Pretty Michal

He thought that Valentine would understand the allusion.

And Valentine did understand it, but he would not take the hint. He told the coachman to drive direct to the townhall.

The civic coachman was a very old man. He had many a time driven Valentine's father on the business of the town, and was also very much attached to his son.

"Mr. Sheriff," he inquired, as they passed beneath the portcullis, "hadn't we better drive home first of all?"

"No, old fellow! the business of the city comes first. I'll go home afterward."

As the sledge stopped before the townhall, where the town-councilors, apprised of the arrival of the deputies, had already assembled, the first person whom Valentine met on dismounting was Count Hommonai.

He drew Valentine aside.

"Have you been home yet?" he asked.

"Not yet," replied the other, "'publica præcedunt privatis.'"

"Go home first."

"No, my lord! That I will not do. Tidings may there be awaiting me which will either irritate or delight me, and so either make me too severe or too soft-hearted. The circumstances of the city are at this moment so very serious that, till they have been set right, we must let our private affairs go. So, by your leave, the townhall first and my own house afterward."

And when Valentine explained in the council the actual situation of affairs, everyone said that he had acted quite rightly.

The Prince of Transylvania, in order to bring King Ferdinand over to his side, had surrendered to him the five counties on this side of the Theiss which had been ceded to Transylvania by the Peace of Linz. Then, shutting his ears against all good advice, he had invaded Poland, and his first attack was crowned with success, for Cracow fell into his hands.

King Ferdinand had accepted the portions of Transylvania offered to him, but at the same time intimated to Prince George Rakoczy that if he did not evacuate Poland at once, he, Ferdinand, would be forced to make common cause with the Poles, and compel him to do so by force of arms.

And now, too, the Sultan was very wroth with Prince George Rakozcy for beginning the war without his consent, and also for surrendering portions of the land to Ferdinand. When they are wroth in Stamboul it is no joke. The Sultan declared that George Rakoczy had forfeited his throne, and issued an athname which gave the scepter to Achatius Baresai, at the same time commanding the Khan of the Crim Tartars to march into Transylvania and chastise his rebellious vassal.

So the town of Kassa had now to choose between two things.

It might quietly conform to the will of Prince George Rakoczy, and consent to be transferred to Ferdinand of Austria, the first consequence of which would be that the troops of the Prince of Transylvania would quit the town in order to garrison the fortress of Onod, while a Walloon regiment, under the command of General Löffelholz, would take their place; in which case the Jesuits would have their cloisters restored to them, and would reënter the town behind the Walloons.

That would be a bitter morsel to swallow.

The second alternative for the town, in case it disliked the Emperor's friendship, was to throw itself into the arms of the Turks. The Sultan had deposed George Rakoczy, and appointed Achatius Baresai Prince in his stead. If the town of Kassa chose, it could side with Baresai and summon the Pasha of Eger to its assistance.

One of these two courses had to be adopted.

Good advice was now scarce.

There lay the stone which one fool had cast into the well, and one hundred wise men could not pull it out.

The session of the council, when these things had been explained was extraordinarily stormy. Valentine Kalondai, who presided, was scarcely able to maintain order, so heated were the tempers of his colleagues.

One of them threatened to burn his house to the ground rather than permit German troops to be quartered upon him, while another protested that he would rather massacre his own wife and children than allow the Turkish janissaries to perpetrate their atrocities upon them; and while some exhausted the whole vocabulary of abuse against the unbelieving heathen, others excelled themselves in blackening the Jesuits. Thus there arose two fiercely antagonistic parties, neither of which would give way a hair's breadth to the other.

The president alone was silent.

At last the superrector turned to him and asked him for his opinion.

"Well, if you want to know what I think," began Kalondai, "let me tell you that I do not agree with either opinion. Judging the case on its merits, I think the Theiss counties ought not to have been ceded to Ferdinand till he had fulfilled his obligation of assisting George Rakoczy against Poland, which he has not done. But on the other hand, neither has the Sultan any right to dispose of the free city of Kassa; such right belongs to the Estates of the Realm alone. So again, Rakoczy can only be deposed by the Estates of Transylvania, and if they wish Baresai for their Prince they alone can elect him. My opinion, therefore, is that neither Walloon horsemen nor Turkish Spahis be allowed to enter here, but we must close the city gates, and, if need be, oppose force to force as our fathers have done. If the council wish it so, I'll stake my head upon the issue, and God shall judge betwixt us."

But Mr. Zwirina was by no means enamored of so adventurous a policy, and he so dexterously strung together the evil consequences which would accrue to the town from such obstinacy—to wit, bombardments with red-hot bullets, loss of life, famine, plague, conflagrations, bankruptcy of the merchants, ruin of the guilds, storms, capitulations, wholesale blackmailing, nay, even the wresting of the churches from the hands of the Protestants—that when it came to voting, the majority of the council decided that the town ought rather to conform to the will of the Prince by submitting to the change, than come to loggerheads with the Kaiser and the Sultan at the same time; and that the Walloons should be allowed to enter, especially as they were, after all, the soldiers of the King of Hungary.

