kind; while Tököly calmly, composedly smiling, flung back the most violent assaults of his rival as if it were a mere sport to him, so lightly, so confidently did his sword turn in his hand, with so much finished grace did he accompany every movement—in fact, he hardly seemed to make any exertion. The most violent blows aimed at him by Feriz Beg he parried with the lightest twist of his sword, and not once did he counter, so that at last Feriz Beg, involuntarily overcome by rage, fell back and lowered his sword.

"You are only playing with me. Why don't you strike back?"

"Twice you might have received from me Basanella's master-stroke, so impetuously do you fight."

In a duel nothing is so wounding as the supercilious self-restraint of an opponent. Feriz Beg grew quite furious at Tököly's cold repose, and flung himself upon his opponent as if absolutely beside himself.

"Let us see whether you are the Devil or not," he cried.

At the same instant, when he had advanced a pace nearer to Tököly, the latter suddenly stretched forth his sword and at the instant when he parried his opponent's blow, he made a scarce perceptible backward and upward jerk with the point of his sword, and at that same instant a burning red line was visible on the temples of Feriz Beg. The young Turk lowered his sword in surprise as his face, immediately after the unnoticed stroke, began to bleed. Tököly flung away his sword and, tearing out his white pocket-handkerchief, rushed suddenly towards his opponent, stanched the wound with the liveliest sympathy, and said, in a voice tremulous with the most naïve apprehension: "Look now! didn't I tell you all along to watch for that stroke?"

By this time the leech had also come up with the bandages, and examining the wound, observed consolingly:

"A soldierly affair. Only the skin is pierced. In three days you will be all right."

Tököly, full of joy, pressed the hand of Feriz Beg.

"Henceforth we will be good friends," said he. "Before God, I protest I never gave you the slightest cause of offence."

"I shall rejoice in your friendship," said Feriz solemnly, "but if you wish it to last, listen to my words: never approach a girl whom you do not love in order to make her love you, and if you are loved, love in return and make her happy."

"You have my word of honour on it, Feriz," replied Tököly. "Of all the girls whom I have seen since I knew you, not one of them have I loved, and by none of them do I want to be loved."

Feriz Beg could not refrain from shaking his head and smiling.

"Apparently you forget that your own bride was among them."

Tököly bit his lips in some confusion, and answered nothing; he thought it best to pass off this slip of the tongue as a mere jest. Then the two reconciled antagonists embraced and returned to the roadside cross. Tököly constrained the Beg to take his coach and go on to Ibraila, while he himself mounted his horse, and taking leave of Feriz, took the road leading to the Pass of Bozza.

The soldier-courier now fancied it was high time that the urgent letters, of which he was the bearer, should be read, and accordingly asked his master about it.

"Well, where are your two letters?" asked the Count very languidly.

"There are not two, sir, but three."

"What! have they multiplied?"

"Miss Flora gave me the third half an hour before she took coach to go home."

"Then she has gone on before, eh? Well, let us see what they write about."

Teleki's was the first letter which Emeric perused; he glanced through it rapidly, as if it had no very great claim upon his attention. When he came to that part of it where he was told to look after Flora, he paused for a little. "Well, I can easily overtake her," he thought, and he took the second letter, which was subscribed with the name of Helen. Twice he perused it, and then he returned to it a third time, and his face grew visibly redder. Involuntarily he sighed as he thrust the letter into his breast pocket just above his heart, and looked sadly in front of him, as if he were listening to the beating of his own heart.

Then he broke open the third letter.

It contained an engagement ring, nothing else. That was all—not a single accompanying word or letter.

For an instant Emeric held it in his hand in blank amazement; his steed stopped also. For some minutes his face was pale and his head hung down.

But in another instant he was again upright in his saddle, and he exclaimed in a voice loud enough to be heard afar:

"Well, it's not coming off then, so much the better!"

Then he threw away the envelope in which the ring had been, and drawing out the letter which he had thrust into his bosom, he put the ring into it and then returned it to his bosom; then, with a glowing face, he turned his horse's head and, in the best of humours, called to his soldier: "We will not go to Transylvania. Back to Mehadia!"

CHAPTER IV.
AFFAIRS OF STATE.

The year was a few weeks older since we saw Tököly depart from Rumnik, after reading the three letters, and behold, Michael Teleki still lingered at Gyulafehervár, and had not gone with the Transylvanian forces to Déva.

He had been feeling ill for some days, and had not been able to leave his room. A slow fever tormented his limbs, his face had lost its colour, he was hardly able to hold himself up, and every joint ached whenever he moved. He had need of repose, but not a single moment could he have to himself, and just when he would have liked to have shown the door to every worry and bother, the Prince at one moment, and the Turkish Ambassador at another, were continually pressing their affairs upon him.

At that moment his crony Nalaczi was with him, standing at the window, while Teleki sat in an arm-chair. All his members were shaken by the ague, his breath was burning hot, his face was as pale as wax, and he could scarce keep his lips together.

By his chair stood his page—young Cserei—whilst huddled up in a corner on one side was a scarce visible figure which clung close to the wall with as miserable, shamefaced an expression as if it would have liked to crawl right into it and be hidden. What with the darkness and its own miserableness, we should scarce recognise this shape if Teleki did not chance to give it a name, railing at it, from time to time, as if it were a lifeless log, without even looking at it, for, in truth, his back was turned upon it.

"I tell you, Master Szénasi, you are an infinitely useless blockhead——"

"I humbly beg——"

"Don't beg anything. Here have I, worse luck, been entrusting you with a small commission, in order that you might impart some wholesome information to the people, and instead of that you go and fool them with all sorts of old wives' stories."

"Begging your Excellency's pardon, I thought——"

"Thought? What business had you to think? You thought, perhaps, you were doing me a service with your nonsense, eh?"

"Mr. Nalaczi said as much, your Excellency."

Mr. Nalaczi seemed to be sitting on thorns all this while.

"Now just see what a big fool you are," interrupted Teleki. "Mr. Nalaczi may have told you, for what I know, that it might be well for you to use your influence with the common people by mentioning before them the wonders which have recently taken place, and thereby encouraging them to be loyal and friendly to each other, but I am sure he did not tell you to manufacture wonders on your own account, and terrify the people by spreading abroad rumours of coming war."

"I thought——" Here he stopped short, the worthy man was quite incapable at that moment of completing his sentence.

"Thought! You thought, I suppose, that just as I was collecting armies, you would do me a great service by preaching war? So far as I am concerned, I should like to see every sword buried in the earth."

"Begging your Excellency's pardon——"

"Get out of my sight. Never let me see you again. In three days you must leave Transylvania, or else I'll send you out, and you won't thank me for that."

"May I humbly ask what I am to do if your Excellency withdraws your favour from me?" whined the fellow.

"You may do as you like. Go to Szathmár and become the lacquey of Baron Kopp, or the scribe of Master Kászonyi. I'm just going to write to them. I'll mention your name in my letter, and you can take it."

"And if they won't accept me?"

"Then you must tack on to someone else, anyhow you shan't starve. Only get out of my sight as quickly as possible."

The "magister" withdrew in fear and trembling, wiping his eyes with his pocket-handkerchief.

"Sir," said Nalaczi, when they were alone together, "this violence does harm."

"The only way with such fellows is to bully them whatever they do, for they are deceivers and traitors at heart, and would otherwise do you mischief. Kick and beat them, chivy them from pillar to post, and make them feel how wretched their lot is, if you don't want them to play off their tricks upon you."

"I don't see it in that light. This irritability will do you no good."

"On the contrary it keeps me up. If I had not always given vent to my feelings I should have been lying on a sick-bed long ago. Take these few thalers, go after that good-for-nothing, and tell him that I am very angry with him, and therefore he must try in future to deserve my confidence better, in which case I shall not forget him. Tell him to wait in the gate for the letter I am about to write, and when once he has it in his hand let him get out of Transylvania as speedily as he can. Remind him that I don't yet know about what happened in the square at Klausenberg, and if I did know I would have him flogged out of the realm; so let him look sharp about it."

Nalaczi laughed and went out.

Teleki sank back exhausted on his pillows, and made his page rub the back of his neck violently with a piece of flannel.

At that instant the Prince entered. His face was wrath, and all because of his sympathy. He began scolding Teleki on the very threshold.

"Why don't you lie down when I command you? Does it beseem a grown-up man like you to be as disobedient as a capricious child? Why don't you send for the doctor; why don't you be blooded?"

"There is nothing the matter with me, your Highness. It is only a little hæmorrhoidalis alteratio. I am used to it. It always plagues me at the approach of the equinoxes."

"Ai, ai, Michael Teleki, you don't get over me. You are very ill, I tell you. Your mental anxiety has brought about this physical trouble. Does it become a Christian man, I ask, to take on so because my little friend Flora cannot have one particular man out of fifteen wooers, and a fellow like Emeric, too—a mere dry stick of a man."

"I don't give it any particular importance."

"You are a bad Christian, I tell you, if you say that. You love neither God nor man; neither your family, nor me——"

"Sir!" said Teleki, in a supplicating voice.

"For if you did love us, you would spare yourself and lie down, and not get up again till you were quite well again."

"But if I lie down——"

"Yes, I know—other things will have a rest too. The bottom of the world isn't going to fall out, I suppose, because you keep your bed for a day or two. Come! look sharp! I will not go till I see you lying on your bed."

What could Teleki do but lie down at the express command of his Sovereign.

"And you won't get up again without my permission, mind," said the Prince, signalling to young Cserei, and addressing the remainder of his discourse to him. "And you, young man, take care that your master does not leave his bed, do you hear? I command it, and, till he is quite well, don't let him do any hard work, whether it be reading, writing, or dictation. You have my authorisation to prevent it, and you must rigorously do your duty. You will also allow nobody to enter this room, except the doctor and the members of the family. Now, mind what I say! As for you, Master Teleki, you will wrap yourself well up and get yourself well rubbed all over the body with a woollen cloth, clap a mustard poultice on your neck and keep it there as long as you can bear it, and towards evening have a hot bath, with salt and bran in it; and if you won't have a vein opened put six leeches on your temples, and the doctor will tell you what else to do. And in any case don't fail to take some of these pilulæ de cynoglosso. Their effect is infallible." Whereupon the Prince pressed into Teleki's hand a box full of those harmless medicaments which, under the name of dog's-tongue pills, were then the vogue in all domestic repositories.

"All will be well, your Highness."

"Let us hope so! Towards evening I will come and see you again."

And then the Prince withdrew with an air of satisfaction, thinking that he had given the fellow a good frightening.

Scarce had he closed the door behind him than Teleki beckoned to Cserei to bring him the letters which had just arrived.

The page regarded him dubiously. "The Prince forbade me to do so," he observed conscientiously.

"The Prince loves to have his joke," returned the counsellor. "I like my joke, too, when I've time for it. Break open those letters and read them to me."

"But what will the Prince say?"

"It is I who command you, my son, not the Prince. Read them, I say, and don't mind if you hear me groan."

Cserei looked at the seal of one of the letters and durst not break it open.

"Your Excellency, that is a secretum sigillum."

"Break it open like a man, I say. Such secrets are not dangerous to you; you are a child to be afraid of such things."

Cserei opened the letter, and glancing at the signature, stammered in a scarce audible voice: "Leopoldus."[5]

[5] i.e. the Emperor Leopold.

Teleki, resting on his elbows, listened attentively.

"Your Highness and my well-disposed Friend—I have heard from Baron Mendenzi Kopp and worthy Master Kászonyi of your Excellency's good dispositions towards me and Christendom, and your readiness to help in the present disturbances. All my own efforts will be directed to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the Christian Princes, so that there may not be the slightest occasion that the Turkish War should extend, and that the whole power of the Ottoman Empire should be hurled on me and my dominions. But I hope that the fury of these barbarians, by the combination of the foreign kings and princes, shall, with God's assistance, be so opposed and thwarted as to make them turn back from the league of the combined faithful hosts. Meanwhile, I assure your Excellency and the Estates of Transylvania of my protection, so long as you continue well-disposed towards me, and I entrust the maintenance of this good understanding between us to Messrs. the illustrious Baron Kopp and the Honourable Mr. Kászonyi. Wishing your Excellency good health and all manner of good fortune, etc., etc."

Cserei looked at the doors and windows in terror, for fear someone might be listening.

"And now let us read the second letter."

Cserei's top-knot regularly began to sweat when he recognised at the bottom of the opened letter the signature of the Grand Vizier, who thus wrote to the Prince:

"Most illustrious Prince, hearty love and greeting!—We would inform thee of our grace and favour that we have sent a part of our army to the assistance of the imprisoned heroes in our most mighty master the Sultan's fortress of Nyitra, where the faithless foe are besieging them. It is therefore necessary that thou with thy whole host and all the necessary muniments of war should hasten thither without loss of time, so as to unite both in heart and deed with our warriors, who are on their way against the enemy. We believe that by the grace of God thou wilt be ready to render useful service to the mighty Sultan, and so be entitled to participate in his favour and liberality. We, moreover, after the end of the solemn feast days which we are wont to keep after our fasts are over, will follow our advance guards with our countless hosts, and thou meanwhile must manfully take this business in hand, so that thy loyalty may shine the more gloriously in martial deeds. Peace be to those who are in the obedience of God."

Poor Cserei, when he had read this letter through, had a worse fit of ague than his master. He anxiously watched the face of the statesman, but the only thing visible in his features was bodily suffering. There was no sign of mental disturbance.

The blood flew to his face, the veins were throbbing visibly in his temples.

"Come hither, my son," he said in a scarcely audible voice; "bring me a glass of water, put into it as much rhubarb powder as would go on the edge of a knife, and give it me to drink."

Cserei fancied that the sick Premier had not mastered the contents of the letter because of a fresh access of fever, and, having prepared the rhubarb water in a few moments, gave it him to drink, whereupon Teleki crouched down beneath his coverlet. He could have done nothing better, for now the ague burst forth again, so that he regularly shivered beneath its attack. Cserei wanted to run for a doctor.

"Whither are you going?" asked Teleki. "Fetch ink and parchment, and write."

The lad obeyed his command marvelling.

"Bring hither the round table and sit down beside it. Write what I tell you."

The pen shook in the lad's hand, and he kept dipping it into the sand instead of into the ink.

Teleki, in a broken voice, dictated a letter as well as the fever would allow him.

"Most Exalted Grand Vizier and Well-beloved Sir,—We learn from your Highness's dispatch that the armies of the Sublime Sultan who have lately been besieging the fortress of Nyitra are now endeavouring to combine their forces, and though this realm has but a meagre possession of the muniments of war remaining to it, we shall be prepared most punctually to hold at your Highness's gracious disposition as much, though it be but little, forage, hay, and other necessary stores as we still possess, you making allowance for all inevitable defects and shortcomings. Moreover, rumour has it that the hostile hosts are beginning to show themselves on the borders of Transylvania, which irruption, though it be no secret, is yet to be confirmed, and should it be so we must meet it with all our attention and energy. As to this your Highness shall be informed in good time, and in the meanwhile we commit you to God's gracious favour, etc., etc."

Cserei sighed and thought to himself: "I wonder whence all the hay and oats is to come?"

But Teleki knew very well that in consequence of last year's bad harvests and inundations the Turkish army was suffering severely from want of hay, so that what with him was an occasion for delay, with them was an occasion for hurrying—whence we may draw the reflection that the great events of this world are built upon haycocks!

"Address the second letter," continued Teleki, "to his Excellency Baron Mendenzi Kopp and to the honourable Achatius Kászonyi, commandants of the fortress of Szathmár," and he thus went on dictating to Cserei, whilst in the intervals of silence the groans which the ague forced from his breast were distinctly audible.

"With joy we learn of the intention of your Honours to endeavour to seize one of the gates of entrance of the enemy of our faith, through which he was always ready to come for our destruction. May the God of mercy forward the designs of your Excellencies. If, on this occasion, your Excellencies could also find time to make a feigned attack upon Transylvania in order to give us a reasonable excuse of our inability to lend the Turks the assistance they expect from us, you would make matters easier for us, and render us an essential service. On the other hand, if we should be compelled against our wills to send our soldiers against the Christian camp, in conjunction with the enemies of our faith, we assure your Excellencies that our host will be a purely nominal one, etc., etc.

"P.S.—The bearer of this letter can be employed by your Excellencies as a courier or otherwise."

Cserei looked with amazement at the man in whom mental vivacity seemed to rise triumphant even over the lassitude of fever.

"Take a third sheet of paper, and address it to the Honourable Ladislaus Ebéni, Lieutenant-Governor of the fortress of Klausenburg.

"We hasten to inform your Honour that preparations are being made by the Commandant of the fortress of Szathmár, which leads us to conjecture that he meditates making an irruption into Transylvania. It may, of course, be merely a feint, but your Honour would do well to be prepared and under arms, lest he have designs against us, and is not merely making a noise. We, meanwhile, will postpone the advance of our arms into Hungary, lest, while we are attacking on one side, we leave Transylvania defenceless on the other. Once more we counsel your Honour to use the utmost caution, etc."

"And now take these letters and carry them to the Prince, that he may sign them."

"And what if he box my ears for allowing your Excellency to dictate?" said the frightened lad.

"Never mind it, my son, you will have suffered for your country. I, too, have had buffets enough in my time, not only when I was a child, but since I have grown up." And with that he turned his face towards the wall and pulled the coverlet over him.

Fortunately Cserei found Apafi in the apartment of the consort, and thus avoided the box on the ear, got the letters signed, and dispatched them all in different directions, so that all three got into the proper hands in the shortest conceivable time. And now let us see the result.

The Grand Vizier blasphemed when he had read his, and swore emphatically that if there were no hay in Transylvania he would make hay of their Excellencies.

Baron Kopp and Mr. Kászonyi chuckled together over their letter. The Commandant murmured gruffly: "I don't care, so you needn't."