No sooner had this resolution been adopted than Count Hommonai took the golden key of the town from his neck and threw it on the table, saying that from henceforth he no longer regarded himself as commandant, and would discharge his troops forthwith. He would now, he said, retire to his estates to shoot stags and plant cabbages.

"If you go, I go too," said Valentine Kalondai. "I also lay down the sheriff's staff on the table; let a better man bear it!"

And so saying, he placed the gold-headed Spanish cane on the table, and rose from his seat. It must certainly have been his guardian angel that gave him the idea of resignation at that moment, for he thereby averted the point of the sword that was actually suspended over his head.

But now he was suddenly assailed on all sides. His friends, his enemies also (especially the latter), begged and prayed him to remain. Most earnestly of all Mr. Zwirina implored him not to forsake the town at such a crisis. Was he not so very much wiser than they all? Without him the concord of the town would become sheer anarchy; it was just at such times as these that they needed a strong hand like his to guide them, for where could they find such another? At last they attacked him on his weak point. It was cowardice, they said, to hide his head just as danger was approaching. They pestered him so long that at last the voice of ambition drowned the suggestion of his good angel; but it is only fair to say that his love for his native place, and his sense of duty, also, contributed not a little thereto. He allowed them to lead him back to his place, for which complacency he received a loud vivat. They even wished to lift him up in the air, chair and all, as upon the occasion of his election, but he motioned to them not to do so.

Then Count Hommonai withdrew from the council-chamber; he had no longer any business there.

Valentine Kalondai declared, however, that he would only hold office till the new order of things had been established; then they must elect them a new sheriff in his place.

After this weighty matter had thus been satisfactorily settled, the recorder and the fiscal procurator brought in sundry official documents, which only needed the signature of the sheriff, the council having already passed them; they were urgent criminal cases, in which every delay would be cruel. In all penal matters a swift execution is merciful. Not till all this business had been disposed of could Valentine quit the council-chamber.

The first document presented for his signature was a death-warrant.

It was the first sentence of death he had ever signed; his heart beat violently.

To kill a man in the battlefield, in the heat of the combat; to manfully grapple with a man who is already mowing his way through the ranks, sword in hand, first bidding him defend himself or surrender; to cut down with a strong hand and dash to pieces a man who breaks into the land as an enemy, and ravages it like a wild beast—all that he had often and cheerfully done, as became a soldier. But to sit in a soft armchair and kill a man in cold blood, a man in fetters who cannot fly, who cannot defend himself; a man of the same town as yourself, a fellow-citizen, perhaps an acquaintance, who, pale with mortal agony, begs you for mercy; to kill such a man by breaking the staff of office over him—in such a thing as that he was quite a novice.

He asked what crime this man had committed.

"He has killed his wife."

A terrible crime!

"He killed his wife, and she, too, big with child."

A horrible, unnatural crime. Such a wound as that none but the headsman can heal.

The headsman! He had not thought of that on the day of his triumph, when he had visited every church, and prayed before every altar, "God preserve this noble city from the misfortune of requiring the headsman to come hither to execute justice before the year is out!"

That will, indeed, be a painful meeting when Valentine Kalondai and Henry Catsrider meet each other in the narrow path leading to the scaffold, the one as the judge of wretched criminals, the other as the torturer, the executioner of the condemned felons!

How will he be able to look that man in the face?

He would not submit to the inevitable. He requested that the charge brought against the accused should be laid before him. A sheriff cannot sign a death-warrant before he has heard the defense of the accused.

The conrector, acting as secretary, then recited to him both the accusation and the defense. A militiaman—Valentine knew him very well, for he was a butcher's apprentice—came home drunk one night from patrolling. His wife began scolding him, and he furiously drew his sword and aimed a blow at her. He only meant to hit her with the flat of the blade, but the devil jogged his hand, and the point went right through her heart. She died. The murderer gave himself up immediately the deed was done. He repented of his crime, and himself demanded death as his punishment.

"Then he did this dreadful deed when he was in liquor and is now sorry for it?" said Valentine, by way of extenuation.

"Yes, and that is certainly a reason for mitigating the punishment," replied the superrector. "Just for that very reason he has only been condemned to be beheaded, otherwise he would have been quartered alive for his bloody deed."

"Has he any children?" asked the sheriff.

"Seven," replied the conrector.

"He leaves behind him seven orphans," sighed Valentine, "seven innocent orphans, who will be forever branded as the children of the man who died beneath the hand of the headsman!"

"So it is!" answered the cold and grim superrector; "seven will be branded with infamy for the crime of one. But if we were to pardon him, all the inhabitants of Kassa would be branded for all time."

"I don't ask you to pardon him. Lifelong imprisonment in the treadmill of the civic reservoir, with the sting of conscience in his heart, would be a still greater punishment for him than death."

"Pray don't let us have any mawkish sentiment, good Master Sheriff! If we don't kill, people will kill us. If we pardon the evil-doers we shall leave the good defenseless. This hard-mouthed people requires an example which shall strike its eyes and so frighten it. If we pardon one malefactor, a hundred others will spring up. It is a sad duty, no doubt, but it is a duty none the less, and must be done."

The cold sweat started out on Valentine's forehead like the morning dew on a flower-bed, as he dipped the pen into the inkhorn, and his large powerful hand trembled so much as he wrote his name under the warrant that his signature, ordinarily so bold and energetic, was now scarcely legible.

"Are there any more arrears?"

"One more sentence, only one, a 'harum palczarum.'"

We must linger a little on these words in order to find out what they mean. Both of the German chroniclers whom we here follow write "harum pallizarum," possibly a corrupt contraction with Latin terminations of the Hungarian expression "három pálczára," i. e., "with three staves." But what is the meaning of the expression? In the annals of the Debreczin town council we find this peculiar punishment (reserved for witches found guilty of pimping and seduction) very plainly described. The Debreczin chronicle says, "let them be crowned with three staves!" The German chronicler adds it was very seldom that anyone survived this punishment. The head of the condemned was pressed between three staves, and then the executioner slowly screwed them together, thereby causing the felons truly infernal torments. Very often they swooned away, and then they were beaten with bunches of thorn till they came to again.

This was the horrible sentence which Valentine Kalondai had now to sign.

When he read the name of the condemned, he fancied the whole house was sinking with him.

"Red Barbara!"

Sparks and rings of fire danced before his eyes.

That she should have fallen into his hands!

"Examine the documents, Master Sheriff; the case will interest you!" said the conrector.

Valentine Kalondai read.

It was indeed a hellish message which these documents conveyed.

The confessions of the imprisoned witch, the charge brought by Valentine's mother, the testimony of acquaintances and friends all showed that a detestable plot had been forged against his happiness and honor. The accused denied nothing. She confessed everything at the very first examination. The great and mighty Mr. Zurdoki had sent her to corrupt the wife of Valentine Kalondai. She had intended, by fair means or foul, to have carried Michal off and made her Zurdoki's mistress. She had been paid to do so, and had got everything ready for carrying out this diabolical plan.

But when they had asked by what means she had managed to approach the wife of Valentine Kalondai, and how she had got her to listen to her filthy insinuations, seeing that Michal had recoiled from them with horror, nay, at least, had even fainted away, the accused had simply replied: "I am a witch, I can do everything." Nay, even when they applied the question extraordinary, she stood them out that she had no other help but her own magic power. At last, however, under the extremest torture, she had declared herself the mother of Dame Valentine Kalondai. That was why the latter had allowed her free access to her person. Nay, so far did this woman's impudence go, that she actually maintained that when the sheriff came home, he would be the first to implore the town council to let the mother of his wife go free.

Valentine felt as if the whole world was falling to pieces over his head. And then it was that the maxim occurred to him, that it was just when the universe lies in ruins around him that a true man raises his head most defiantly.

His friends and foes at the green table were watching him with curiosity and concern to see what he would do. Would he quail beneath the blow, and justify the assertion of the witch by imploring them to do her no harm?

Valentine Kalondai took the pen, dipped it into the inkhorn, and wrote, no longer with a trembling hand, the date and his own name at the bottom of the warrant, underlining the words "with three staves" twice, and taking good care not to mistake the inkhorn for the sandbox when he sanded his signature.

And then, his heavy fist still reposing on the bundle of documents, he requested the conrector to fold together a sheet of paper and, "fracto margine," to write, in the name of the town council, a letter of citation to the headsman of Zeb, Henry Catsrider, bidding him, as in duty bound, to appear within eight days at the city of Kassa, in order to execute the law's sentences which had been passed that day, copies of which were sent him. He was then to present his account to the civic auditor, who was authorized to discharge it. This citation Valentine also subscribed.

He had still a faint glimmer of hope.

When Henry Catsrider receives this citation and learns that he, the headsman of Zeb, must come face to face with Valentine Kalondai whom he had formerly robbed of his beloved, he was then a genius, a luminary, a cleric and a scholar, face to face with him who had once been an expelled convict, but now was sheriff; when he reflects that he who was now a branded monster, an outcast from every city, is to appear before his former rival, who was now the first magistrate of one of the most important cities of the land; and when, besides all that, Henry Catsrider discovers that one of the condemned, on whom a masterpiece of his hellish art was to be performed, was his father's former housekeeper, who had once actually been his own nurse and suckled him, why, then, he would surely have human feeling enough to remain at home, and, as he was often wont to do, send his oldest apprentice to execute the sentence in his stead.