Mr. Ebéni, however, on reading his letter, deposited it neatly among the public archives, growling angrily:

"If I were to call the people to arms at every wild alarm or idle rumour, I should have nothing else to do all day long. It is a pity that Teleki hasn't something better to do than to bother me continually with his scribble."

CHAPTER V.
THE DAY OF GROSSWARDEIN.

In order that the horizon may stand clearly before us, it must be said that in those days there were two important points in Hungary on the Transylvanian border: Grosswardein and Szathmár-Németi, which might be called the gates of Transylvania—good places of refuge if their keys are in the hand of the Realm, but all the more dangerous when the hands of strangers dispose of them.

At this very time a German army was investing Szathmár and the Turks had sat down before Grosswardein, and the plumed helmets of the former were regarded as as great a menace on the frontiers of the state as the half-moons themselves.

The inhabitants of the regions enclosed between these fortresses never could tell by which road they were to expect the enemy to come. For in such topsy-turvy days as those were, every armed man was an enemy, from whom corn, cattle, and pretty women had to be hidden away, and their friendship cost as much as their enmity, and perhaps more; for if they found out at Szathmár that some nice wagon-loads of corn and hay had been captured from local marauders without first beating their brains out, the magistrates would look in next day and impose a penalty; and again, on the other hand, if it were known at Grosswardein that the Szathmárians had been received hospitably at any gentleman's house, and the daughter of the house had spoken courteously to them, the Turks would wait until the Szathmárians had gone farther on and would then fall upon the house in question and burn it to the ground, so that the Szathmárians should not be able to sleep there again; and, as for the daughter of the house, they would carry her off to a harem, in order to save her from any further discoursing with the magistrates of Szathmár.

And, last of all, there was a third enemy to be reckoned with, and this was the countless rabble of betyárs, or freebooters, who inhabited the whole region from the marshes of Ecsed to the morasses of Alibuner, and who gave no reason at all for driving off their neighbour's herds and even destroying his houses.

In those days a certain Feri Kökényesdi had won renown as a robber chieftain, and extraordinary, marvellous tales were told in every village and on every puszta[6] of him and the twelve robbers who followed his banner, and who were ready at a word to commit the most incredible audacities. People talked of their entrenched fortresses among the Bélabora and Alibuner marshes which were inaccessible to any mortal foe, and in which, even if surrounded on all sides, they could hold out against five regiments till the day of judgment. Then there were tales of storehouses concealed among the Cumanian sand-hills which could only be discovered by the scent of a horse; there were tales of a good steed who, after one watering, could gallop all the way from the Theiss to the Danube, who could recognise a foe two thousand paces off, and would neigh if his master were asleep or fondling his sweetheart in the tavern; there were tales of the gigantic strength of the robber chief who could tackle ten pandurs[7] at once, and who, whenever he was pursued, could cause a sea to burst forth between himself and his pursuers, so that they would be compelled to turn back.

[6] Common.

[7] Police officers.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Kökényesdi was neither a giant who turned men round his little finger nor a magician who threw dust in their eyes, but an honest-looking, undersized, meagre figure of a man and a citizen of Hodmezö-Vásárhely, in which place he had a house and a couple of farms, on which he conscientiously paid his portion of taxes; and he had bulls and stallions, as to every one of which he was able to prove where he had bought and how much he had paid for it. Not one of them was stolen.

Yet everyone knew very well that neither his farms nor his bulls nor his stallions had been acquired in a godly way, and that the famous robber chief whose rumour filled every corner of the land was none other than he.

But who could prove it? Had anybody ever seen him steal? Had he ever been caught red-handed? Did he not always defend himself in the most brilliant manner whenever he was accused? When there was a rumour that Kökényesdi was plundering the county of Mármaros from end to end, did he not produce five or six eye-witnesses to prove that at that very time he was ploughing and sowing on his farms, and was not the judge at great pains to discover whether these witnesses were reliable?

Those who visited him at his native place of Vásárhely found him to be a respected, worthy, well-to-do man, who tossed his own hay till the very palm of his hand sweated, while those who sought for Kökényesdi on the confines of the realm never saw his face at all; it was indeed a very tiresome business to pursue him. That man was a brave fellow indeed who did not feel his heart beat quicker when he followed his track through the pathless morasses and the crooked sand-hills of the interminable puszta. And if two or three counties united to capture him, he would let himself be chased to the borders of the fourth county, and when he had leaped across it would leisurely dismount and beneath the very eyes of his pursuers, loose his horse to graze and lie down beside it on his bunda[8]—for there was the Turkish frontier, and he knew very well that beyond Lippa they durst not pursue him, for there the Pasha of Temesvar held sway.

[8] Sheepskin mantle.

Now, at this time there was among the garrison of Szathmár a captain named Ladislaus Rákóczy. The Rákóczy family, after Helen Zrinyi's husband had turned papist, for the most part were brought up at Vienna, and many of them held commissions in the Imperial army. Ladislaus Rákóczy likewise became a captain of musketeers, and as the greater part of his company consisted of Hungarian lads, it was not surprising if the Prince of Transylvania, on the other hand, kept German regiments to garrison his towns and accompany him whithersoever he went. It chanced that this Ladislaus Rákóczy, who was a very handsome, well-shaped, and good-hearted youth, fell in love with Christina, the daughter of Adam Rhédey, who dwelt at Rékás; and as the girl's father agreed to the match, he frequently went over from Szathmár to see his fiancée, accompanied by several of his fellow-officers, and he and his friends were always received by the family as welcome guests.

Now, it came to the ears of the Pasha of Grosswardein that the Squire of Rékás was inclined to give away his daughter in marriage to a German officer, and perchance it was also whispered to him that the girl was beautiful and gracious. At any rate, one night Haly Pasha, at the head of his Spahis, stole away from Grosswardein and, taking the people of Rékás by surprise, burnt Adam Rhédey's house down, delivered it over to pillage, beat Rhédey himself with a whip, and tied him to the pump-handle, while, as for his daughter, who was half dead with fright, he put her up behind him on the saddle and trotted back to Grosswardein by the light of the burning village.

Ladislaus Rákóczy, who came there next day for his own bridal feast, found everything wasted and ravaged, and the servants, who were hiding behind the hedges, peeped out and told him what had happened the night before, and how Haly Pasha had abducted his bride. The bridegroom was taciturn at the best of times, but a Hungarian is not in the habit of talking much when anything greatly annoys him, so, without a word to his comrades, he went back to the governor and asked permission to lead his regiment against Grosswardein.

The general, perceiving that persuasion was useless, and that the youth would by himself try a tussle with the Turks if he couldn't do it otherwise, took the matter seriously and promised that he would place at his disposal, not only his own regiment but the whole garrison, if only he would persuade the neighbouring gentry to join him in the attack on the Turks of Grosswardein.

As for the gentry, they only needed a word to fly to arms at once, for there was scarce one of them who had not at one time or other been enslaved, beaten, or at least insulted by the Turks, so that the mere appearance of a considerable force of regular soldiers marching against the Turks was sufficient to bring them out at once. The Turks, having once got possession of Grosswardein, had established themselves therein as firmly as if they meant to justify the Mussulman tradition that he never abandons a town that he has once occupied, or never voluntarily surrenders a place in which he has built a mosque, and indeed history rarely records a case of capitulation by the Turks—their fortresses are generally taken by storm.

From the year 1660, when Haly Pasha occupied the fortress, a quite new Turkish town had arisen in the vacant space between the fortress and the old town, and this new town was surrounded by a strong palisade, the only entrances into which were through very narrow gates. This new town was inhabited by nothing but Turkish chapmen, who bartered away the goods captured by the garrison, and Haly Pasha's Spahis did a roaring business in the oxen and slaves which they had gathered together, attracting purchasers all the way from Bagdad. Thus from year to year the market of Grosswardein became better and better known in the Turkish commercial world, so that one wooden house after another sprang up, and they built across and along the empty space just as they liked, so that at last there was hardly what you would call a street in the whole place, and people had to go through their neighbours' houses in order to get into their own; in a word, the whole thing took the form of a Turkish fair, where pomp and splendour conceals no end of filth; the patched up wooden shanties were covered with gorgeous oriental stuffs, while in the streets hordes of ownerless dogs wandered among the perennial offal, and if two people met together in the narrow alleys, to pass each other was impossible.

This fenced town was not large enough to hold the herds that were swept towards it, there was hardly room enough for the masters of the herds; but on the banks of the Pecze there was a large open entrenched space reserved for the purpose, where the Bashkir horsemen stood on guard over the herds with their long spears, and had to keep their eyes pretty open if they didn't want Kökényesdi to honour them with a visit, who was capable of stealing not only the horses but the horsemen who guarded them.

Take but one case out of many. One day Kökényesdi, in his bunda, turned inside out as usual, with a round spiral hat on his head and a large knobby stick in his hands, appeared outside the entrenchment within which a closely-capped Kurd was guarding Haly Pasha's favourite charger, Shebdiz.

"What a nice charger!" said the horse-dealer to the Kurd.

"Nice indeed, but not for your dog's teeth."

"Yet I assure you I'll steal him this very night."

"I shall be there too, my lad," thought the Kurd to himself, and with that he leaped upon the horse and grasped fast his three and a half ells long spear; "if you want the horse come for it now!"

"I'm not going to fetch it at once, so don't put yourself out," Kökényesdi assured him. "You may do as you like with him till morning," and with that he sat down on the edge of the ditch, wrapped himself up in his bunda, and leaned his chin on his big stick.

The Kurd durst not take his eyes off him, he scarce ventured even to wink, lest the horse-dealer should practise magic in the meantime.

He never stirred from the spot, but drew his hat deep down and regarded the Kurd from beneath it with his foxy eyes.

Meanwhile it was drawing towards evening. The Kurd's eyes now regularly started out of his head in his endeavours to distinguish the form of Kökényesdi through the darkness. At last he grew weary of the whole business.

"Go away!" he said. "Do you hear me?"

Kökényesdi made no reply.

The Kurd waited and gazed again. Everything seemed to him to be turning round, and blue and green wheels were revolving before his eyes.

"Go away, I tell you, for if this ditch was not a broad one I would leap across and bore you through with my spear."

The bunda never budged.

The Kurd flew into a rage, dismounted from the horse, seized his spear, and climbing down into the ditch, viciously plunged his spear into the sleeping form before him.

But how great was his consternation when he discovered that what he had looked upon as a man in the darkness was nothing but a propped up stick, on which a bunda and a hat were hanging! While he had been staring at Kökényesdi, the latter had crept from out of the bunda beneath his very eyes and hidden himself in the ditch.

The Kurd had not yet recovered from his astonishment when he heard the crack of a whip behind his back, and there was Kökényesdi sitting already on the back of Haly Pasha's charger, Shebdiz, and the next moment he had leaped the ditch above the Kurd's head, shouting back at him:

"The trench is not broad enough for this horse, my son!"

Master Szénasi was one of those who had been sent to find Kökényesdi, and he now arrived at Demerser, the famous robber's most usual resting-place in those days, and pushing his way forward told him that the gentlemen of Szathmár had sent him to ask him, Kökényesdi, to assist them in their expedition against the Turks.

Kökényesdi, who was carrying a sheaf on his back, looked sharply at the magister, who dared not meet his gaze, and when he had finished his little speech he roared at him:

"You lie! You're a spy! I don't like the look of your mug! I'm going to hang you up!"

Szénasi, who was unacquainted with the robber chief's peculiarities, was near collapsing with terror, whereupon Kökényesdi observed with a smile:

"Come, come, don't tremble so, I won't eat you up at any rate, but tell the gentleman that sent you here that another time he mustn't send a spy to me, for to tell you the truth I don't believe in such faces as yours. You may tell the gentleman, moreover, that if he wants to speak to me he must come himself. I don't care about making a move on the strength of idle chatter. I am easily to be found. Go to Püspök Ladánya, walk into the last house on the right-hand side and ask the master where the Barátfa hostelry is, he'll show you the way; and now in God's name scuttle! and don't look back till you've got home."

The magister did as he was bid, and on getting home delivered the message to his masters, whereupon they immediately set out; Raining going on the part of the military, János Topay on the part of the Hungarians, together with Ladislaus Rákóczy himself and the captain of the gentry of Báródság.

The gentlemen safely reached Püspök Ladánya, where they had to wait at the magistrate's house till night-fall, although Raining would have much preferred to meet Kökényesdi by daylight, and Rákóczy was burning to carry through his enterprise as soon as possible.

While they waited Raining could not help asking the magistrate whether it was far from there to the Barátfa inn?

The magistrate shook his head and maintained there was no such inn in the whole district, nor was there.

Raining fancied that the magistrate must be a stranger there, so he asked two or three old men the same question, but they all gave him the same answer: there might be a barátfa puszta[9] here but there could be no inn on it, or if there was an inn, the puszta itself did not exist.

[9] Common.

"Well, if they don't know anything about it at the last house we had better turn back," said Raining to himself; and, when it had grown quite dark, he approached the house and began to talk with the master who was dawdling about the door.

"God bless thee, countryman! where's the barátfa inn?"

The man first of all measured the questioner from head to foot, and then he merely remarked: "God requite thee! over yonder!" and he vaguely indicated the direction with his head.

"We want to go there; can't you show us the way?" asked Topay.

The man seized the questioner's hand and pointed with it to a herdsman's fire in the distance.

"Look; do you see the shine of its windows there?"

"Which is the way to it?"

"That way 'tis nearer, t'other way it's quicker."

"What do you mean?"

"If you go that way you'll go astray the quicker, and if you go t'other way you may plump into a bog."

"You lead us thither," intervened Rákóczy, at the same time pressing a ducat into the man's fist.

He looked at it, turned it round in his palm and gave it back to Rákóczy with the request that he would give him copper money in exchange for it. He could not imagine anyone giving him gold which was not false.

When this had been done he neatly led the gentlemen through the morass—wading in front of them, girded up to his waist—through those hidden places where the water-fowl were sitting on their nests, and when at last they emerged from among the thick reedy plantations they saw a hundred paces in front of them a fire of heaped up bulrushes brightly burning, by the light of which they saw a horseman standing behind it.

Here their guide stopped and the three men trotted in single file towards the fire, which suddenly died out at the very moment they were approaching it, as if someone had cast wet rushes upon it.

Topay greeted the horseman, who lifted his hat in silence and allowed them to draw nearer.

"There are three of you gentlemen together," he observed guardedly; "but that doesn't matter," he continued. "It would be all the same to me if there were ten times as many of you, for there's a pistol in every one of my holsters, from which I can fire sixteen bullets in succession, and in each bullet is a magnet, so that even if I don't aim at my man I bring him down all the same."

"Very good, very good indeed, Master Kökényesdi," said Topay; "we have not come here for you to pepper us with your magnetic globules, but we have come to ask your assistance for the accomplishment of a doughty deed, the object of which is an attack upon our pagan foes."

"Oh, my good sirs, I am ready to do that without the co-operation of your honours. In the courtyard of a castle in the Baborsai puszta there is a well some hundred fathoms deep and quite full of Turkish skulls, and I will not be satisfied till I have piled up on the top of it a tower just as high made of similar materials."

"So I believe. But you would gain glory too?"

"I have glory enough already. I am known in foreign countries as well as at home. The King of France has long ago only waited for a word from me to make me chief colonel of a long-tailed regiment, and quite recently, when the King of England heard how I bored through the hulls of the munition ships on the Theiss, he did me the honour to invite me to form a regiment of divers to ravage the enemy under water. And I've all the boys for it too."

"I know, I know, Master Kökényesdi, but there will be booty here too, and lots of it."

"What is booty to me? If I choose to do so, I could bathe in gold and sleep on pearls."

"Have you really as much treasure as all that?" inquired Raining with some curiosity.

"Ah," said Kökényesdi, "you ought to see the storehouse in the Szilicza cavern, where gold and silver are filled up as high as haystacks. There, too, are the treasures dug up from the sands of the sea, nothing but precious stones, diamonds, rubies, carbuncles, and real pearls. I, myself, do not know how many sackfuls."

"And cannot you be robbed of them?"

"Impossible; the entrance is so well concealed that no man living can find it. I myself can never tell whether I am near it; the shifting sand has so well covered it. Only one living animal can find it when it is wanted, and that is my horse. And he will never betray it, for if anyone but myself mounts him, not a step farther will he go."

"And how did you come into possession of these enormous treasures?" asked Raining with astonishment.

"God gave them to me," said the horse-dealer, raising his voice and his eyebrows at the same time.

"Very edifying, no doubt, my friend," said Topay; "but tell me now, briefly, for how much will you join us against the Turks of Grosswardein?—not counting the booty, which of course will be pretty considerable."

"Well—that is not so easily said. Of course I shall have to collect together my twelve companies, and it will cost something to hold them together and give them what they want and pay them."

"At any rate you can name a good round sum for the services you are going to render us, can't you? Come! how much do you require?"

The robber chief reflected.

"Well, as it is your honours' own business I hope your honours won't say that I tax you too highly. Let us look at the job in this way: suppose I came to the attack with seventeen companies, and I charge one thousand thalers for each company. Let us say each company consists of one thousand men, that will be a thaler per head—and what is that, 'twill barely pay for their keep. Thus the whole round sum will come to seventeen thousand thalers."

"That won't do at all, Master Kökényesdi. 'Twere a shame to fatigue so many gallant fellows for nothing, but suppose you bring with you only a hundred men and the rest remain comfortably at home? In that case you shall receive from us seventeen hundred florins in hard cash."

"Pooh!" snapped the robber, "what does your honour take me for, eh? Do you suppose you are dealing with a gipsy chief or a Wallachian bandit, who are paid in pence? Why, I wouldn't saddle my horse for such a trifle, I had rather sleep the whole time away."

"But you have so much treasure besides," observed Raining naïvely.

"But we may not break into it," rejoined the robber angrily.

"Why not?"

"Because we have agreed not to make use of till it has mounted up to a million florins."

"And what will you do with it then?"

"We shall then buy a vacant kingdom from the Tartar king, where the pasturage is good, and thither we will go with our men and set up an empire of our own. We will buy enough pretty women from the Turks for us all, and be our own masters."

Topay smiled.

"Well," said he, "this seventeen hundred florins of ours will at any rate purchase one of the counties in this kingdom of yours." He was greatly amused that Raining should take the robber's yarn so seriously, and he pushed the German gentleman aside. "Mr. Kökényesdi," said he, "you have nothing to do with this worthy man; he is come with us only to see the fun, but it is we who pay the money, and I think we understand each other pretty well."

"Why didn't you tell me so sooner?" said the robber sulkily, "then I shouldn't have wasted so many words. With which of you am I to bargain?"

"With this young gentleman here," said Topay. "Ladislaus Rákóczy. I suppose you know him by report?"

"Know him? I should think I did. Haven't I carried him in my arms when he was little? If it hadn't been so dark I should have recognised him at once. Well, as it is he, I don't mind doing him a good turn. I certainly wouldn't have taken a florin less from anyone else. I'll take from him the offer of seventeen hundred thalers."

"Seventeen hundred florins, I said."

"I tell your honour, you said thalers—thalers was what I heard, and I won't undertake the job for less; may my hand and leg wither if I move a step for less."

"Oh, I'll give him his thalers," said Rákóczy, interrupting the dispute; whereupon the robber seized the youth's hand and shook it joyfully.

"Didn't I know that your honour was the finest fellow of the three?" said the robber. "If, therefore, you will send these few trumpery thalers a week hence to the house of the worthy man who guided you hither, I will be at Grosswardein a week later with my seventeen hundred fellows."

"But, suppose we pay you in advance, and you don't turn up?" said Raining anxiously.

The robber looked at the quartermaster proudly.

"Do you take me for a common swindler?" said he. Then he turned with a movement of confiding expansion to the other gentlemen.

"We understand each other better," he remarked. "Your honours may depend upon me. God be with you."

With that he turned his horse and galloped off into the darkness. The three gentlemen were conducted back to Ladány.

"Marvellous fellow, this Kökényesdi," said Raining, who had scarce recovered yet from his astonishment.

"You mustn't believe all the yarns he chooses to tell you," said Topay.

"What!" inquired Raining. "Had he then no communications with the French and English Courts?"

"No more than his grandmother."

"Then how about those treasures of which he spoke?"

"He himself has never seen them, and he only talked about them to give you a higher opinion of him."

"And his castle in the puszta, and his seventeen companies of freebooters?"

"He invented them entirely for your honour's edification. The freebooter is no fool, he lives in no castle in the puszta, but in a simple village as modest Mr. Kökényesdi, and his seventeen companies scarcely amount to more than seventeen hundred men."

"Then why did he consent so easily to take only seventeen hundred thalers?"

"Because he does not mean to give his lads a single farthing of it."

Raining shook his head, and grumbled to himself all the way home.

In a week's time they sent to Kökényesdi the stipulated money. Raining, moreover, fearing lest the fellow might forget the fixed time, did not hesitate to go personally to Vásárhely, to seek him at his own door. There stood Master Kökényesdi in his threshing-floor, picking his teeth with a straw.

"Good-day," said the quartermaster.

"If it's good, eat it," murmured Kökényesdi to himself.

"Don't you know me?"

"Blast me if I do."

"Then don't you remember what you promised at the Barátfa inn?"

"I don't know where the Barátfa inn is."

"Then haven't you received the seventeen hundred thalers?"

"What should I receive seventeen hundred thalers for?"

"Don't joke, the appointed time has come."

"What appointed time?"

"What appointed time? And you who have to be at Grosswardein with seventeen hundred men!"

"Seventeen oxen and seventeen herdsmen on their backs, I suppose you mean."

"Well, a pretty mess we are in now," said Raining to himself as he wrathfully trotted back to Debreczen, and as he rushed into Rákóczy's room exclaiming, "Well, Kökényesdi has toasted us finely!" there stood Kökényesdi before his very eyes.

"What, you here?"

"Yes, I am; and another time your honour will know that whenever I am at my own place I am not at home."

It was the Friday before Whit Sunday, and the time about evening. A great silence rested over the whole district, only from the minarets of Varalja one Imâm answered another, and from the tombs one shepherd dog answered his fellow: it was impossible to distinguish from which of the two the howling proceeded.

A couple of turbaned gentlemen were leisurely strolling along the bastions. Above the palisaded gate the torso of a square-headed Tartar was visible, with his elbows resting on the ramparts, holding his long musket in his hand. The Tartar sentinel was gazing with round open eyes into the black night, watching lest anyone should come from the direction in which he was aiming with his gun, and blowing vigorously at the lunt to prevent its going out. While he was thus anxiously on the watch, it suddenly seemed to him as if he discerned the shape of a horseman approaching the city.

In such cases the orders given to the Osmanli sentinels were of the simplest description: they were to shoot everyone who approached in the night-time without a word.

The Tartar only waited until the man had come nearer, and then, placing his long musket on the moulding of the gate, began to take aim with it.

But the approaching horseman rode his steed as oddly as only Hungarian csikósok[10] can do, for he bobbed perpetually from the right to the left, and dodged backwards and forwards in the most aggravating manner.

[10] Horse-dealers.

"Allah pluck thy skin from off thee, thou drunken Giaour," murmured the baffled Tartar to himself, as he found all his aiming useless; for just as he was about to apply the lunt, the csikós was no longer there, and the next moment he stood at the very end of his musket. "May all the seven-and-seventy hells have a little bit of thee! Why canst thou not remain still for a moment that I may fire at thee?"

Meanwhile the shape had gradually come up to the very gate.

"Don't come any nearer," cried the Tartar, "or I shan't be able to shoot thee."

"Oh, that's it, is it?" said the other. "Then why didn't you tell me so sooner? But don't hold your musket so near to me, it may go off of its own accord."

We recognise in the csikós Kökényesdi, whose horse now began to prance about to such an extent that it was impossible for the Tartar to take a fair aim at it.

"I bring a letter for Haly Pasha, from the Defterdar of Lippa," said the csikós, searching for something in the pocket of his fur pelisse, so far as his caracolling steed would allow him. "Catch it if you don't want to come through the gate for it."

"Well, fling it up here," murmured the sentinel, "and then be off again, but ride decently that I may have a shot."

"Thank you, my worthy Mr. Dog-headed Hero; but look out and catch what I throw to you."

And with that he drew out a roll of parchment and flung it up to the top of the gate. The Tartar, with his eyes fixed on the missive, did not perceive that the csikós, at the same time, threw up a long piece of cord, and the sense of the joke did not burst upon him until the csikós drew in the noose, and he felt it circling round his body. Kökényesdi turned round suddenly, twisted the cord round the forepart of his horse, and clapping the spurs to its side, began galloping off.

Naturally, in about a moment the Tartar had descended from the top of the gate without either musket or lunt, and the cord being well lassoed round his body, he plumped first into the moat, a moment afterwards reappeared on the top of the trench, and was carried with the velocity of lightning through bushes and briars. Being quite unused to this mode of progression, and vainly attempting to cling by hand or foot to the trees and shrubs which met him in his way, he began to bellow with all his might, at which terrible uproar the other sentries behind the ramparts were aroused, and, perceiving that some horseman or other was compelling one of their comrades to follow after him in this merciless fashion, they mounted their horses, and throwing open the gate, plunged after him.

As for Kökényesdi, he trotted on in front of them, drawing the Tartar horde farther and farther after him till he reached a willow-wood, when he turned aside and whistled, and instantly fifty stout fellows leaped forth from the thicket on swift horses with csákánys[11] in their hands, so that the pursuing Turks were fairly caught.

[11] Long-handled hammers.

They turned tail, however, in double-quick time, having no great love of the csákánys, and never stopped till they reached the gate of the fortress, within the walls of which they yelled to their heart's content, that Kökényesdi's robbers were at hand, had leaped the cattle trench at a single bound, seized a good part of the herds and were driving the beasts before them; whereupon, some hundreds of Spahis set off in pursuit of the audacious adventurers. When, however, the robbers had reached the River Körös, they halted, faced about and stood up to their pursuers man to man, and the encounter had scarce begun when the Spahis grew alive to the fact that their opponents, who at first had barely numbered fifty, had grown into a hundred, into two hundred, and at last into five or six hundred: from out of the thickets, the ridges, and the darkness, fresh shapes were continually galloping to the assistance of their comrades, while from the fortress the Turks came rushing out on each other's heels in tens and twenties to the help of the Spahis, so that by this time the greater part of the garrison had emerged to pounce upon Kökényesdi's freebooters; when suddenly, the battle-cry resounded from every quarter and from the other side of the Körös, whence nobody expected it, the bandérium[12] of the gentry of Báródság rushed forth, and swam right across the river; while from the direction of Várad-Olaszi, amidst the rolling of drums, Ladislaus Rákóczy came marching along with the infantry of Szathmár.

[12] Mounted troops.

"Forward!" cried the youth, holding the banner in his hand, and he was the first who placed his foot on the storming-ladder. The terrified garrison, after firing their muskets in the air, abandoned the ramparts and fled into the citadel.

Rákóczy got into the town before the Spahis who were fighting with Kökényesdi, and who now, at the sound of the uproar, would have fled back through the town to take refuge in the citadel, but came into collision with the cavalry of Topay, who reached the gates of the town at the same moment that they did, and both parties, crowding together before the gates, desperately tried to get possession of them, during which tussle the contending hosts for a moment were wedged together into a maddened mass, in which the antagonists could recognise each other only from their war-cries; when, all at once, from the middle of the town, a huge column of fire whirled up into the air, illuminating the faces of the combatants. The fact was that Kökényesdi had hit upon the good idea of connecting a burning lunt with the tops of the houses, and making a general blaze, so that at least the people could see one another. By this hideous illumination the Spahis suddenly perceived that Rákóczy's infantry had broken through the ramparts in one place, and that a sturdy young heyduke had just hoisted the banner of the Blessed Virgin on the top of the eastern gate.

"This is the day of death," cried the Aga of the Spahis in despair; and drawing his sword from its sheath, he planted himself in the gateway, and fought desperately till his comrades had taken refuge in the town, and he himself fell covered with wounds. It was over his body that the Hungarians rushed through the gates after the flying Spahis.

At that moment a fresh cry resounded from the fortress: "Ali! Ali!" The Pasha himself was advancing with his picked guards, with the valiant Janissaries, with those good marksmen, the Szaracsies, who can pierce with a bullet a thaler flung into the air, and with the veteran Mamelukes, who can fight with sword and lance at the same time. He himself rode in advance of his host on his war-horse, his big red face aflame with rage; in front of him his standard-bearer bore the triple horse-tail, on each side of which strode a negro headsman with a broadsword.

"Come hither, ye faithless dogs! Is the world too narrow for ye that ye come to die here? By the shadow of Allah, I swear it, ye shall all be sent to hell this day, and I will ravage your kingdom ten leagues round. Come hither, ye impure swine-eaters! Your heads shall be brought to market; everyone who brings in the head of a Christian shall receive a ducat, and he who brings in a captive shall die."

Thus the Pasha roared, stormed, and yelled at the same time; while Topay tried to marshal once more his men who were scattering before the fire of the Turks, galloping from street to street, and re-forming his terrified squadrons to make head against the solid host of the advancing Turks, which was rapidly gaining ground, while Kökényesdi's followers only thought of booty.

"A hundred ducats to him who shoots down that son of a dog!" thundered the Pasha, pointing out the ubiquitous Topay, and, finding it impossible to get near him, roared after him: "Thou cowardly puppy! whither art thou running? Look me in the face, canst thou not?"

Topay heard the exclamation and shouted back very briefly:

"I saw thy back at Bánfi-Hunyad."[13]

[13] See "'Midst the Wild Carpathians," Book II., Chapter IV.

At this insult Ali Pasha's gall overflowed, and seizing his mace, he aimed a blow with it at Topay, when suddenly a sharp crackling cross-fire resounded from a neighbouring lane, and amidst the thick clouds of smoke, Rákóczy's musketeers appeared, sticking their daggers into their discharged firearms, a practise to which the bayonet owed its origin at a later day. The Turkish cavalry, crowded together in the narrow street, was in a few moments demoralised by this rapid assault. The improvised bayonet told terribly in the crush, swords and darts were powerless against it.

"Allah is great!" cried Ali. "Hasten into the fortress and draw up the bridge, we are only perishing here. Only the fortress remains to us."

His conductors, against his will, seized his bridle, and dragged him along with them; and when a valiant musketeer, drawing near to him, cut down his charger, the terrified Pasha clambered up into the saddle of one of his headsmen, and took refuge behind his back.

A young Hungarian horseman was constantly on his track. Nobody could tell Ali who he was, but one could see from his face that he was the Pasha's fiercest enemy, and animated by something more than mere martial ardour. This young horseman gave no heed to the bullets or blades which were directed against him; he was bent only on bloodshed.

It was young Rákóczy, to whom bitterness had given strength a hundredfold. Forcing his way through the flying hostile rabble, he was drawing nearer and nearer to Ali every moment, cutting down one by one all who barred the way between him and the Pasha, and the Turks quailed before his strong hands and savage looks.

At length they reached the bridge, which was built upon piles, between deep bulwarks, and led into the fortress, the front part of whose gate was fortified by iron plates and huge nails, and could be drawn up to the gate of the tower by round chains. On the summit of the tower of the citadel could still be seen the equestrian statue of St. Ladislaus derisively turned upside down between the severed legs of two felons.

The Hungarians and the Turks reached the bridge together so intermingled that the only thing to be seen was a confused mass of turbans and helmets, in the midst of a forest of swords and scimitars, with the banner of the Blessed Virgin cheek by jowl with the crescented horse-tails.

At the gate of the citadel stood two long widely gaping eighteen-pounders commanding the bridge, filled with chain, shot, and ground nails; but the Komparajis dare not use their cannons, for in whatever direction they might aim, there were quite as many Turks as Hungarians. On the bridge itself the foes were fighting man to man. Rákóczy was at that moment fighting with the bearer of the triple horse-tail, striving to take the standard pole with his left hand, while he aimed blow after blow at his antagonist with his right.

"Shoot them down, you good-for-nothings!" roared Ali Pasha, turning back to the inactive and contumacious Komparajis. "Reck not whether your bullets sweep away as many Mussulmans as Hungarians, myself included! Sweep the bridge clear, I say! Life is cheap, but Paradise is dear!"

But the gunners still hesitated to fire amongst their comrades, when Ali sent two drummers to them commanding them to aim their guns aloft and fire into the air.

The contest on the bridge was raging furiously; the Janissaries had placed their backs against the parapet, and there stood motionless, with their huge broad-swords in their naked fists, like a fence of living scythes, tearing into ribbons everything which came between them.

Then it occurred to a regiment of German Drabants to clamber up the parapet of the bridge, and tear the Janissaries away from the parapet; some ten or twenty of these Drabants did scramble up on the bridge, when the parapet suddenly gave way beneath the double weight, and Janissaries and Drabants fell down into the deep moat beneath, throttling each other in the water, and whenever a turbaned head appeared above the surface, the Germans standing at the foot of the bridge beat out its brains with their halberds.

Meanwhile, the two fighting heroes in the middle of the bridge were almost exhausted by the contest. They had already hacked each other's swords to pieces, had grasped the banner, the object of the struggle, with both hands, and were tearing away at it with ravening wrath.

The Turkish standard-bearer then suddenly pressed his steed with his knees, making it rear up beneath him, so that the Turk stood now a head and shoulder higher than Rákóczy, and threatened either to oust him from his saddle or tear the standard from his hand.

At that moment the white figure of a girl appeared on the summit of the rampart of the tower, her black locks streaming in the wind, her face aglow with enthusiasm.

"Heaven help thee, Ladislaus!" cried the girl from the battlement of the tower; and the youth, hearing from on high what sounded like a voice from heaven, recognised it, looked up and saw his bride—a superhuman strength arose in his heart and in his arm, and when the Turkish standard-bearer made his charger rear, Rákóczy suddenly let the flag-pole go, and seizing the bridle of the snorting steed with both hands, with one Herculean thrust, flung back steed, rider, and banner through the palisade into the deep moat below.

"There is no hope save with God!" cried Ali in despair, for his terrified people at the sight of this prodigy had dragged him along with them against his will.

"Ladislaus! Ladislaus! My darling!" resounded from above. The youth was fighting with the strength of ten men; three horses had already been shot under him, and a third sword was flashing in his hand. Already he was standing on the drawbridge; his sweetheart threw down a white handkerchief to him, and he was already waving it above his head in triumph, when a well-directed bullet pierced the young hero's heart, and he collapsed a corpse on the very threshold of his success, in the very gate of the captured fortress at the feet of his beloved.

At that same instant a heart-rending shriek resounded, and from the top of the tower a white shape fell down upon the bridge; the beautiful bride, from a height of thirty feet, had cast herself down on the dead body of her beloved, and died at the same instant as he, mingling their blood together; and if their arms did not, at least their souls could, embrace each other.

This spectacle so stupefied the besiegers, that Ali Pasha had just time enough swiftly to raise the drawbridge and save the fortress and a fragment of his host. Of those who remained outside, not a single soul survived. Kökényesdi massacred without mercy everything which distantly resembled a Turk, together with the camels and mules, sparing nothing but the horses, and when every house had been well plundered, he set the town on fire in twelve places, so that the flames in half an hour consumed everything, and the whole city blazed away like a gigantic bonfire, the rising wind whirling the smoke and flame over the ditch towards the fortress.

"Ali Pasha may put that in his pipe and smoke it," said Kökényesdi, rejoicing at the magnificent conflagration.

But the bodies of Ladislaus Rákóczy and his sweetheart they bore away, and buried them side by side in the family vault at Rákás.