Valentine actually believed that there was still some human feeling left in Henry Catsrider!

When all this had been done he arose from his seat of honor.

The whole town council bowed before him. The conrector, Ignatius Zwirina the younger, expressed the satisfaction felt by all the burgesses at having a sheriff whose wise and firm administration would serve as an example to all his successors.

And now Valentine hastened home.

He asked no questions. He let no one speak. He stifled the words on the lips of his mother and his wife with kisses. Then he took his pretty Michal on his knee, and whispered in her ear in the tones of a lover to his lady:

"Come what may or must! Be it weal or woe, our comfort is that we shall share it together!"

And pretty Michal was content that it should be so.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

For this was, after all, the trade for which Henry was intended by nature, and within a few years he was as much at home in it as if he had done nothing else all his life. Coarse society soon brings down everyone who mixes in it to its own level. The feeling, too, that all the world despises him, arouses in a man the defiant instinct to avenge himself on the whole world for such contempt. Till then he had led the life of a recluse, but now he suddenly plunged into a continual orgy, and hated sobriety. The ghastly death of his father had filled him with the cruelty of a wild beast, and the destruction of his house had extinguished in him the last sparks of human feeling. After the loss of his wife, whom he had loved passionately, he sank completely into the slough of vileness, and sought the society of those women whom not the altar but the pillory would sooner or later unite to him—to-day a glowing kiss, to-morrow a hissing iron. As, moreover, he had lost a large part of his treasures in the burning of his house, he became avaricious likewise. He wanted to make up again what he had lost. Just then they were beginning in Poland to play at games of chance with the painted cards invented by Peter Gringenoir, and Henry spent all his time in the Polish cities playing cards with the cheats and filchers of the district. And in these gambling dens he generally managed to lose some fresh piece of his silver plate which he brought with him in the leg of his boot. Woe betide them who then fell into his hands!

Once he was warned by the authorities that he would be degraded and expelled from his office if he did not attend to it better.

After all this we may readily suppose that Henry Catsrider, when he received the summons from the town council of Kassa, did not hesitate a moment to appear personally in answer to it. That this summons was signed by Valentine Kalondai, as sheriff, did not disturb him in the least. On the contrary, the idea of appearing before his former rival as executioner rather tickled him than otherwise. That one of the victims was Red Barbara afforded him the greatest satisfaction. He suspected at once that the witch had set his house on fire and stolen a portion of his treasures. That she had also filched from him his greatest treasure was, however, unknown to him as yet. He would not for any consideration have relinquished to anyone else the bliss of tormenting her.

A week after the dispatch of the citation, the wagon of the executioner of Zeb rattled over the stones of the market-place of Kassa. It was a black vehicle, with red wheels and axles, on which the somber company, like a troupe of itinerant comedians, brought with them all the requisites of their terrible stage. Mounted drabants and musketeers escorted them before and behind.

The worshipful town council had a very hard time of it that day. In the early morning, two squadrons of Walloon cuirassiers had marched into the town, blowing, not the Hungarian farogato whose richly varying melodies so much delighted the people, but those shrill trumpets which were only invented for the annoyance of mankind. And between the two squadrons of cavalry, sitting on mules and chanting discordant hymns, the Jesuit fathers also came back to the town.

The colonel of the foreign soldiers and the superior of the Jesuits hastened together to the townhall, and a great dispute arose between them in the council-chamber as to which of them should have the precedence. General Löffelholz asserted that, by virtue of his rank, he was entitled to settle military matters with the magistrates first of all. Prior Hieronymus, on the other hand, appealed to the privileges of his order, which placed him above every temporal authority.

Neither the soldier nor the monk would give way, and the pair of them kept their heads covered, the one with his plumed hat, the other with his hood. At that moment the sound of clanking spurs was heard coming along the corridor, and now both the contending parties gave way before the third comer.

The man who now entered also wore a plumed biretta on his head, but it was scarlet. His powerful body was dressed in a scarlet coat, and over it he wore a long scarlet mantle.

The clergyman and the soldier instantly made way for him. They were careful not to come into contact with so much as the hem of his garment.

It was the headsman.

Henry Catsrider's face had very much altered since he had laid aside his priestly garb. His former long fair hair was now clipped short, and his beard flowed down in two long reddish wisps. His face was puffy from much drinking, and his large eyes, that had once been so sparkling, now gleamed out of his coppery, swollen countenance like smoldering embers. His large, coarse mouth was all awry. The humanized wild beast had relapsed again into its original savagery. Even if he had worn no hangman's weeds, all the world might have read his frightful profession from his face. As he approached, everyone timidly made way for him.

And if there was anyone who had as much cause to shudder at the appearance of this shape, as if the skeleton with the scythe had suddenly sprung up out of the ground before him, it was certainly Valentine Kalondai. To him this creature was not only the man of blood, but the man whom he had robbed of his wife.

Even at the time when passion had led him to this step—a step to which a whole host of concurring circumstances, hot blood, and the force of fate had constrained him—even then he had thought that he might one day fall in with him whom he had made a widower, but he had then said, "I will rather get together a robber band than surrender my beloved to destruction!" That would have been a very different kind of meeting. A meeting like this was more than human foresight could have foreseen.

All eyes turned to him who was the head of the city, the president of the town council.

And even at that moment his strength of mind did not forsake him. He looked Henry Catsrider straight in the face, as if they had never known each other, as if he had never trespassed against him.

The headsman planted himself in front of the sheriff and said: "'They have called me, and I have come!'"

Valentine, with perfect sangfroid, completed the quotation:

"'I have sprung from the dust of an accursed earth.'"

This distich, it is said, was written in Chaldaic characters on the wings of those locusts which first appeared at the call of Moses, and always reappear when the Lord would abase the pride of man.

Everyone knew this saying. The words of the sheriff, therefore, called forth a slight smile on every face, and a murmur of merriment ran through the room because he had so dexterously turned the tables on the coarse intruder.

Still more satisfied with his wisdom were they when he pronounced judgment in the precedence dispute. "The Church first, then the temporal power, last of all the headsman."

But the Walloon general, a strapping fellow, tapped his saber, said he was the first man in the town, and made a terrible to-do.

Valentine Kalondai thereupon shoved back his presidential chair, laid down his mace, girded on his sword, and donned his hat. There were now four persons in the council-chamber who had their hats on.

Then he turned to the general and said: "Have we come hither to deliberate or to fight?"

The Walloon perceived that he had met his match. Such courage pleased him. He held out his hand to the sheriff and said with a laugh: "Well, well, Master Sheriff, I have not come hither to squabble. Pray sit down again and deliberate," and with that he drew back.

This resolute behavior made such an impression on the members of the council that, as the sheriff resumed his seat, they greeted him with a loud vivat, while the victorious prior stretched forth his skinny arm toward him and said: "Deus benedicat tibi!"

"I have asked no blessing of your reverence; he who sits in the judgment-seat may not even accept a benediction;" and he forthwith began to investigate the points in dispute between the city and the College of Jesuits.

If you really want to test a man's presence of mind and dialectic skill, just engage him in an argument in a foreign language. Valentine now showed that he could negotiate with the Jesuit in Latin and with the Walloon in German, without stammering or stuttering in the least. And indeed, as the conrector could not help remarking to his neighbor, the sheriff was a far greater master of both languages than those with whom he was negotiating. His precise, curial style was easily victorious over the Jesuit's dog Latin, and his expressive German, with his pithy Lutheranisms, was more than a match for the general's Platt-Deutsch dialect.

And the headsman was standing behind him all the time!

The questions before him were by no means easy to solve. On the part of the town a charter had to be drafted and signed, guaranteeing to the Jesuits all their privileges and possessions, and declaring their cloisters a sacred asylum, whose very threshold the secular authorities should never cross. The College of Jesuits had also to subscribe an agreement pledging itself not to convert Protestants to the Roman faith by force, artifice, moral pressure, or any sort of cajolery.

Valentine's clear intelligence knew exactly how to hit the proper mean between these directly antagonistic pretensions, and keep the document entirely free from those artfully insinuated clauses whereby the Jesuits tried again and again to smuggle in their mental reservations.

The prior was satisfied with the compact, and when Valentine took up his pen to subscribe it the other unctuously exclaimed:

"Such a good sowing will produce a good harvest!"

And Valentine could not help thinking, as he handled the pen, "I wonder what sort of harvest the letters I am now sowing will bring in to me."

The matters to be settled with the general, too, were not a whit less captious. The relations between the military and the civic authorities had to be very carefully defined and settled, once for all. The city had an armed garrison of its own, and reserved to itself the complete control of this garrison. The gates were to be watched by both parties together. So the Gordian knot to be untied was this: how two sets of men diametrically opposed in nationality, religion, and politics were to be made to consent to be faithful guardians of the law of the land and the prerogatives of the Kaiser, without prejudicing the liberties of the city, or interfering in any way with one another, or attempting to violently hew the knot in two with the sword.

And that Kalondai settled this complicated matter also in the wisest possible way is sufficiently obvious from the fact that neither party was quite contented with his decision.

Last of all, it occurred to him that there was still someone standing behind him—the headsman.

He did not tell the fellow to stand forth, but alluded to him in the third person, and as the man had a Slovack accent, he addressed him in the Slovack tongue, just as if they had never squabbled with each other in their youth in the Hungarian, German, and Latin languages.

"Master Henry will be at his post on the scaffold at six o'clock to-morrow morning, and there await with his apprentices the arrival of the magistrates."