CHAPTER VI.
THE MONK OF THE HOLY SPRING.

About a day's journey from Klausenburg there used to be a famous monastery, whose ruined tower remains to this day.

Formerly the ample courtyard was surrounded by a stone wall, massive and strong, within which crowds of pilgrims, coming from every direction, found a convenient resting-place. For at the foot of this monastery was a famous miraculous spring, which entirely disappeared throughout the winter and spring, but on certain days in the summer and autumn was wont to trickle through the crevices of the rocks, and, for a couple of weeks or so, to bubble forth abundantly, whereupon it gradually subsided again.

During this season whole hosts of suffering humanity, the lame, the paralytic, the aged, the mentally infirm, and the childless mothers, would come from the most distant regions; and the Lord of Nature gave a wondrous virtue to the waters, and the sufferers quitted the blessed spring crutchless and edified, both in body and mind. There could be seen, hung up on the walls of the church, votive crutches which the cripples had left behind them; and more than one great nobleman, out of gratitude to the holy spring, enriched the altar with gold and silver plate.

The larger part of the building was reserved for noble guests, the common people encamped in the courtyard beneath tents; and behind the building a splendid garden was laid out, which the worthy monks always magnificently maintained. Even to this day, in the grassy patches round about the spot, it is possible to discover the savage descendants of many rare and precious flowers.

At the period in which our history falls, the convent of the holy well was represented by a single reverend father, whom the common tongue simply called Friar Gregory, and there was scarce a soul in Transylvania who did not know him well. He was a big man, six feet in height, with a flowing black beard, swarthy, lean, with a bony frame, and with hands so big that he could cover a six-pound cannon ball with each palm. A simple habit covered his limbs, head-dress he had none, and his broad shining forehead was without a wrinkle. His droning voice was so powerful that when he sang his psalms he made more noise than a whole congregation.

At the times when the holy spring was flowing, the cellar and pantry of the good friar stood wide open to rich and poor alike, for whatever he earned in one year he never put by for the next, and whatever the wealthy paid to him the needy had the benefit of; and whenever any clerical colleague happened to come his way, whether he were Orthodox, Armenian, Calvinist, or Unitarian, he could not make too much of him; all such guests, during their stay, regularly swam in milk and butter, and remembered it to the very day of their death.

Just at this very time the Right Reverend Ladislaus Magyari's little daughter, Rosy, was suffering from a complaint which gave the lie to her healthy name, and her father thought it just as well to take her to the holy spring, perchance the healing water would restore to her wan little face the colour of youth.

Brother Gregory was beside himself with joy; the best room was prepared for his right reverend colleague, and brother cook, brother cellarer, and brother gardener were ordered to see to it that meat, drink, and heaps of flowers were provided for the honoured guests. No two people in the wide world were so suited to each other as Father Gregory and Dean Magyari; their hearts were equally good, and each of them had a head upon his shoulders. They rose up early in the morning to argue with each other on dogmatic questions—to wit, which faith was the best, truest, happiest, most blessed, and surest, and kept it up till late in the evening, by no means neglecting the frequent emptying of foaming beakers during the contest, pounding each other with citations, entangling each other with syllogisms, flooring each other with authorities, and overwhelming each other with anecdotes; and it always ended in their shaking hands and agreeing together that every faith was good if only a man were true to himself.

While her father was thus manfully battling, pretty pale Rosy would be amusing herself in the garden or by the spring with little girls of her own age, and the fresh air, the scent of the flowers, and the beneficent water of the spring gradually restored to her face its vanished bloom; and Magyari joyfully thought how delighted her mother would be if she were able to embrace her convalescent child, and, in sheer delight at the idea, spun out his disputatious evenings whilst Rosy in an adjacent cell was sleeping the sleep of the just.

The two worthy gentlemen were sitting over their cups one beautiful evening, when a loud knocking was heard at the outer gate. The rule was that at sundown the pilgrim mob was to betake itself to the courtyard of the cloister, and the gate should be closed. The friar who kept the gate came to announce that four queer-looking monks demanded admission, were they to be let in?

"There can be no question about it," said Father Gregory. "If any desire admission, bring them to us, and provide refreshment for them."

In a few moments the four friars in question entered. They were dressed in coarse black sackcloth habits, with the cowls drawn down over their heads. All that was to be seen of them was their eyes and shaggy beards. With deep obeisances, but without a word, they approached the two reverend gentlemen. The Father rose politely and greeted them respectfully in Latin: "Benedicite nomen Domini." They only kept on bowing and were silent.

"Nomen dei sit benedictum!" repeated Gregory, fancying that his guests did not hear what he said, and as they did not reply to that, he asked with great astonishment:

"Non exandistis nomen gloriosissimi Domini, fratres amantissimi?"

At this the foremost of them said: "We do not understand that language, worthy brother."

"Then what sort of monks are ye? To what confession do ye belong? Are ye Greeks?"

"We are not Greeks."

"Then are you Armenians?"

"We are not Armenians."

"Arians, then?"

"Neither are we Arians."

"Are you Patarenes?"

"No, we are not."

"Then in gloriam æterni to what order do you belong?"

"We are robbers," thereupon exclaimed the one interrogated, throwing aside the fold of his cloak, beneath which could be seen a belt crammed with daggers and pistols. "My name is Feri Kökényesdi," said he, striking his breast.

Magyari thereupon leaped from his chair, which he immediately converted into a weapon; it at once occurred to him that he had an only daughter to defend, and he was ready to fight the robbers on behalf of her. But the father pulled him by the cassock and whispered: "Pray be quiet, your Reverence," and then with an infinitely placid face he turned towards the robbers. "So that is the order to which you belong," said he. "Still, if you have come as guests, sit down and eat what you desire."

"But that is not sufficient. Outside this monastery there are 1700 of us, and all of them want to eat and drink, for it is only the ancient prophets who, when hungry, were content with the meat of the Word."

"Let them also satisfy their desires."

"However, the main thing is this: in your Reverence's chapel is a whole lot of very nice gold and silver saints, who certainly befriend those who sigh after them, and as we cannot come running to them here every day in order to entreat their aid, we had better take them along with us, that they may be helpful to us on the road."

"Thou hast a pretty mother-wit, frater! Who could refuse thee anything?"

"It is also no secret to us, Father Gregory, that your Reverence's cellar is crammed with kegs full of good money, silver and gold. May we be allowed to relieve your Reverence of a little of this burden?"

"He is quite welcome to it," thought the father, well aware that there was absolutely nothing at all.

"Do not imagine, your Reverence," continued the robber, "that we cannot extort a confession, if it should occur to your Reverence to conceal anything. It would be just as well, therefore, if your Reverence were to reveal everything before we cut up your back with sharp thongs."

The brother smiled as good-humouredly as if he were listening to some pleasing anecdote.

"Have you any other desires, my sons?"

"Yes, a good many. There is a great crowd of women collected together in your Reverence's courtyard. We have taken no vows of celibacy, therefore we should like to choose from among them what would suit us."

Magyari felt the hairs of his head rising heavenwards, a cold shiver ran through him from head to foot, and he would have risen from his place had not the monk pressed him down with a frightfully heavy hand.

"For God's sake, my dear son, do not so wickedly. Take away the saints from the altar if you like, but harm not the innocent who are now peacefully slumbering in the shadow of God's protection."

"Not another word, Brother Gregory," cried the robber, closing his fist on his dagger, "or I'll set the monastery on fire and burn every living soul in it, yourself included. A robber only recognises four sacraments: wine, money, wenches, and blood! You may congratulate yourself if we are content with the third and dispense with the last."

"So it is!" observed another of the cowled and bearded robbers, tapping Magyari on the shoulder. "Do you recognise me, eh, your Reverence?"

Magyari, with a sensation of shuddering loathing, recognised Szénasi, a canting charlatan whose frauds he had often exposed.

"We know well enough," said the fellow with an evil chuckle, "that you have a fair daughter here. I am going to pay off old scores."

If Magyari had not been well in the brother's grip, he would have gone for the wretch. Every fibre of his body was shivering with rage.

Only the brother remained calm and smiling. Joining his hands together, he made a little mill with the aid of his two thumbs.

"Wait, my dear son, cannot we come to some agreement. You know very well that my money is concealed in barrels, but so well hidden is it that none besides myself know where it is. Even if you turned this monastery upside down you would not find it. You may also have heard that once upon a time there lived a kind of men called martyrs, who let themselves be boiled in oil, or roasted on red-hot fires, or torn in pieces by wild beasts, without saying a word which might hurt their souls. Well, that is the sort of man I am. If I make up my mind to hold my tongue, you might tear me to bits inch by inch with burning tweezers, and you would get not a word nor a penny out of me. Now 'tis for you to choose. Will you carry off the money and leave the poor women-folk alone, or will you lay your hands on the down-trodden, lame, halt, consumptive beggar-women, whom you will find here, and not see a farthing? Which is it to be?"

The four robbers whispered together. No doubt they said something to this effect: only let the pater produce his money, and then it will be an easy thing for us to take back our given word and satisfy our hearts' desires. They signified that they would stand by the money.

"Look now! you are good men," said the father, "take these two torches and come with me to the cellar and go through my treasures, only you must do none any harm."

"A little less jaw, please," growled Kökényesdi. "Two go in front with the torches, and Brother Gregory between you. I'll follow after; the magister can remain behind to look after the other parson. Whoever speaks a word or makes a signal, I'll bring my axe down on his head—forward!"

And so it was. Two of the robbers went in front with torches; after them came the brother with Kökényesdi at his heels with a drawn dagger in his hand; last of all marched Magyari, whom Master Szénasi held by the collar at arm's-length, threatening him at the same time with a flashing axe.

Thus they descended to the cellar. The good father, with timid humility, hid his head in his hood and looked neither to the left nor to the right.

The cellar was provided with a large, double, iron trap-door. After drawing out its massive bolts, the worthy brother raised one of its flaps, bidding them lower the torches for his convenience.

As now the first robber descended and the second plunged after him, the father suddenly kicked out with his monstrous wooden shoe and brought the door down on his head, so that he rolled down to the bottom of the stairs; and then, quick as thought, he turned upon Kökényesdi, seized his hands, and said to Magyari:

"You seize the other!"

Kökényesdi, in the first moment of surprise, thrust at the brother, but his dagger glanced aside against the stiff hair-shirt, and there was no time for a second thrust, for the terrible brother had seized both his hands and crushed them against his breast with irresistible force with one hand, while with the other he dispossessed him of all the murderous weapons in his girdle one by one, shaking him with one hand as easily as a grown man shakes a child of nine; then he dragged him towards the cellar door, pressing it down with their double weight so that those below could not raise it.

Mr. Magyari that self-same instant had caught the magister by the nape of the neck and, mindful of the wrestling trick he had learnt in his youth when he was a student at Nagyenyed, quickly floored, and, not content with that, sat down on the top of him with his whole weight, so that the poor meagre creature was flattened out beneath him. Magyari at the same time relieved his sprawling hands of their murderous weapons in imitation of the good priest.

Kökényesdi admitted to himself that never before had he been in such a hobble. In a stand-up fight he had rarely met his equal, and more than once he had held his own against two or three stout fellows single-handed; but never had he had to do with such a man as Brother Gregory, one of whose hands was quite sufficient to pin his two arms uselessly to his side, while with the other hand he explored his remotest pockets to their ultimate depths and denuded them of every sort of cutting and stabbing instrument. When the robber realized that even his gigantic strength was powerless to drag his antagonist away from the cellar door beneath which his two comrades were vainly thundering, he endeavoured to free himself by resorting to the desperate devices of the wild-beasts, lunging out with his feet and worrying the iron hand of the monk with his teeth; whereupon Brother Gregory also lost his temper and, seizing Kökényesdi by the hair of his head, held him aloft like a young hare, so that he was unable to scratch or bite any more.

"Do not plunge about so, dilectissime; you see it is of no use," said the brother, holding the robber so far away from him by his hairy poll with outstretched hand that at last he was obliged to capitulate.

"Thou seest what unmercifulness thou dost compel us to adopt, amantissime!" said the brother apologetically, but still holding him aloft with one hand and shaking a reproving finger at him with the other. "Dost thou not shudder at thyself, does not thine own soul accuse thee for coming to plunder holy places? Or dost thou not think of the Kingdom of Hell to the very threshold of which evil resolves have misguided thy feet, and where there will be weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth?"

"Let me go, you devil of a friar!" gasped the robber, hoarse with rage.

"Not until thou hast come to thyself and art sorry for thy sins," said the brother, still holding in the air his dilectissime, whose eyes by this time were starting out of his head because of the tugging pressure on his hair; "thou must be sorry for thy sins."

"I am sorry then, only let me go!"

"And wilt thou turn back to the right path?"

"Yes, yes, of course I will."

"And thou wilt steal no more?"

"Not a cockchafer."

"Nor curse and swear?"

"Never no more."

"Very well, then, I'll let thee go. But, colleague Magyari, first of all tie all these daggers and axes together and fling them out of the window."

Mr. Magyari, who had meanwhile disposed of the magister by tying his hands and legs so tightly that he was unable to move a muscle, effected the clearance confided to him, while Brother Gregory deposited on the ground his convert, who leaned against the wall breathing heavily.

"Well, you monk of hell, give me something to eat if there's anything like a kitchen here."

"Oh, my dear son," said the pater tenderly, stroking the face of his lambkin; "believe me, that there is more joy in heaven over one converted sinner——"

"You're a devil, not a friar; for if you were a man of God you could not have got over Kökényesdi so easily—Kökényesdi, who was wont to overthrow whole armadas single-handed—and now to be beaten by an unarmed man!"

"Thou didst come against me with an axe and a fokos,[14] but I came against thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts, and He who permitted David the shepherd to pluck the raging lion by the beard and slay him, hath aided my arm also in order that I might be a blessing to thee."

[14] Sledge-hammer.

"Blessing indeed!—hang me up! I deserve it for letting myself be collared by a parson."

"Oh, my dear son, to attribute such flagrant cruelty to me! Heaven rejoices not in the death of a sinner."

"Then let me go!"

"How could I let thee go when thou art but half converted? Rather remain here, my son, in this holy seclusion and try and cleanse thy soul by holy penance and prayer."

The robber foamed with rage.

"Where is there a nail that I may hang myself upon it?"

"That thou certainly wilt never be able to do, for a worthy pater shall always be by thy side to teach thee how to sing the Psalter."

The robber gnashed his teeth and stamped with his feet as he cast at the terrible brother bloodshot glances very similar to those which a hyena casts upon a beast-tamer whom he would like to tear to bits and grind to mincemeat, but whom he durst not attack, being well aware that if he but lay a paw or even cast an eye upon him he will instantly be felled to the ground.

"Besides that," continued the brother, "by way of a first trial thou shalt presently deliver a God-fearing discourse."

"I preach a sermon!"

"Not exactly a sermon, but inasmuch as thy faithful followers outside the walls of the monastery may be growing impatient at thy long absence, thou wilt stand at a window and, after assuring them of thy heart-felt penitence, thou wilt send the worthy fellows away that they may depart to their own homes."

"Very well," said Kökényesdi, thinking all the time, let me once be planted at the window in the sight of my bands and at a word from me they will break up the whole monastery, and I will leap out to them at the first opening.

Then Brother Gregory called Magyari aside and whispered in his ear: "You meanwhile will get the carriage ready and take your seat in it with your daughter, and as soon as you perceive that the rabble has departed from the monastery, you will drive straight to Klausenburg and inform Mr. Ebéni, the commandant, that a mixed band of freebooters, together with the garrison of Szathmár, has invaded the realm. I detected a helmet beneath a cowl of one of the rascals I kicked into the cellar. Try to defend the capital against their attacks. God be with you!"

The two priests pressed each other's hands, whereupon Brother Gregory, taking the robber by the arms and shoving him through a little low door, in order that no mischief might befall him, caught him by the nape of the neck and began to force him to ascend a narrow corkscrew staircase, two or three steps at a time.

It was evening now and dark, and there was nothing about the corkscrew staircase to suggest to the robber whither he was being led till at last the brother opened a trapdoor with his head and emerged with him on to a light place and deposited him in front of a lofty window.

The robber's first thought was that he could clear the window at a single bold leap, but one swift glance from the parapet made him recoil with terror; beneath him yawned a depth of at least fifty ells, and, glancing dizzily aloft, he perceived hanging above his head the bells of the monastery. They were in the tower.

"So now, my dear son," said the brother, "stand out on this parapet and call in a loud voice to thy faithful ones that they may draw nigh and hear thee. Then thou wilt speak to them, and in case thou shouldst be at a loss for words, I shall be standing close by this bell-tongue to suggest to thee what thou shalt say. But, for God's sake, beware of thyself, dilectissime! Thou seest what a frightful depth is here below thee, and say not to thy faithful followers anything but what I shall suggest to thee, nor give with thy head or thy hand an unbecoming interpretation to thy words, for if thou doest any such thing, take my word for it that at that same instant thou shalt fall from this window, and if once thou dost stumble, thou wilt not stop till thou dost reach the depths of hell."

The robber stood at the window with his hair erect with horror. He actually trembled—a thing which had never occurred to him before. His valour, that cold contempt for death which had always accompanied him hitherto, forsook him in this horrible position. He felt that at this giddy height neither dexterity nor audacity were of the slightest use to him. Beneath his feet was the gaping abyss, and behind his back was a man with the strength of a giant from whom a mere push—nay! the mere touch of a finger, or a shout a little louder than usual, were sufficient to plunge him down and dash him into helpless fragments on the rocks below. The desperate adventurer, in a fever of terror never felt before, crouched against one of the pillars of the window clutching at the wall with his hand, and it seemed to him as if the wall were about to give way beneath him, as if the tower were tottering beneath his feet; and he regarded the ground below as if it had some horrible power of dragging him down to it, as if some invisible force were inviting him to leap down from there.