He wasted no more words on the subject, but closed the session and went home.

In the evening of the same day the very reverend dean was sent for to come to Kalondai's house to give a lady the sacrament of the altar.

The dean at once supposed that Dame Sarah was on the point of death, and great was his astonishment when they led him to the bedside of the younger lady. It was pretty Michal who desired the last sacraments.

The very reverend gentleman was beyond measure astonished thereat. Had he not seen Michal piously praying in church only the day before! And now she desired the sacrament of the dying!

"Would you haggle with God?" asked Valentine.

So pretty Michal partook of the Lord's Supper, and the clergyman gave her his benediction.

And pretty Michal at that moment had no bodily ailment, yet for all that she was on the point of death.

Next day—it was a dark January morning—the gloomy scaffold stood ready in the market-place of Kassa. The early risers could see through the thick mists the headsman's apprentices, in their pointed caps, moving like hellish shadows about the burning fire, in which they were heating their terrible tools red-hot, and warming their hands the while, to prevent them from growing stiff.

When the clock in the church-tower struck seven, the watchmen on the bastions struck the big drum three times, whereupon the felon's bell in the tower of the townhall began to toll—a sad, heartrending sound. Then the gates of the courtyard were thrown open, and out came the procession in the usual order, the headsman first on horseback, then the convict, and last of all the members of the town council, the sheriff, the superrector, the conrector, the syndic, and the civic warden. All these took their places on the dais, with the sheriff in the center, while the headsman dismounted from his horse and ascended the scaffold.

The soldier who had been condemned to be beheaded was accompanied to the place of execution by his comrades. It was the special privilege of every citizen of Kassa who suffered capital punishment to go to the scaffold free and unfettered, take leave there of his family and friends, and not be maltreated by the headsman.

The convict in question advanced with a cheerful countenance and head erect. Two of his comrades accompanied him, consoling and consoled by him.

"Never mind, gossips! I am not the first to whom it has happened. I don't take it so much to heart, and it doesn't hurt anyone else. God bless those who are left behind!"

Then he kissed and embraced his little children one after the other, and distributed them among his friends.

"To you I give my little son, and to you I leave my little daughter."

And so he parted with them all.

Who is that weeping so loudly?

It is the sheriff beneath his canopy. He cannot refrain from sobbing.

The convict had compassion upon his judge, and said to him:

"Weep not, Master Sheriff! you have pronounced a righteous judgment over me. I deserve to die. Not a drop of my blood will ever burden your soul, for it was a righteous sentence. Turn your head aside if you find it hard to see the sentence carried out!"

But Valentine Kalondai did not cover his eyes. He bade them weep no more, but watch the scene to the very end.

He was learning!

He was learning how to mount the seven steps of the scaffold with a firm step, how to cheerily tap the headsman on the shoulder, ask him if his ax was sharp, and then send his last greetings to those at home.

The man sat down without any assistance on the low stool, put his hands on his knees, stretched forward his head, and began to sing the well-known verse: "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O ----" The word "Lord" was still upon his lips as he stood before the throne of God.

Valentine had learnt something.

Another and far more terrible scene now ensued. They brought up the witch.

She did not endure her fate calmly. She bit, kicked, scratched, cursed the saints and all mankind, and called upon the devil to help her. They had to bind her by force to the pillar.

And Henry Catsrider actually took pleasure in the hideous contest.

It is one of the most ghastly privileges of the headsman to wound with words the wretches whom he is worrying to death, to torture their souls as well as their bodies.

"Oh—oh, you old witch! So you have come under my hands at last, eh?"

"I suckled you, you dog! You have sucked witch's milk from me. Show yourself the devil you are!"

"Come along then, you queen of witches, come and be crowned!"

With that he placed upon her head the crown, made of three staves, and began to screw them together.

Red Barbara turned her face toward Valentine Kalondai and cried; "Judge! make them take this crown off, it hurts me!"

"Wait a bit!" said the headsman, with a harsh laugh; "I'll give you a sedative immediately;" and seizing a scourge with one hand, he gave a vicious twist at the screw with the other.

The tortured hag bellowed for anguish.

"Judge, let them kill me outright, let me die!"

"Don't be afraid! I'll wake you up again," sneered the headsman, and he tore her gown from her shoulders, so as to give freer play to the lashes of his scourge.

It was just such another purple gown as that in which Michal had once so greatly excited Valentine's admiration, and the recollection of that dress occurred to Henry also.

"Is not this the dress you stole from my wife, you thief, you incendiary?" and again the lash hissed through the air.

"Do you strike me, you hangman? You knacker, you! I'll strike you back now! I'll brand your face so that you will bear the marks about with you to your dying day. You cuckold, you horned beast! You have crowned me, have you! I'll crown you still better. Your wife, your pretty Michal, still lives, and is the mistress of that sheriff yonder! You have two horns on your head, bear them as best you can!"