Meanwhile his bands, who were lying in ambush outside the monastery, perceived the form of their leader aloft and suddenly darted forward in a body with a loud yell.

"Speak to them, attract their attention!" whispered the brother; "quick, mind what I say!"

The robber indicated his readiness to comply by a nod of his swimming head, and repeated the words which the brother concealed behind the tongue of the bell whispered in his ear.

"My friends" (thus he began his speech), "the priests are collecting their treasures; they are piling them on carts; there are sacks and sacks crammed with gold and silver."

A hideous shout of joy from the auditors expressed thorough approval of this sentence.

"But the worthy brethren have no wine or provisions in this monastery, but in their cellars at Eger there is plenty, so let two hundred of you go there immediately and get what you want."

The freebooters approved of this sentiment also.

"As for the desires that you nourish towards the womenfolk here, I am horrified to be obliged to tell you that for the last three days the black death, that most terrible of plagues, which makes the human body black as a coal even while alive, and infects everyone who draws near it, has been raging within the walls of this monastery during the last three days. I should not therefore advise you to break into this monastery, for it is full of dead and dying men, and so swift is the operation of this destroying angel that my three comrades succumbed to it even while I was ascending this tower, and only the Turkish talisman I wear, composed of earth seven times burnt, and the little finger of a baby that never saw the light of day, have preserved me from destruction."

By the way, Father Gregory had discovered all these things while he was investigating the robber's pockets.

At this terrifying message the horde of robbers began to scatter in all directions from beneath the walls of the monastery.

"For the same reason neither I myself nor the treasure of the monastery can leave this place till all the gold and silver that has been found here has been purified first by fire, then by boiling, and then by cold water, lest the black death should infect you by means of them. And now before making a joint attack on Klausenburg, as we had arranged—which, in view of the height of its walls and the strength of its fortress, would scarcely be a safe job to tackle—you will do this instead: Hide yourselves in parties of two hundred in the forests of Magyar-Gorbo, Vista and Szucság, and remain there quietly without showing yourself on the high road; at the same time four hundred of you will go round at night by the Korod road, and the rest of you will make for the Gyalu woods, and go round towards Szász Fenes. Then, when the garrison of Klausenburg hears the rumour that you are approaching by the Korod road, they will come forth with great confidence; and while some of you will be enticing them further on continually, the rest of you can fall on the defenceless town and plunder it. All you have to do is to act in this way and never show yourselves on the high road."

The robbers expressed their approval of their leader's advice with a loud howl; and while Kökényesdi tottered back half senseless into the brother's arms, they scattered amongst the woods with a great uproar. In an hour's time all that could be heard of them was a cry or two from the darkened distance.

The people assembled in the monastery had been listening to all this in an agony of terror; only Magyari understood the meaning of it. When the brother came down from the tower, Kökényesdi was locked up with his two comrades, and the two reverend gentlemen embraced and magnified each other.

"After God, we have your Reverence to thank for our deliverance," said Magyari with warm feeling, holding his trembling little daughter by the hand.

"But now we must save Klausenburg," said Gregory.

"I will set out this instant; my horse is saddled."

"Your Reverence on horseback, eh? How about the girl?"

"I will leave her here in your Reverence's fatherly care."

"But think."

"Could I leave her in a better place than within these walls, which Providence and your Reverence's fists defend so well?"

"But what if this robber rabble discover our trick and return upon the monastery with tenfold fury?"

"Then I will all the more certainly hasten to defend the walls of your Reverence, because my only child will be within them."

With that the pastor kissed the forehead of his daughter, who at that moment was paler than ever, fastened his big copper sword to his side, seized his shaggy little horse by the bridle, opened the door for himself, and, with a stout heart, trotted away on the high road.

But the brother summoned into the chapel the whole congregation, and late at night intoned a thanksgiving to the Lord of Hosts; after which Father Gregory got into the pulpit and preached to the faithful a powerful and fulminating sermon, in which he stirred them up to the defence of their altars, and at the end of his sacred discourse he seized with one hand the gigantic banner of the church—which on the occasion of processions three men used to support with difficulty—and so stirred up the enthusiastic people that if at that moment the robbers had been there in front of the monastery, they would have been capable of rushing out of the gates upon them with their crutches and sticks and dashing them to pieces.

CHAPTER VII.
THE PANIC OF NAGYENYED.

While the priests were girding swords upon their thighs, while the lame and the halt were flying to arms in defence of their homes and altars, the chief commandant of the town of Klausenburg, Mr. Ebéni, was calmly sleeping in his bed.

The worthy man had this peculiarity that when any of his officers awoke him for anything and told him that this or that had happened, he would simply reply "Impossible!" turn over on the other side, and go on slumbering.

Magyari was well aware of this peculiarity of the worthy man, and so when he arrived home, late at night, safe and sound, he wasted no time in talking with Mr. Ebéni, but opened the doors of the church and had all the bells rung in the middle of the night—a regular peal of them.

The people, aroused from its sleep in terror at the sound of the church-bells at that unwonted hour, naturally hastened in crowds to the church, where the reverend gentleman stood up before them and, in the most impressive language, told them all that he had seen, described the danger which was drawing near to them beneath the wings of the night, and exhorted his hearers valiantly to defend themselves.

The first that Mr. Ebéni heard of the approaching mischief was when ten or twenty men came rushing to him one after another to arouse him and tell him what the parson was saying. When at last he was brought to see that the matter was no joke, he leaped from his bed in terror, and for the life of him did not know what to do. The people were running up and down the streets bawling and squalling; the heydukes were beating the alarm drums; cavalry, blowing their trumpets, were galloping backwards and forwards—and Mr. Ebéni completely lost his head.

Fortunately for him Magyari was quickly by his side.

"What has happened? What's the matter? What are they doing, very reverend sir?" inquired the commandant, just as if Magyari were the leader of troops.

"The mischief is not very serious, but it is close at hand," replied the reverend gentleman. "A band of freebooters—some seventeen companies under the command of a robber chief—have burst into Transylvania, and with them are some regular horse belonging to the garrison of Szathmár. At this moment they cannot be more than four leagues distant from Klausenburg; but they are so scattered that there are no more than four hundred of them together anywhere, so that, with the aid of the gentlemen volunteers and the Prince's German regiments, you ought to wipe them out in detail. The first thing to be done, however, is to warn the Prince of this unexpected event, for he is now taking his pleasure at Nagyenyed."

"Your Reverence is right," said Ebéni, "we'll act at once;" and, after dismissing the priest to look after the armed bands and reconnoitre, he summoned a swift courier, and, as in his confusion he at first couldn't find a pen and then upset the inkstand over the letter when he had written it, he at last hurriedly instructed the courier to convey a verbal message to the Prince to the effect that the Szathmárians, in conjunction with the freebooters, had broken into Transylvania with seventeen companies, and were only four hours' march from Klausenburg, and that Klausenburg was now preparing to defend itself.

Thus Ebéni gave quite another version to the parson's tidings, for while the parson had only mentioned a few horsemen from the Szathmár garrison he had put the Szathmárians at the head of the whole enterprise, and had reduced the distance of four leagues to a four hours' journey which, in view of the condition of the Transylvanian roads, made all the difference.

The courier got out of the town as quickly as possible, and by the time he had reached his destination had worked up his imagination to such an extent that he fancied the invading host had already valiantly covered the four leagues; and, bursting in upon the Prince without observing that the Princess, then in an interesting condition, was with him, blurted out the following message:

"The Szathmár garrison with seventeen bands of freebooters has invaded Transylvania and is besieging Klausenburg, but Mr. Ebéni is, no doubt, still defending himself."

The Princess almost fainted at these words; while Apafi, leaping from his seat and summoning his faithful old servant Andrew, ordered him to get the carriage ready at once, and convey the Princess as quickly as possible to Gyula-Fehervár, for the Szathmár army, with seventeen companies of Hungarians, had attacked Klausenburg, and by this time eaten up Mr. Ebéni, who was not in a position to defend himself.

Andrew immediately rushed off for his horses, had put them to in one moment, in another moment had carried down the Princess' most necessary travelling things, and in the third moment had the lady safely seated, who was terribly frightened at the impending danger.

The men loafing about the courtyard, surprised at this sudden haste, surrounded the carriage; and one of them, an old acquaintance of Andrew's, spoke to him just as he had mounted the box and asked him what was the matter.

"Alas!" replied Andrew, "the army of Szathmár has invaded Transylvania, has devastated Klausenburg with 17,000 men, and is now advancing on Nagyenyed."

Well, they waited to hear no more. As soon as they perceived the Princess's carriage rolling rapidly towards the fortress of Fehervár, they scattered in every direction, and in an hour's time the whole town was flying along the Fehervár road. Everyone hastily took away with him as much as he could carry; the women held their children in their arms; the men had their bundles on their backs and drove their cows and oxen before them; carts were packed full of household goods; and everyone lamented, stormed, and fled for all he was worth.

Just at that time there happened to be at Nagyenyed the envoy of the Pasha of Buda, Yffim Beg, who had been sent to the Prince to hasten his march into Hungary with the expected auxiliary army, and who absolutely refused to believe Teleki that they ought to remain where they where, as it was from the direction of Szathmár that an attack was to be feared.

The worthy Yffim Beg was actually sitting in his bath when the panic-flight took place; and, alarmed at the noise, he sprang out of the water, and wrapping a sheet round him rushed to the window, and perceiving the terrified flying rabble, cried to one of the passers-by: "Whither are you running? What is going on here?"

"Alas, sir!" panted the breathless fugitive, "the Szathmár army, 27,000 strong, has invaded Transylvania, has taken everything in its road, and is now only two hours' march from Nagyenyed."

This was quite enough for Yffim Beg also. Hastily tying the bathing-towels round his body and without his turban, he rushed to the stables, flung himself on a barebacked steed and galloped away from Nagyenyed without taking leave of anyone; and did not so much as change his garment till he reached Temesvár, and there reported that the countless armies of Szathmár had conquered the whole of Transylvania!

Thus Teleki had gained his object: the Transylvanian troops had now good reasons for staying at home. Yet he had got much more than he wanted, for he had only required of Kászonyi a feigned attack, whereas the band of Kökényesdi had ravaged Transylvania as far as Klausenburg.

The fact that the worthy friar and Mr. Ladislaus Magyari had captured the leader of the freebooters made very little difference at all, for the crafty adventurer had bored his way through the wall of his dungeon that very night, and had escaped with his three comrades.

Early next morning, on perceiving that his captives had escaped, Father Gregory was terribly alarmed, imagining that they would now bring back the whole robber band against him; and, hastening immediately to collect the whole of the pilgrims, loaded wagons with the most necessary provisions and the treasures of the altar, conducted them among the hills, and there concealed them in the Cavern of Balina, carrying the sick members of his flock one by one across the mountain-streams in front of the cavern and depositing them in the majestic rocky chamber, which more than once had served the inhabitants of the surrounding districts as a place of refuge from the Tartars, having a large open roof through which the smoke could get out, while a stream flowing through it kept them well supplied with drinking-water. In an hour's time fires and ovens, made from fresh leaves and mown grass, stood ready in the midst of the place of refuge; and on a stone pedestal, in the background, always standing ready for such a purpose, an altar was erected.

Meanwhile Kökényesdi had hastened to overtake his bands which had scattered at the word of the brother in order to re-unite them before the people of Klausenburg could capture them in detail. Szénasi he dispatched to call back the wanderers who had been sent to the cellars of Eger and besiege the monastery.

When Szénasi returned with the two hundred hungry men he only found empty walls, and to make them emptier still—he burnt them down to the ground.

He then sat down, and by the light of the conflagration wrote a sarcastic letter to Teleki, in which he informed him with a great show of humility that he had made the required diversion against Transylvania, that he kissed his hand, that he might command him at any future time, and that he was his most humble servant.

He had scarcely sent off the letter by a Wallachian gipsy, picked up on the road, when he saw a company of horsemen galloping towards the burning monastery, and recognised in the foremost fugitive Kökényesdi.

"It is all up with us!" cried the robber chief from afar, "we are surrounded. All the parsons in the world have become soldiers, and turned their swords against us as if they were Bibles. The Calvinist pastor, the Catholic friar, the Greek priest, and the Unitarian minister—every man jack of them has placed himself at the head of the faithful, and are coming against us with at least twenty thousand men: students, artisans and peasants, the whole swarm is rushing upon us. I and fifty more were set upon by the whole Guild of Shoemakers, who cut down twenty of my men; they were all as mad as hatters, and when the peasants had done with us, the gentlemen took us up: they united with the German dragoons, and pursued my flying army on horseback. Every bit of booty, every slave they have torn from us; this Calvinist Joshua is always close on my heels, not a single one of our infantry can be saved."

The robber chief behaved as the leader of robber bands usually do behave. When he had to fight, he fought among the foremost; but when he had to run, then also he was well to the front. When he was beaten, he cared not a jot whether the others got off scot-free, he only thought of saving himself.

When he had announced the catastrophe from horseback to the terrified Szénasi, he clapped spurs to his nag, and, without looking back to see whether anyone was following him, he galloped off, and left Szénasi in the lurch with the footmen.

The fox is always most crafty when he falls into the snare. The perplexed hypocrite perceived that however quickly he might try to escape, the cavalry would overtake him at Grosswardein and mow him down. Unfortunately, he knew not how to ride, and therefore could not hope to save himself that way. Already the trumpets of the Transylvanian bands were blaring all around him; fiery beacons of pitchy pines were beginning to blaze out from mountain-top to mountain-top; on every road were visible the flying comrades of Kökényesdi, terrifying one another with their shouts of alarm as they rushed through the woods and valleys, not daring to take refuge among the snowy Alps, where the axes of the enraged Wallachians flashed before their eyes; and there was not a single road on which they did not run the risk of being trampled down by the Hungarian banderia and the German dragoons.

In that moment of despair Szénasi quickly flung himself into the garments of a peasant, climbed up to the top of a tree, and as soon as he perceived the first band of German horsemen approaching him, he called out to them.

"God bless you, my noble gentlemen!"

They looked up at these words and told the man to come down from the tree.

"No doubt you also have taken refuge from the robbers, poor man!"

"Ah! most precious gentlemen! they were not robbers, but German soldiers in Hungarian uniforms who had been sent hither from Szathmár. Take care how you pursue them, for if your German soldiers should meet theirs, it might easily happen that they would join together against you. I heard what they were saying as I understand their language, but I pretended that I did not understand; and while they made me come with them to show them the road, they began talking among themselves, and they said that they had had sure but secret information from the Klausenburg dragoons that they were going to attack the town. The Devil never sleeps, my noble gentlemen!"

The good gentlemen were astounded; the intelligence was not altogether improbable, and as, just before, a vagabond had been captured who could speak nothing but German, a mad rumour spread like wild-fire among the Magyars that the dragoons had an understanding with the enemy and wanted to draw them into an ambush; and so the gentlemen told the students, and the students told the mechanics, and by the time it reached the ears of Ebéni and the parsons, there was something very like a mutiny in the army. The gentry suggested that the Germans should be deprived of their swords and horses; the students would have fought them there and then; but the most sensible idea came from the Guild of Cobblers, who would have waited till they had lain down to sleep and then bound and gagged them one by one.

Master Szénasi meanwhile went and hunted up the dragoons, whom he found full of zeal for the good cause entrusted to them, and had a talk with them.

"Gentlemen!" said he, "what a pity it is, but look now at these Hungarian gentlemen! Well, they are shaking their fists at you, so look to yourselves. Someone has told them that you are acting in concert with the people of Szathmár, so they won't go a step further until they have first massacred the whole lot of you."

At this the German soldiers were greatly embittered. Here they were, they said, shedding their blood for Transylvania, and the only reward they got was to be called traitors! So they sounded the alarm, collected their regiments together, took up a defensive position, and for a whole hour the camp of Mr. Ebéni was thrown into such confusion that nothing was easier for Master Szénasi than to hide himself among the fugitives. All night long Mr. Ebéni suffered all the tortures of martyrdom. At one time he was besieged by a deputation from the Magyars, who demanded satisfaction, confirmation, and Heaven only knows what else; while the worthy parsons kept rushing from one end of the camp to the other, with great difficulty appeasing the uproar, enlightening the half-informed, and in particular solemnly assuring both parties that neither the Hungarian gentlemen wanted to hurt the Germans nor the Germans the Hungarians, till light began to dawn on them, and the reconciled parties were convinced, much to their astonishment, that the whole alarm was the work of a single crafty adventurer who clearly enough had gained time to escape from the pursuers when they had him in their very clutches.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE SLAVE MARKET AT BUDA-PESTH.

In the middle of the sixteenth century, Haji Baba, the most celebrated slave-dealer of Stambul, having been secretly informed beforehand, by acquaintances in the Seraglio, that a great host would assemble that summer beneath Pesth, hastily filled his ship with wares before his business colleagues had got an inkling of what was going to happen; and, steering his bark with its precious load through the Black Sea and up the Danube, reached Pesth some time before the army had concentrated there.

Casting anchor in the Danube, he adorned his vessel with oriental carpets and flowers, and placing a band of black eunuchs in the prow of the vessel with all sorts of tinkling musical instruments, he set about beating drums till the sound re-echoed from the hills of Buda.

The Turks immediately assembled on the bastions of the castle of Buda right opposite, and perceiving the bedizened ship with its flags streaming from the mast and sweeping the waves, thereby giving everyone who wanted to know what sort of wares were for sale there, got into all sorts of little skiffs and let themselves be rowed out thither.

The loveliest damsels in the round world were there exhibited for sale.

As soon as the first of the Turks had well intoxicated himself with the sight of the sumptuous wares, he hastened back to get his money and come again, telling the dozen or so of his acquaintances whom he met on the way what sort of a spectacle he had seen with no little enthusiasm, and in a very short time hundreds more were hastening to this ship which offered Paradise itself for sale.