The headsman's apprentices began to laugh.

Furious with rage at this taunt, the headsman gave the gibbering witch such a blow on the head, with the leaden knob of his scourge, that she never spoke another word on this earth; then, rushing to the edge of the scaffold, he stretched out his arm and pointed his whip at Valentine.

The town-councilors sprang to their feet with a shudder.

Then Valentine said in a calm voice: "It is so—it is true!"

Augustus Zwirina immediately turned toward him and said: "Then, Mr. Valentine Kalondai, the time has come for you to lay down the sheriff's staff!"

Valentine surrendered his staff, descended from the tribune, and went straight home. He went quite alone. Not a soul accompanied him.

When he got home, pretty Michal could read from his face that misfortune had overtaken him.

"It's all up. We are betrayed and openly accused."

Pretty Michal was not dismayed by this intelligence, she was prepared for it.

"I only ask one thing of you," said she to Valentine, "and as you love me, you must grant it. Our sole defense is that Henry Catsrider, when he married me, gave himself out to my father as a different person from what he really was. That is an impediment which nullifies the marriage. We might, therefore, defend ourselves by contending that I was not his true and lawful wife, that he married me under false pretenses, and kept me in his house by force. I pray and beseech you not to offer any such defense. My poor father knows not what has befallen me, and I wish him never to know it."

"But I have a mother."

"Her heart will break for your sake. I know it. But then she will live forever among the choirs of angels. She has nothing to reproach herself with. Her inward monitor does not accuse her. But it is my father's own fault that I came into this terrible situation. If he ever learns that he is the sole cause of all this sorrow and shame, it will not only be the death of him, but it will make him lose his hopes of heaven."

Valentine kissed his pretty Michal.

"You are right. We will not defend ourselves."

At that moment worthy Simplex appeared.

"Quick, comrade! Take horse! The gates are not yet closed. Twelve of your trusty friends have banded to assist your flight. There is no time for reflection. The town council is at this moment deciding your fate."

But Valentine answered: "If I alone were concerned, I do not say that I would not attempt to escape. But there are two of us, and rather let my head be thrown into the dust along with the head of my Michal than her name and mine should be written over the pillory to our eternal shame. Here we remain, come what may."

"Good! Be it so!" said Simplex. "But, at least, defend yourself. You know the rule: 'Si fecisti, nega!' We will give the accusers enough to do. I will swear that I saw with my own eyes the wife of Henry, the hangman, perish in the flames. I don't care very much whether I am a cell higher or lower in hell. I know the commandment says: 'Thou must not bear false witness against thy neighbor.' But there is nothing said about bearing false witness to befriend thy neighbor."

"No, my good Simplex! we don't do that. If my Michal were to say that she had never been Henry's wife, but was another person, she would next be asked who she really was then, and who her father was. But this she never will say. Do you understand why?"

"Yes, comrade, I do understand. She would spare the white hairs of her father."

"And if she would not answer this question, would you like them to lay upon the rack her whom I adore?"

Valentine, in his anguish, pressed the trembling creature to his breast, while Simplex gnashed his teeth, and struck his forehead with his fist.

"And finally," said Valentine, proudly raising his head, "I would rather die one hundred times over, and see my wife die before my eyes, than let a single lie cross my lips, which would make me blush when I stood face to face with the knacker of Zeb. Rather let my blood trickle to the ground than stream into my face for shame! What! would you have me lie to this man, and then turn my face away from him? I will oppose him boldly, tell him the truth, and then spit in his face."

"Right, Valentine, right! You are acting like a true man," said Simplex, while pretty Michal fell at her husband's feet and kissed his hands. "Then you must accept our last offer. If you will neither fly nor lie, our twelve trusty friends will give good bail to the city magistrates to prevent you from being put in fetters."

"I will accept that offer thankfully, and make bold to say that they will lose nothing by it."

Simplex had no sooner departed than a message came from the town council, summoning Valentine and his wife to appear before it.

Dame Sarah now learnt for the first time whereof her children were accused, and was terribly enraged thereat.

Dressed just as she used to be indoors (she did not even throw her fur mantle over her shoulders), she rushed after her children. She would like to see who would dare to rob her of them.

She followed the accused into the council-chamber. The halberdiers would have kept her back, but she sent them spinning to the left and right against the doorposts, and forced her way up to the green table itself. She could scarcely restrain herself while the syndic read out the accusation, according to which Valentine had abducted the wife of Henry Catsrider, and unlawfully cohabited with her. Then Dame Sarah could contain herself no longer.

"The whole thing is a lie, a shameless, scandalous calumny! What! my daughter-in-law, Milly, the wife of the headsman of Zeb! Step forth, you scarlet juggler! Produce the marriage certificate which can show that my daughter-in-law, Milly, was ever married to the knacker of Zeb! Your wife, forsooth, you red dog! This gentle, pious creature, who is a veritable angel! Or name, if you can, the clergyman who united you at the altar, you spawn of hell, you flayer of men, you scarecrow, with this angelic creature!"