Hassan Pasha, the then Governor of Buda, perceiving the throng from the windows of his palace, and ascertaining the cause, sent his favourite Yffim Beg to forbid the market to the mob till he, the general, had chosen for himself what girls he wanted; and if there was any one of the slave-girls worthy of consideration, he was to buy her for his harem.

Yffim Beg hastened to announce the prohibition, and when the skiffs had departed one by one from the ship, he got into the general's curtained gondola and had himself rowed over to the ship of Haji Baba.

The man-seller, perceiving the state gondola on its way to him, went to the ship's side, and waited with a woe-begone face till it had come alongside, and stretched forth his long neck to Yffim Beg that he might clamber up it on to the deck.

The Beg, with great condescension, informed the merchant that he had come on behalf of the Vizier of Buda, who was over all the Pashas of Hungary, to choose from among the wares he had for sale.

Haji Baba, on hearing this, immediately cast himself to the ground and blessed the day which had risen on these hills, and the water and the oars which had brought the Beg thither, and even the mother who had made the slippers in which Yffim Beg had mounted his ship.

Then he kissed the Beg's hand, and having, as a still greater sign of respect, boxed the ears of the eunuch who happened to be nearest to the Beg, for his impertinence in daring to stand so near at all, led Yffim into the most secret of his secret chambers. Heavy gold-embroidered hangings defended the entry to the interior of the ship; after this came a second curtain of dark-red silk, and through this were already audible sweet songs and twittering, and when this curtain was drawn aside by its golden tassels, a third muslin-like veil still stood in front of the entrance through which one could look into the room beyond without being seen by those inside.

Fourteen damsels were sporting with one another. Some of them darting in and out from between the numerous Persian curtains suspended from the ceiling, and laughing aloud when they caught each other; one was strumming a mandoline; five or six were dancing a round dance to the music of softly sung songs; another group was swinging one another on a swing made from costly shawls. All of them were so young, all of them were of such superior loveliness, that if the heart had allowed the eye alone to choose for it, mere bewilderment would have made selection impossible.

Yffim Beg gazed for a long time with the indifference of a connoisseur, but even his face relaxed at last, and smilingly tapping the merchant on the shoulder, he said to him:

"You have been filching from Paradise, Haji Baba!"

Haji Baba crossed his hands over his breast and shook his head humbly.

"All these girls are my pupils, sir. There is not one of them who resembles her dear mother. From their tenderest youth they have grown up beneath my fostering care; I do no business with grown-up, captured slave-girls, for, as a rule, they only weep themselves to death, grow troublesome, wither away before their time, and upset all the others. I buy the girls while they are babies; it costs a mint of money and no end of trouble before such a flower expands, but at least he who plucks it has every reason to rejoice. Look, sir, they are all equally perfect! Look at that slim lily there dancing on the angora carpet! Did you ever see such a figure anywhere else? How she sways from side to side like the flowering branch of a banyan tree! That is a Georgian girl whom I purchased before she was born. Her father when he married had not money enough for the wedding-feast, so he came to me and sold for a hundred denarii the very first child of his that should be born. Yes, sir, not much money, I know, but suppose the child had never been born? And suppose it had been a son! And how often too, and how easily I might have been cheated! I am sure you could not say that five hundred ducats was too much for her if I named that price. Look, how she stamps down her embroidered slippers! Ah, what legs! I don't believe you could find such round, white, smooth little legs anywhere else! Her price, sir, is six hundred ducats."

Yffim Beg listened to the trader with the air of a connoisseur.

"Or, perhaps, you would prefer that melancholy virgin yonder, who has sought solitude and is lying beneath the shade of that rose-tree? Look, sir, what a lot of rose-trees I have all about the place! My girls can never bear to be without rose-trees, for roses go best with damsels, and the fragrance of the rose is the best teacher of love. That Circassian girl yonder was captured along with her father and mother; the husband, a rough fellow, slew his wife lest she should fall into our hands, but he had no time to kill his child, for I took her, and now I would not sell her for less than seven hundred ducats; there's no hurry, for she is still quite a child."

Here Yffim Beg growled something or other.

"Now that saucy damsel swinging herself to and fro on the shawl," continued the dealer, "I got in China, where her parents abandoned her in a public place. She does not promise much at first sight, but touch her and you'll fancy you are in contact with warm velvet. I would let you have her, sir, for five hundred ducats, but I should charge anyone else as much again."

Yffim Beg nodded approvingly.

"And now do you see that fair damsel who, with a gold comb, is combing out tresses more precious than gold; she came to me from the northern islands, from a ship which the Kapudan Pasha sent to the bottom of the sea. I don't ask you if you ever saw such rich fair tresses before, but I do ask you whether you ever saw before a mortal maid with such a blindingly fair face? When she blushes, it is just as if the dawn were touching her with rosy finger-tips."

"Yes, but her face is painted," said Yffim Beg suspiciously.

"Painted, sir!" exclaimed Haji Baba with dignity. "Painted faces at my shop! Very well! come and convince yourself."

And, tearing aside the muslin veil, he entered the apartment with Yffim Beg.

At the sight of the men a couple of the charming hoydens rushed shrieking behind the tapestries, and only after a time poked their inquisitive little heads through the folds of the curtains; but the Georgian beauty continued to dance; the Chinese damsel went on swinging more provocatively than ever; the beauty from the northern islands allowed her golden tresses to go on playing about her shoulders; a fresh, tawny gipsy-girl, in a variegated, elaborately fringed dress, with ribbons in her curly hair, stood right in front of the approaching Beg, eyed him carefully from top to toe, seized part of his silken caftan, and rubbed it between her fingers, as if she wanted to appraise its value to a penny; while a tiny little negro girl with gold bracelets round her hands and legs, fumigated the entering guest with ambergris, naïvely smiling at him all the time with eyes like pure enamel and lips as red as coral.

The robber-chapman was right, there was not one of these girls who felt ashamed. They looked at the purchaser with indifference and even complacency, and everyone of them tried to please him in the hope that he would take them where they would have lots of jewels and fine clothes, and slaves to wait on them.

Haji Baba led the Beg to the above-mentioned beauty, and raising the edge of her white garment and displaying her blushing face, rubbed it hard, and when the main texture remained white, he turned triumphantly to the seller.

"Well, sir! I sell painted faces, do I? Do you suppose that every orthodox shah, emir, and khan would have any confidence in me if I did? Will you not find in my garden those flowers which the Sultana Valideh presents to the greatest of Emperors on his birthday, and which in a week's time the Sultan gives in marriage to those of his favourite Pashas whom he delights to honour? Why, I don't keep Hindu bayaderes simply because they stain their teeth with betel-root and orange yellow, and gild their eyebrows; accursed be he who would improve upon what Allah created perfect! The black girl is lovely because she is black, the Greek because she is brown, the Pole because she is pale, and the Wallach because she is ruddy; there are some who like blonde, and some who like dark tresses; and fire dwells in blue eyes as well as in black; and God has created everything that man may rejoice therein."

While the worthy man-filcher was thus pouring himself forth so enthusiastically, Yffim Beg, with a very grave face, was gazing round the apartment, drawing aside every curtain and gazing grimly at the dwellers behind them, who, clad in rich oriental garments, were reclining on divans, sucking sugar-plums and singing songs.

Haji Baba was at his back the whole time, and had so much to say of the qualifications of every damsel they beheld, that the Turkish gentleman must have been sorely perplexed which of them to choose.

He had got right to the end of the apartment, when unexpectedly peeping into the remotest corner, he beheld a damsel who seemed to be entirely different from all the rest. She was wrapped in a simple white wadding-like garment, only her head was visible; and when the Beg turned towards her, both his eyes and his mouth opened wide, and he stood rooted to the spot before her.

It was the face of the Queen in the Kingdom of Beauty. Never had he seen such a look, such burning, glistening, flashing eyes as hers! The proud, free temples, beneath which two passionate eyebrows sparkled like rainbows, even without a diadem dispensed majesty. At the first glance she seemed as savage as Diana surprised in her bath, at the next she was as timorous as the flying Daphne; gradually a tender smile transformed her features, she looked in front of her with a dazed expression like betrayed Sappho gazing at the expanse of ocean in which she would fain extinguish her burning love.

"Chapman!" cried the Beg, scarce able to contain himself for astonishment, "would you deceive me by hiding away from me a houri stolen from heaven?"

"I assure you, sir," said the chapman, with a look of terror, "that it were better for you if you turned away and thought of her no more."

"Haji Baba, beware! if perchance you would sell her to another, or even keep her for yourself, you run the risk of losing more than you will ever make up again."

"I tell you, sir, by the beard of my father, look not upon that woman."

"Hum! Some defect perhaps!" thought Yffim to himself, and he beckoned to the girl to let down her garment. She immediately complied, and, standing up, stripped her light mantle from her limbs.

Ah! how the Beg's eyes sparkled. He half believed that what he saw was not human, but a vision from fairy-land. The damsel's shape was as perfect as a marble statue carved expressly for the altar of the Goddess of Love, and the silver hoop encircling her body only seemed to be there as a girdle in order to show how much whiter than silver was her body.

"Curses on your tongue, vile chatterer!" said Yffim Beg, turning upon the chapman. "Here have you been wasting an hour of my time with your empty twaddle, and hiding the beauties of Paradise from my gaze. What's the price of this damsel?"

"Believe me, sir, she won't do for you."

"What! thou man-headed dog! Dost fancy thou hast to do with beggars who cannot give thee what thou askest? I come hither to buy for Hassan Pasha, the Governor of Buda, who is wont to give two thousand ducats to him who asks him for one thousand."

At these words the damsel's face was illuminated by an unwonted smile, and at that moment her large, fiery eyes flashed so at Yffim Beg that his eyes could not have been more blinded if he had been walking on the seashore and two suns had flashed simultaneously in his face, one from the sky and the other from the watery mirror.

"It is not that," said the slave merchant, bowing himself to the ground; "on the contrary, I'll let you have the damsel so cheaply that you will see from the very price that I had reserved her for one of the lowest mushirs, in case he should take a fancy to her—you shall have her for a hundred dinars."

"Thou blasphemer, thou! Dost thou cheapen in this fashion the masterpieces of Nature. Thou shouldst ask ten thousand dinars for her, or have a stroke on the soles of thy feet with a bamboo for every dinar thou askest below that price."

The merchant's face grew dark.

"Take her not, sir," said he; "you will be no friend to yourself or to your master if you would bring her into his harem."

"I suppose," said the Beg, "that the damsel has a rough voice, and that is why she is going so cheaply?" and he ordered her to sing a song to him if she knew one.

"Ask her not to do that, sir!" implored the chapman. But, already, he was too late. At the very first word the girl had laid hold of a mandolin, and striking the chords till they sounded like the breeze on an æolian harp, she began to sing in the softest, sweetest, most ardent voice an Arab love-song:

"In the rose-groves of Shiraz,
In the pale beams of moonlight,
In the burning heart's slumber,
Love ever is born.

"'Midst the icebergs of Altai,
On the steps of the scaffold,
In the fierce flames of hatred,
Love never can die."

The Beg felt absolutely obliged to rush forthwith upon Haji Baba and pummel him right and left for daring to utter a word to put him off buying the damsel.

The slave-dealer patiently endured his kicks and cuffs, and when the jest was over, he said once more:

"And again I have to counsel you not to take the damsel for your master."

"What's amiss with her, then, thou big owl? Speak sense, or I'll hang thee up at thine own masthead."

"I'll tell you, sir, if only you will listen. That damsel has not belonged to one master only, for I know for certain that five have had her. All five, sir, have perished miserably by poison, the headman's sword, or the silken cord. She has brought misfortune to every house she has visited, and she has dwelt with Tartars, Turks, and Magyars. Against the Iblis that dwells within her, prophets, messiahs, and idols have alike been powerless; ruin and destruction breathe from her lips; he who embraces her has his grave already dug for him, and he who looks at her had best have been born without the light of his eyes. Therefore I once more implore you, sir, to let this damsel go to some poor mushir, whose head may roll off without anybody much caring, and do not convey danger to so high a house as the palace of Hassan Pasha."

The Beg shook his head.

"I thought thee a sharper, and I have found thee a blockhead," said he, and he signified to the damsel to wrap herself in her mantle and follow him.

"Allah is my witness that I warned you; I wash my hands of it," stammered Haji Baba.

"The girl will follow me; send thou for the money to my house."

"The Prophet seeth my soul, sir. If you are determined to take the damsel, I will not give her to you for money, lest so great a man may one day say that he bought ruin from me. Take her then as a gift to your master."

"But I have forgotten to ask the damsel's name?"

"I will tell you, but forget not every time that name passes your lips to say: 'Mashallah!' for that woman's name is the name of the devil, and doubtless she does not bear it without good cause, nor will she ever be false to it."

"Speak, and chatter not!"

"That damsel's name is Azrael ... Allah is mighty!"

CHAPTER IX.
THE AMAZON BRIGADE.

It was three days since Azrael had come into the possession of Hassan Pasha, and in the evening of the third day Haji Baba was sitting in the prow of his ship and rejoicing in the beautiful moonlight when he saw, a long way off, in the direction of the Margaret island a skiff, and then another skiff, and then another, row across the Danube, and heard heart-rending shrieks which only lasted for a short time.

Presently the skiffs disappeared among the trees on the river bank, the last hideous cry died away, and from the rose-groves of the castle came a romantic song which resounded over the Danube through the silent night. The merchant recognised the voice of the odalisk, and listened attentively to it for a long time, and it seemed to him as if through this song those shrieks were passing incessantly.

The next day Yffim Beg came to see him, and the merchant hospitably welcomed him. He set before him a narghile and little cups of sherbet, and then they settled down comfortably to their pipes, but neither of them uttered a word.

Thus a good hour passed away; then at last Haji Baba opened his mouth.

"During the night I saw some skiffs row out towards the island, and I heard the sound of stifled shrieks."

And then they both continued to pull away at their narghiles, and another long hour passed away.

Then Yffim Beg arose, pressed the hand of Haji Baba, and said, just as he was moving off:

"They were the favourite damsels of Hassan Pasha, who had been sewn up in leathern sacks and flung into the water."

Haji Baba shook his head, which signifies with a Turk: I anticipated that.

Not long afterwards the whole host began to assemble below Pesth, encamping on the bank of the Danube; a bridge suddenly sprang into sight, and across it passed army corps, heavy cannons and wagons. First there arrived from Belgrade the Vizier Aga, with a bodyguard of nine thousand men, and pitched their tents on the Rákás; after him followed Ismail Pasha, with sixteen thousand Janissaries, and their tents covered the plain. The Tartar Khan's disorderly hordes, which might be computed at forty thousand, extended over the environs of Vácz; and presently Prince Ghyka also arrived with six thousand horsemen, and along with him the picked troops of the Vizier of Buda; the whole army numbered about one hundred thousand.

So Haji Baba did a roaring trade. There were numerous purchasers among so many Turkish gentlemen; there was something to suit everyone, for the prices were graduated; and Haji thought he might perhaps order up a fresh consignment from his agents at Belgrade, hoping to sell this off rapidly so long as the camp remained. But he very much wanted to know how long the concentration would go on, and how many more gentlemen were still expected to join the host, and with that object he sought out Yffim Beg.

The Beg answered straightforwardly that nearly everyone who had a mind to come was there already. The Prince of Transylvania had treacherously absented himself from the host, and only Kucsuk Pasha and young Feriz Beg's brigades were still expected; without them the army would move no farther.

At the mention of these names Haji Baba started.

"You have as good as made me a dead man, sir. I must now go back to Stambul with my whole consignment."

"Art thou mad?"

"No, but I shall become bankrupt, if I wait for these gentlemen. Never, sir, can I live in the same part of the world, sir, with those fine fellows, whom may Allah long preserve for the glory of our nation! I have two houses on the opposite shores of the Bosphorus, so that when these noble gentlemen are in Europe I may be in Asia, and when they come to Asia I may sail over to Europe."

"Thou speakest in riddles."

"Then you have not heard the fame of Feriz Beg?"

"I have heard him mentioned as a valiant warrior."

"And how about the brigade of damsels which is wont to follow him into battle?"

Yffim Beg burst out laughing at these words.

"It is easy for you to laugh, sir, for you have never dealt in damsels like me. But you should know that what I tell you is no jest, and Feriz Beg is as great a danger to every man who trades in women as plague or small-pox."

"I never heard of this peculiarity of his."

"But I have. I tell you this Feriz Beg is a youth with magic power, in whose eyes is hidden a talisman, whose forehead is inscribed with magic letters, and from whose lips flow sorcery and magic spells, so that whenever he looks upon a woman, or whenever she hears his words even through a closed door, that woman is lost for ever. Just as he upon whom the moon shines when he is asleep is obliged to follow the moon from thenceforth, so, too, this young man draws after him with the moonbeams of his eyes all the women who look upon him. Ah! many is the great man who has cursed the hour in which Feriz Beg galloped past his windows and thereby turned the heads of the most beauteous damsels. Even the Grand Vizier himself has wept the loss of his favourite bayadere Zaida, who descended from his windows by a silken cord into the sea, and swam after the ship which bore along Feriz Beg; and one night my kinsman, Kutub Alnuma, who is a far greater slave merchant than I am, was, while he slept, tied hand and foot by his own damsels to whom he heedlessly had pointed out Feriz Beg, and the whole lot incontinently ran after him."

"And what does the youth do with all these women?"

"Oh, sir, that is the most marvellous part of the whole story. For if he culled all the fairest flowers of earth for the sake of love, I would say that he was a wise man, who tasted the joys of Paradise beforehand. But it is quite another thing, sir. You will be horrified when I tell you that he at whose feet all the beauties of earth fling themselves, never so much as greets one of them with a kiss."

"Is he sick, then, or mad?"

"He loves another damsel, a Christian girl, who is far from here, and for whom he has pined from the days of his childhood. At the time of his first battle he saw this girl for the first time, and as often as he has gone to war since, it is always with her name upon his lips that he draws his sword."

"And what happens to the girls he takes away?"

"When the first of these flung themselves at his feet, offering him their hearts and their very lives and imploring him to kill them if he would not requite their love, to them he replied: 'You have not been taught to love as I love. Your love awoke in the shadows of rose-bushes, mine amidst the flashing of swords; you love sweet songs, and the voice of the nightingale, I love the sound of the trumpet. If you would love me, love as I do; if you would be with me, come whither I go; and if Allah wills it, die where I die.' Ah, sir, there is an accursed charm on the lips of this young man. He destroys the hearts of the damsels with his words so that they forget that Allah gave them to men as playthings and delightful toys, and they gird swords upon their tender thighs, fasten cuirasses of mail round their bosoms, and expose their fair faces to deadly swords."

"And do these women really fight, or is it all a fable?"

"They do wonders, sir. No one has ever seen them fly before the foe, and frequently they are victorious; and if they have less strength in their arms than men, they have ten times more fire in their hearts. And if at any one point the fight is most dogged, and the enemy collecting together his most valiant bands has tired out the hardly-pressed spahis and timariots, then the youth draws his sword and plunges into the blackest of mortal peril. And then the wretched women all plunge blindly after him, and each one of them tries to get nearest to him, for they know that every weapon is directed against him, and they ward off with their bosoms the bullets which were meant for him. And so long as the youth remains there, or presses forward, they never leave him, the whole battalion perishes first. And at last, if he wins the fight and remains master of the field, the youth dismounts from his horse, collects the bodies of the slain who have fallen fighting beside him, kisses them one by one on their foreheads, sheds tears on their pale faces, and with his own hands lays them in the grave. And, believe me, sir, these bewitched, enchanted damsels are mad after that kiss, and their only wish is to gain it as soon as possible."

"And is there none to put an end to this scandal? Have the generals no authority to abolish this abomination? Do not the outraged owners demand back their slave-girls?"

"You must know, sir, that Feriz Beg stands high in the favour of the Sultan. He is never prominent anywhere but on the battlefield, but there he gives a good account of himself; and if anybody who came to his tents to try and recover his slave-girls by force, he might easily be sent about his business minus his nose and ears. Besides, who could say that these warriors of Feriz are women? Do they not dispense thrusts and slashes instead of kisses? Do you ever hear them sing or see them dance and smile so long as they are under canvas? Oh, sir, I assure you that you would do well if you told all those who buy slave-girls from me to guard the damsels from the enchanting dark eyes of this man, for there is a talisman concealed in them. And, in particular, forget not to tell your master to conceal his damsel, for you know not what might happen if a magician caused a female Iblis[15] to enter into her. If an enamoured woman is terrible, what would an enamoured she-devil be? You bought her, take care that she does not sell you! The day before yesterday you threw his favourite women into the water, the day after to-morrow you might——but Allah guard my tongue, I will not say what I would. Watch carefully, that's all I'll say. Yet to keep a watch upon women is the most difficult of sciences. If you want to get into a beleagured fortress, hide an enamoured woman in it, and she'll very soon show you the way in. Take heed to what I say, sir, for if you forget my words but for half an hour, I would not give my little finger-nail for your head."

[15] Evil spirit.

Whereupon Yffim Beg arose without saying a word and withdrew, deeply pondering the words of the slave-dealer. But Haji Baba that same night drew up his anchors, and at dawn he had vanished from the Danube, none knew whither.

CHAPTER X.
THE MARGARET ISLAND.

On the Margaret island, in the bosom of the blue Danube, was the paradise of Hassan Pasha, and to behold its treasures was death. At every interval of twenty yards stands a eunuch behind the groves of the island with a long musket, and if any man fares upon the water within bullet-reach, he certainly will never tell anyone what he saw.

Paradise exhales every intoxicating joy, every transient delight; it is full of flowers, and no sooner does one flower bloom than another instantly fades away; and this also is the fate of those flowers which are called damsels, for some of these likewise fade in a day, whilst others are culled to adorn the table of the favourite. This, I say, is the fate of all the flowers, and frequently in those huge porcelain vases which stand before Azrael's bed, among its wreaths of roses and pomegranate flowers, one may see the head of an odalisk with drooping eyes who yesterday was as bright and merry as her comrades, the rose and pomegranate blossoms.

Oh, that woman is a veritable dream! Since he possessed her Hassan Pasha is no longer a man, but a piece of wax which receives the impression of her ideas. He hears nothing but her voice, and sees nothing but her. Already they are beginning to say that Hassan Pasha no longer recognizes a man ten feet off, and is no longer able to distinguish between the sound of the drum and the sound of the trumpet. And it is true, but whoever said so aloud would be jeopardizing his head, for Hassan would conceal his failings for fear of being deprived of the command of the army if they became generally known.

All the better does Yffim Beg see and hear, Yffim Beg who is constantly about Azrael; if he were not such an old and faithful favourite of Hassan Pasha he might almost regret that he has such good eyes and ears. But Azrael's penetrating mind knows well enough that Yffim Beg's head stands much more firmly on his shoulders than stand the heads of those whom Hassan Pasha sacrifices to her whims, so she flatters him, and it is all the worse for him that she does flatter.

Hassan Pasha, scarce waiting for the day to end and dismissing all serious business, sat him down in his curtained pinnace, known only to the dwellers on the fairy island, and had himself rowed across to his hidden paradise, where, amidst two hundred attendant damsels, Azrael, the loveliest of the living, awaits him in the hall of the fairy kiosk, round whose golden trellis work twine the blooms of a foreign sky.

Yffim Beg alone accompanies the Pasha thither.

The Governor, after embracing the odalisk, strolled thoughtfully through the labyrinth of fragrant trees where the paths were covered by coloured pebbles and a whole army of domesticated birds made their nests in the trees. Yffim Beg follows them at a little distance, and not a movement escapes his keen eyes, not so much as a sigh eludes his sharp ears; he keeps a strict watch on all that Azrael does and says.

In the midst of their walk—they hadn't gone a hundred paces—a falcon rose before them from among the trees and perched on a poplar close by.

"Look, sir, what a beautiful falcon!" cried Yffim Beg.

Azrael laughed aloud and looked back.

"Oh, my good Beg, how canst thou take a wood-pigeon for a falcon? why it was a wood-pigeon."

"I took good note of it, Azrael, and there it is sitting on that poplar."

"Why, that's better still—now he calls a nut-tree a poplar. Eh, eh! worthy Beg, thou must needs have been drinking a little to see so badly."

"Well, that was what I fancied," said the Beg, much perplexed, and for the life of him not perceiving the point of the jest. Why should the odalisk make a fool of him so?

"But look then, my love," said Azrael, appealing to the Pasha; "thou didst see that bird fly away from the tree yonder, was it not a wood-pigeon flying from a nut-tree?"

Hassan saw neither the tree nor the bird, but he pretended he did, and agreed with the odalisk.

"Of course it was a wood-pigeon and a nut-tree."

Yffim Beg did not understand it at all.

They went on further, and presently Yffim Beg again spoke.

"Shall we not turn, my master, towards that beautiful arcade of rose-trees?"

Azrael clapped her hands together in amazement.

"What! an arcade of roses! Where is it?"

"Turn in that direction and thou wilt see it."

"These things! Why if he isn't taking some sumach trees full of berries for an arcade of rose-trees!"

Hassan Pasha laughed. As for Yffim Beg he was lost in amazement—why did this damsel choose to jest with him in this fashion?

At that moment a cannon shot resounded from the Pesth shore.

"Ah!" said the Pasha, stopping, "a cannon shot!"

"Yes, my master," said Yffim, "from the direction of Pesth."

"From Pesth indeed," said Azrael, "it was from Buda; it was the signal for closing the gate."

"I heard it plainly."

"Excuse me, my good Beg, but thy hearing is as bad as thy sight. I am beginning to be anxious about thee. How could it be from the direction of Pesth when the whole camp has crossed over to Buda?"

"Maybe a fresh host has arrived, which now awaits us."

"Come," cried Azrael, seizing Hassan's hand, "we will find out at once who is right;" and she hastened with them to the shore of the island.

On the further bank the camp of Feriz Beg was visible; they were just pitching their tents on the side of the hills. A company of cavalry was just going down to the water's-edge, at whose head ambled a slim young man whose features were immediately recognised, even at that distance, both by the favourite Beg and the favourite damsel.

Only Hassan saw nothing; in the distance everything was to him but a blur of black and yellow.

"Well, what did I say?" exclaimed Yffim Beg triumphantly; "that is the camp of Feriz Beg, and there is Feriz himself trotting in front of them."

The words were scarce out of his mouth when the terrible thought occurred to him that Azrael had no business to be looking upon this strange man.

The odalisk, laughing loudly, flung herself on Hassan's neck.

"Ha, ha, ha! the worthy Beg takes the water-carrying girls for an army!"

Then Yffim Beg began to tremble, for he perceived now whither this woman wanted to carry her joke.

"My master," said he, "forbid thy slave-girl to make a fool of me. The camp of Feriz Beg is straight in front of us, and thou wilt do well to prevent thy maid-servant from looking at these men with her face unveiled."

"Allah! thou dost terrify me, good Beg!" said Azrael, feigning horror so admirably that Hassan himself felt the contagion of it.

"Say! where dost thou see this camp?"

"There, on the water-side; dost thou not see the tents on the hillocks?"

"Surely it is the linen which these girls are bleaching."

"And that blare of trumpets?"

"I only hear the merry songs that the girls are singing."

In his fury Yffim Beg plucked at his beard.

"My master, this devilish damsel is only mocking us."

"Thou art suffering from deliriums," said Azrael, with a terrible face, "or thou art under a spell which makes thee see before thee things which exist not. Contradict me not, I beg; this hath happened to thee once before. Dost thou not remember when thou fleddest from Transylvania how, then also, thou didst maintain that the enemy was everywhere close upon thy heels! Thou also then wert under the spell of a hideous enchantment, for thy eunuch horseman who remained behind at Nagyenyed, and is now a sentinel on this island, hath told me that there was no sign of any enemy for more than twenty leagues around, and he remained waiting for thee for ten days and fancied thou wert mad. Most assuredly some evil sorcery made thee fly before an imaginary enemy without thy turban or tunic."

Yffim Beg grew pale. He felt that he must surrender unconditionally to this infernal woman.

"Was it so, Yffim?" cried Hassan angrily.

"Pardon him, my lord," said Azrael soothingly; "he was under a spell then, as he is now. Thou art bewitched, my good Yffim."

"Really, I believe I am," he stammered involuntarily.

"But I will turn away the enchantment," said the damsel; and tripping down to the water's-edge she moistened her hand and sprinkled the face of the Beg, murmuring to herself at the same time some magic spell. "Now look and see!"

The Beg did all that he was bidden to do.

"Who, then, are these walking on the bank of the Danube?"

"Young girls," stammered the Beg.

"And those things spread out yonder."

"Wet linen."

"Dost thou not hear the songs of the girls?"

"Certainly I do."

"Look now, my master, what wonders there are beneath the sun!" said Azrael, turning towards Hassan Pasha; "is it not marvellous that Yffim should see armies when there is nothing but pretty peasant girls?"

"Miracles proceed from Allah, but methinks Yffim Beg must have very bad sight to mistake maidens for men of war."

Yffim Beg durst not say to Hassan Pasha that he also had bad sight; he might just as well have pronounced his own death sentence at once. Hassan wanted to pretend to see all that his favourite damsel pointed out, and she proceeded to befool the pair of them most audaciously in the intimate persuasion that Hassan would not betray the fact that he could not see, while Yffim Beg was afraid to contradict lest he should be saddled with that plaguy Transylvanian business.

Meanwhile, on the opposite bank, Feriz Beg in a sonorous voice was distributing his orders and making his tired battalions rest, galloping the while an Arab steed along the banks of the Danube. The odalisk followed every movement of the young hero with burning eyes.

"I love to hear the songs of these damsels; dost not thou also, my master?" she inquired of Hassan.

"Oh, I do," he answered hastily.

"Wilt thou not sit down beside me here on the soft grass of the river bank?"

The Pasha sat down beside the odalisk, who, lying half in his bosom, with her arm round his neck, followed continually the movements of Feriz with sparkling eyes.

"Look, my master!" said she, pointing him out to Hassan; "look at that slim, gentle damsel, prominent among all the others, walking on the river's bank. Her eyes sparkle towards us like fire, her figure is lovelier than a slender flower. Ah! now she turns towards us! What a splendid, beauteous shape! Never have I seen anything so lovely. Why may I not embrace her—like a sister—why may I not say to her, as I say to thee, 'I love thee, I live and die for thee?'"

And with these words the odalisk pressed Hassan to her bosom, covering his face with kisses at every word; and he, beside himself with rapture, saw everything which the girl told him of, never suspecting that those kisses, those embraces, were not for him but for a youth to whom his favourite damsel openly confessed her love beneath his very eyes!

And Yffim Beg, amazed, confounded, stood behind them, and shaking his head, bethought him of the words of Haji Baba, "Cast forth that devil, and beware lest she give you away!"

CHAPTER XI.
A STAR IN HELL.

Let the gentle shadows of night descend which guard them that sleep from the eyes of evil spectres! Let the weary errant bee rest in the fragrant chalice of the closed flower. Everything sleeps, all is quiet, only the stars and burning hearts are still awake.

What a gentle, mystical song resounds from among the willows, as of a nightingale endowed with a human voice in order to sing to the listening night in coherent rhymes the song of his love and his melancholy rapture. It is the poet Hariri whom, sword in hand, they call Feriz Beg, "The Lion of Combat," but who, when evening descends, and the noise and tumult of the camp are still, discards his coat of mail, puts on a light grey burnush, and, lute in hand, strolls through the listening groves and by the side of the murmuring streams and calls forth languishing songs from the depths of his heart and the strings of his lute, uninterrupted by the awakening appeals of the trumpet.

Many a pale maid opens her window to the night at the sound of these magic songs—and becomes all the paler from listening to them.

The eunuchs steal softly along the banks of the Margaret Island with their long muskets, and stop still and watch for any suspicious skiff drawing near to the island; and the most wakeful of them is old Majmun, who, even when he is asleep, has one eye open, and in happier times was the guardian of the harem. He sits down on a hillock, and even a carrier-pigeon with a letter under its wings could not have eluded his vigilance. He has only just arrived on the island, having previously accompanied Yffim Beg into Transylvania, and therefore has only seen Azrael once.

His eyes roam constantly around, and his sharp ears detect even the flight of a moth or a beetle, yet suddenly he feels—some one tapping him on the shoulder.

He turns terrified, and behold Azrael standing behind him.

"Accursed be that singing over yonder. I was listening to it, so did not hear thee approach. What dost thou want? Why dost thou come hither in the darkness of night? How didst thou escape from the harem?"

"I prythee be quiet!" said the odalisk. "This evening I went a-boating with my master, and a gold ring dropped from my finger into the water; it was a present from him, and if to-morrow he asks: 'Where is that ornament?' and I cannot show it him, he will slay me. Oh, let me seek for it here in the water."

"Foolish damsel, the water here is deep; it will go over thy head, and thou wilt perish."

"I care not; I must look for it. I must find the ring, or lose my life for it."

And the odalisk said the words in such an agony of despair that the eunuch was quite touched by it.

"Thou shouldst entrust the matter to another."

"If only I could find someone who can dive under the water, I would give him three costly bracelets for it; I would give away all my treasures."

"I can dive," said Majmun, seized by avarice.

"Oh, descend then into the water for me," implored the damsel, falling on her knees before him and covering the horny hand of the slave with her kisses. "But art thou not afraid of being suffocated? For then in the eyes of the governor I should be twice guilty."

"Fear not on my account. In my youth I was a pearl-fisher in the Indian Ocean, and I can remain under water and look about me like a fish, even at night, while thou dost count one hundred. Only show me the place where the ring fell from thy finger."

Azrael drew a pearl necklace from her arm and casting it into the water, pointed at the place where it fell.

"It was on the very spot where I have cast that; if thou dost fetch up both of them for me, the second one shall be thine."

Majmun perceived that this was not exactly a joke, and laying aside his garment and his weapon, bade the damsel look after them, and quickly slipped beneath the water.

In a few seconds the eunuch's terrified face emerged above the water and he struck out for the shore with a horrified expression.

"This is an evil spot," said he; "at the bottom of the water is a heap of human heads."

"I know it," said the odalisk calmly.

The eunuch was puzzled. He gazed up at her, and was astounded to observe that in the place of the sensitive, supplicating figure so lately there, there now stood a haughty, awe-inspiring woman, who looked down upon him like a queen.

"Those heads there are the heads of thy comrades," said Azrael to the astounded eunuch, "whom last night and the preceding nights I asked to do me a service, which they refused to do. Next day I accused them to the governor and he instantly had their heads cut off without letting them speak."

"And what service didst thou require?"

"To swim to the opposite shore and give this bunch of flowers to that youth yonder."

"Ha! thou art a traitor."

"No such thing. All I ask of thee is this: dost thou hear those songs in that grove yonder? Very well, swim thither and give him this posy. If thou dost not, thy head also will be under the water among the heap of the others. But if thou dost oblige me I will make thee rich for the remainder of thy life. It is in thine own power to choose whether thou wilt live happily or die miserably."

"But I have a third choice, and that is to kill thee," cried the eunuch, gnashing his teeth.

Azrael laughed.

"Thou blockhead! Whilst thou wert still under the water it occurred to me to fill thy musket with earth and gird thy dagger to my side. Utter but a cry and thou wilt have no need to wait for to-morrow to lay thy head at thy feet."

At these words the damsel squeezed the eunuch's arm so emphatically that he bent down before her.

"What dost thou command?"

"I have already told thee."

"I am playing with my own head."

"That is not as bad as if I were playing with it."

"What dost thou want of me?"

"I want thee to row me across to the opposite shore."

"There is only one skiff on the island, and in that Yffim Beg is wont to fish."

"Oh, why have I never learnt to swim!" cried Azrael, collapsing in despair.

"What! wouldst thou swim across this broad stream?"

"Yes, and I'll swim across it now, this instant."

"Those are idle words. If thou art not a devil thou wilt drown in this river if thou canst not swim."

"Thou shalt swim with me. I will put one hand on thy shoulder to keep me up."

"Thou art mad, surely! Only just now thou didst threaten me with death, and now thou wouldst trust thy life to me! I need only hold thee under for a second or two to be rid of thee for ever. Water is a terrible element to him who cannot rule over it, the dwellers beneath the waves are merciless."

"By putting my life into thy hands I show thee that I fear thee not. Lead me through the water!"

"Thou art mad, but I still keep my senses. Go back to the Vizier's kiosk while he hath not noticed thy absence. I will not betray thee."

"Then thou wilt not go with me?" said the odalisk darkly.

"May I never see thee again if I do so," said Majmun resolutely, sitting down on a hillock.

"Wretched slave!" cried Azrael in despair, "then I will go myself."

And with that she cast herself into the water from the high bank. Majmun, unable to prevent her leap, plunged in after her and soon emerged with her again on the surface of the water, holding the woman by her long hair.

She suddenly embraced the eunuch with both arms, turned in the water so as to come uppermost and raising her head from the waves, cried fiercely to the submerged eunuch:

"Go to the opposite shore, or we'll drown together."

The eunuch, after a short, desperate struggle, becoming convinced that he could not free himself from the arms of the damsel who held him fast like a gigantic serpent, with a tremendous wrench contrived to bring his head above the water and cried unwillingly:

"I'll lead thee thither."

"Hasten then!" cried Azrael, releasing him from her arms and grasping the woolly pate of the swimmer with one hand; "hasten!"

The eunuch swam onwards. Nothing was to be seen but a white and a black head moving closely together in the darkness and the long tresses of the damsel floating on the surface of the waves.

"Is the bank far?" she presently asked the slave, for she was somewhat behind and could not see in front of her.

"Art thou afraid?"

"I fear that I may not be able to see it."

"We shall be at the other side directly. The stream is broad just now, for the Danube is in flood."

A few minutes later the negro felt firm ground beneath his feet, and the odalisk perceived the branch of a willow drooping above her face. Quickly seizing it, she drew herself out of the water.

Softly and tremulously she ran towards the grove of trees which concealed what she sought, and on perceiving the singer, whose enchanting tones had enticed her across the water, she stood there all quivering, holding back her breath, and with one hand pressed against her bosom.

The young singer was sitting on a silver linden-tree. He had just finished his song, and had placed the lute by his side, and was gazing sadly before him with his handsome head resting against his hand as if he would have summoned back the spirit which had flown far far away on the wings of his melody.

"Now thou canst speak to him," said Majmun to the damsel.

Azrael stood there, leaning against a weeping willow and gazing, motionless, at the youth.

"Hasten, I say. The night is drawing to an end and we have to get back again. Wherefore dost thou hesitate when thou hast come so far for this very thing?"

The odalisk sighed softly, and leant her head against the mossy tree trunk.

"Thou saidst thou wouldst rush to him, embrace his knees, and greet him with thy lips, and now thou dost stand as if rooted to the spot by spells."

The damsel slowly sank upon her knees and hid her face in her garment.

"The girl is really crazy," murmured the negro; "if thou hast come hither only to weep, thou couldst have done that just as well on the other side."

At that moment the voice of a bugle horn rang out from a distance through the silent night, whereupon the singer, suddenly transformed into a warrior, sprang to his feet. It was the first reveille from the camp of Buda to awake the sleepers, and Hariri disappeared to become Feriz Beg again, who, drawing his sword, quickly hastened away from among the willow-trees, and in his hurry forgot his lute beneath a silver birch.

"Thou seest he has departed from thee," cried the negro malevolently, seizing the damsel's hand. "Hasten back with me while yet there is time."

The girl arose—holding her breath as she gazed after the youth—and waited till he had disappeared among the bushes; then she drew forth the wreath of flowers which she had hidden in her bosom, and took a step forward, listening till the retreating footsteps had died away, and then suddenly rushed towards the abandoned lute, pressed it to her heart, covered it with kisses, and fell down beside it filled with agony and rapture.

Then she took the wreath and cast it round the lute, and the wreath was composed of these flowers: A rose. What does a rose signify in the language of love?—"I love thee, I am happy." Then a pomegranate-flower, which signifies: "I love none but thee!" Then a pink, which signifies: "I wither for love of thee." Then a balsam, which signifies: "I dare not approach thee." And, finally, a forget-me-not, which signifies: "Let us live or die together."

This wreath the odalisk fastened together with a lock of her own hair, which signifies: "I surrender my life into thy hands!" For a Turkish woman never allows a lock of her hair to pass into the hand of a stranger, believing, as she does, that whoever possesses it has the power to ruin or slay her, to deprive her either of her reason or her life.

Majmun gazed at her in astonishment. Was this all she had come for through so many terrible dangers?

"Hasten, damsel, with thine incantations," said he, "the camp is now aroused and the dawn is at hand."

Azrael cast a burning kiss with her hand in the direction whither Feriz had disappeared; then returning to the slave, she said, with her usual commanding voice:

"Remain here and count up to six hundred without looking after me, and by that time I shall have come back."

Majmun counted up to six hundred with a loud voice.

Meanwhile, Azrael ran along the dam of the river bank till she came to the sluice, which she raised by the exertion of her full strength. The liberated water began to flow through the opening with a mighty roar.

Then Azrael hastened back to the negro.

"And now for the island," said she.

And once more they traversed the dangerous way, Azrael lying on her back with a hand on the negro's head. In her bosom was a poplar leaf, which afforded her great satisfaction.

On reaching the island Azrael richly recompensed the negro, and said to him:

"To-morrow morning, at dawn, thy master, Yffim Beg, will seek thee and command thee to accompany him and Hassan Pasha across the bridge to the other side where stands the camp of Feriz Beg. Thou wilt find no one there, but look at the place where we were this night, and if thou shouldst find there a nosegay or a wreath, bring it to me!"

Majmun listened with amazement. How could Azrael have found out all about these things?

Azrael returned to the kiosk, where Hassan Pasha was still sleeping the deep sleep of opium. He awoke in the arms of his favourite, and he could not understand why her hands were so cold and her kisses so burning.

The odalisk told him she had been dreaming. She had dreamt that she swam across the river enticed by the singing of the Peris.

Hassan smiled.

"Go on sleeping, and continue thy dream," said he.

The sun was high in the heaven when Hassan Pasha quitted the kiosk. Yffim Beg was awaiting him.

"Wilt thou not ride to Pesth there to mark out the place for the camp of Feriz Beg, who has just arrived?"

Azrael shrewdly guessed that Yffim Beg was for leading the Governor to the Pesth shore to satisfy him as to the peasant girls whom he was said to have mistaken for soldiers by some evil enchantment. She also thought how convenient it would be for her that they should take Majmun with them for the whole day.

Hassan accordingly accepted Yffim's invitation, and galloped with him and Majmun over to the opposite shore, where Yffim was amazed to discover that not a soul of Feriz Beg's host was visible.

In the night the suddenly released water had covered the whole ground of their camp, and they had been obliged to retire farther away from the river and seek another encampment beyond Pesth.

Yffim Beg would have liked to have torn out his beard in his wrath if he had not been restrained by the general's presence.

But Majmun, under the pretext of clearing the way, reconnoitred the scene of yesterday's interview, and there, in the roots of the silver birch, he found that a wreath had been deposited. He concealed it beneath his burnush, and carried it home to Azrael.

The wreath was composed of two pieces—a branch of laurel and a spray of thorn.

The damsel bowed her head before this answer. She knew that it signified: "Suffer if thou wouldst prevail!"

CHAPTER XII.
THE BATTLE OF ST. GOTHARD.

It was a beautiful summer evening; there was a half-moon in the sky, and a hundred other half-moons scattered over the hillocks below. The Turkish host had encamped among the hills skirting the river Raab.

Concerning this particular new moon, we find recorded in the prophetic column of the "Kaossa Almanack" for the current year that it was to be:

"To the Germans, help in need;
To the Turks, fortune indeed;
To the Magyars, power to succeed.
And whoever's not ill
Shall of health have his fill,
For 'tis Heaven's own will."

The worthy astrologer forgot, however, to find out in heaven whether there are not certain quarters of the moon beneath which man may easily die even if they are not sick.

The great Grand Vizier Kiuprile, after resting on the ruins of Zerinvár, turned towards the borders of Styria and united with the army of the Pasha of Buda, below St. Gothard.

Kiuprile's host consisted for the most part of cavalry, for his infantry was employed in digging trenches round Zerinvár, whose commandant, in reply to an invitation to surrender the fortress and not attempt to defend it with six hundred men against thirty thousand, jestingly responded: "As one Hungarian florin is worth ten Turkish piasters, one Hungarian warrior necessarily must be worth ten Turkish warriors." And what is more, the worthy man made good this rate of exchange, for when the victors came to count up the cost, they found that for six hundred Hungarians they had had to pay six thousand Osmanlis into the hands of his Majesty King Death.

Kiuprile had then pursued the armies of the Emperor, but they refused to stand and fight anywhere; and while their enemies were marching higher and higher up the banks of the Raab, they seemed to be withdrawing farther and farther away on the opposite shore.

The army of the Pasha of Buda should have gone round at the rear of the imperial forces, in order to unite with the Pasha of Érsekújvár, the former having previously cut off every possibility of a retreat; but Hassan, as an independent general, did not follow the directions sent him, simply because they came from Kiuprile, and he also made straight for the Raab by forced marches, in order to wrest the opportunity of victory from his rival.

Thus the two armies came together, on July 30th, below the romantic hills of St. Gothard, each army pitching its tents on the right bank of the river, and occupying the summits of the hills, which commanded a view of the whole region.

And certainly the worthy gentlemen showed no bad taste when they took a fancy to that part of the kingdom. In every direction lay the yellow acres, from which the terrified peasants had not yet reaped the standing corn; to the right were the gay vineyard-clad hills; to the left the dark woods and stretch upon stretch of undulating meadow-land, bisected by the winding ribbon of the Raab. On a hill close by stood the gigantic pillared portico of the Monastery of St. Gothard, with fair pleasure-groves at its base. Farther away were the towers of four or five villages. The setting sun, as if desirous of making the district still more beautiful, enwrapped it in a veil of golden mist.

"Thou dog!" cried Hassan Pasha to the peasant who alone received the terrible guests in the abandoned cloisters, "this region is far too beautiful for the like of you monks to dwell in. But you will not be in it long, my good sirs, for I mean to take it for myself. The peasant after all is lord here. He eats his own bread and he drinks his own wine, and he has a couple of good garments to draw over his head. But stop, things shall be very different, for I shall have a word to say about it."

The honest peasant took off his cap. "God grant," said he, "that more and more of you may dwell in my domains, and that I may build your houses for you." The man was a grave-digger.

Hassan Pasha and his suite occupied the monastery, whose vestibule was filled with priests and magistrates from every quarter of the kingdom, whose duty it was to collect and bring in provisions and taxes due to the Turkish Government. And what they brought in was never sufficient, and therefore the poor creatures had to send deputies as hostages from time to time, who followed their lords on foot wherever they went, and relieved each other from this servitude in rotation; some of them had been here for half a year.

The Turkish army was more than 100,000 strong, and the right bank of the river was planted for a long distance with their tents. The monastery constituted the centre of the camp; there was the encampment of Hassan's favourite mamelukes and the selected corps of cloven-nosed, gigantic negroes, who used to plunge into the combat half-naked, and neither take nor give quarter. Alongside of them was the cavalry of Kucsuk Pasha, a corps accustomed to the strictest discipline. Close beside the tents of this division, within a quadrilateral, guarded by a ditch, you could see the camp of the Amazon Brigade, whose first thought when they pitch their tents is to entrench themselves.

Close to the camp of Kucsuk lies the Moldavian army, from whose elaborate precautions you can gather that they have a far greater fear of their allies all around them than of the foe against whom they are marching. From beyond the monastery, right up to the vineyards of Nagyfalva, the ground is occupied by the noisy Janissaries of Ismail Pasha, who, if their military reputation lies not, are more used to distributing orders to their commanders than receiving orders from them. Beyond the vine-clad hills lies the cavalry of the Grand Vizier, Achmed Kiuprile, and all round about, wherever a column of smoke is to be seen or the sky is blood-red, there is good reason for suspecting that there the marauding Tartar bands are out, whom it was not the habit to attach to the main army. Far in the rear, along the mountain paths, on the slopes of the narrow forest passes, could be seen the endlessly long procession of wagons laden with plunder, intermingled with long round iron cannons and ancient stone mortars, each one drawn along by ten or twelve buffaloes, striving laboriously and painfully to urge their way forward, and if one of them stops for a moment, or falls down, all the others behind it must stop also.

It is now evening, and from one division of the army to another the messengers from headquarters are hurrying. Kiuprile's messenger comes to inform Hassan that the army of the enemy has taken up its position on the opposite bank, between two forests, the French mercenaries and the German auxiliary troops have joined it, so that it would be well to attack it in the night, before it has had time properly to marshal its ranks.

"Thy master is mad," replied Hassan; "how can I fly across the water? Before me is the river Raab. I should have to fling a bridge across it first—nay two, three bridges—which it would take me days to do, and I cannot even begin to do it till the old ammunition waggons have arrived. Go back, therefore, and tell thy master that if he wants to fight I'll sound the alarm."

The messenger opened his eyes wide, being unaware of the fact that Hassan was short-sighted, and consequently only knew the river Raab from the map, not knowing that at the spot where he stood the river was not more than two yards wide, and could be bridged over in a couple of hours without the assistance of old ammunition wagons—so back the messenger went to Kiuprile.

He had scarce shown a clean pair of heels, when the messenger of Kucsuk Pasha arrived to signify in his master's name that the battle could not be postponed, because no hay had arrived for the horses.

Hassan turned furiously on the captive magistrates.

"Why have you not sent hay?"

The wisest of them, desirous to answer the question, politely rejoined: "It has been a dry summer, sir, the Lord has kept back the clouds of Heaven."

"Oh, that's it, eh!" said Hassan. "Tell Kucsuk Pasha that he must give his horses the clouds to eat; the hay of the Magyars is there, it seems."

This messenger had no sooner departed than a whole embassy arrived from the Janissaries, and the whole lot of them energetically demanded that they should be led into battle at once.

"What?" inquired Hassan mockingly, "has your hay fallen short too, then?" The Janissaries are infantry, by the way.

"It is glory we are running short of," said the leader of the deputation stolidly; "it bores us to stand staring idly into the eyes of the enemy."

"Then don't stare idly at them any longer; away with those mutinous dogs and impale them, and put them on the highest hillock that the whole army may see them."

The bodyguard, after a fierce struggle, overpowered the Janissaries, and pending their impalement, locked them up in the cellar of the cloisters.

By this time Hassan Pasha was in the most horrible temper; and just at that unlucky moment who should arrive but Balló, the envoy of the Prince of Transylvania.

Hassan, who could not see very well at the best of times, and was now blinded with rage besides, roared at him:

"Whence hast thou come? Who hath sent thee hither? What is thy errand?"

"I come from Kiuprile, sir," replied Balló blandly.

"What a good-for-nothing blackguard this Kiuprile must be to send to me such a rogue as thou art, except in chains and fetters."

"Well, of course he knows that I am the envoy of Transylvania, and represent the Prince."

"Represent the Prince, eh? Art thou the Prince's cobbler that thou standest in his shoes? Hast thou brought soldiers with thee?"

"Gracious sir——"

"Thou hast not, then? Not another word! Hast thou brought money?"

"Gracious sir!"

"Not even money! Wherefore, then, hast thou come at all? Canst thou pay the allotted tribute?"

"Gracious sir!"

"Don't gracious sir me, but answer—yes or no!"

"Well, but——"

"Then why not?"

"The land is poor, sir. The heavy hand of God is upon it."

"Thou must settle that with God, then, and pray that it may not feel my heavy hand also. Wherefore, then, hast thou come?"

Balló made up his mind to swallow the bitter morsel.

"I have come to implore you to remit the annual tribute."

At first Hassan did not know what to say.

"Hast thou become wooden, then," he said at last, "thou and thy whole nation? What right have ye to ask for a remission of the tribute?"

"Gracious sir, the tribute is five times more than what Gabriel Bethlen was wont to pay."

"Gabriel Bethlen was a fine fellow who paid in iron what he did not pay in silver; if he paid fourteen thousand thalers for the privilege of fighting alongside of us, ye may very well pay down eighty thousand for sitting comfortably at your own firesides. What, only eighty thousand for Transylvania, a state that is always digging up gold and silver, when a single sandjak[16] pays the Pasha of Thessalonica twice as much?"

[16] Province.

At these words the national pride awoke in the breast of Balló.

"Sir, Thessalonica is a subject province, and its Pasha has unlimited power over his sandjaks, but Transylvania is a free state."

"And who told thee that it shall not become a sandjak like the rest?" said Hassan grimly. "Before the moon has waxed and waned again twice, take my word for it that a Turkish Pasha shall sit on the throne of Transylvania! Dost thou hear me? By the prophet I swear it."

"The Grand Seignior has also sworn that the ancient rights of Transylvania should never be infringed. He swore it on the Koran and by the Prophet."

"It is beneath the dignity of the Grand Seignior, our present Sultan," cried Hassan, "to remember the oath sworn by the great Suleiman; not what he says, but what his viziers wish, will happen. And vainly do ye entrust your heads to his hand, while the sword of execution remains in our hands! I'll humble you, ye stony-headed, most obstinate of all nations! Ye shall be no different from the Bosnian rajas who themselves pull the plough!"