Henry was terribly alarmed. His teeth chattered and his chin waggled, beard and all, at this woman's onslaught, for he could not have proved that Michal had been married to him, the hangman. He had married her as a clergyman. He had obtained her hand by subtlety. And all this would now come out. He did not know what to say. Words failed him.

But still more frightened was Michal. Full of terror she pressed her husband's hand.

Then Valentine turned to Henry Catsrider and said:

"I forbid you to answer that question. It has no bearing on the case. I acknowledge and confess that my consort was this man's wife. I took her from him because it was better for her to die with me than to live with him, and I am responsible for it to God alone and his avenging cherubim."

"But here below you are also responsible to the high tribunal of the worshipful city of Kassa," said the presiding superrector. "You know the law. You know that death is the penalty for such a transgression."

"I await death."

"You shall not be disappointed."

Pretty Michal crossed her arms over her breast, and turning her martyr-like face to heaven, looked up as if transfigured, while Valentine supported her with his stalwart arm.

A solemn pause ensued, and then the silence was broken by the heartrending cry of Dame Sarah:

"I appeal!"

"To whom?" inquired the cruelly cold voice of the superrector.

"To the Prince."

"He lies in a Polish dungeon."

"To the Kaiser, then."

"He died last week."

"Then I appeal to God!" cried the mother, in her bitter agony.

"He's napping!" answered a deep, hollow voice, which seemed to come from the very bowels of the earth. It was the headsman who had spoken.

But the dean there and then arose from his place at the green table, and gave the speaker such a buffet in the face that the blood flowed in streams from his mouth and nose.

CHAPTER XXXV.

And again the felon's bell rang, again the gates of the townhall were thrown open, and in the midst of the sad procession came the unhappy pair, supporting one another; Michal in a snow-white garment, her beautiful face bound round with a white fillet, but Valentine in his court dress, in his jacket with the foxskin collar, and with his long hair flowing down his shoulders.

The members of the council took their places on the dais beneath the baldachin, and in the midst of them sat Augustus Zwirina.

When they reached the scaffold, Valentine would have supported Michal as she ascended the steps, but she needed no assistance. It was with an easy heart and a light step that she mounted up.

In the distance could be heard the shrieks of a woman, whom the halberdiers had to keep back by main force lest she should make a disturbance. It was Dame Sarah.

When they had got to the top of the scaffold, which was hung with black cloth, Valentine kissed the hands and the cheeks of his Michal.

"Do you forgive me?"

"I have nothing to forgive."

"For your horrible death?"

"It unites me eternally with you."

"Do you expect that we shall meet again?"

"I'll wait at the gates of heaven till you come."

"And if for my sin's sake I go to hell?"

"I'll pray to God till he releases you."

"Would you like to pray again now?"

"No, my heart is at peace."

"Amen!"

Then she sat her down on the little stool, and bound up her hair with the white fillet.

An iron coffin was there to hold them both.

The headsman's henchman stood close by the little stool, leaning on his sword.

Michal recognized and spoke to him.

"Tell me now, Master Matthias! was I not always a good mistress to you?"

"Would to God you had never been!" murmured the rough fellow.

"Deal gently with me now, and God reward you for it."

A flash, a whiz, and human justice was satisfied. But there above the angels were awaiting their sister, and asked her which was the better of the two—death, or what they call life on earth?

Henry Catsrider sprang from the other end of the scaffold to pick up the corpse.

"Touch her not!" cried Valentine, with the voice of an angry lion, "or I'll give you a blow which will send you to the other world before me."

With that he threw off his jacket, and called to the crowd around:

"Whoever will come and help me, shall have my foxskin jacket!"

"Here I am!" cried a well-known voice, and the faithful Simplex ascended to the scaffold.

"Help me to lay her in the coffin!" said Valentine; "and then don't forget what I asked you to do." And with the help of his friend he laid his pretty Michal in that sad bed from which no one ever rises again till the last trump.

Then he embraced his faithful comrade and sent him away.

"Now it is our turn, Henry Catsrider!" said he, turning to his mortal foe.

The dean, who had accompanied him so far to give him the consolations of religion, exhorted him to turn to God in this the last moment of his life and to pray. Valentine beckoned him away.

"I believe in a God, but not in the bloodthirsty God in whom you believe."

"Do not die without the blessing of the Church," said the clergyman appealingly.

"Can I require a greater blessing from the Church than to have for my confessor the executioner who cuts off my head?"

The crowd below took great pleasure in this passage of arms.

Valentine, in fact, was seized by that desperate merriment which is known as gallows humor. The spirits of those who had preceded him in this dreadful stage swept around him and suggested bitter jibes and taunts.

"Well, my good friend," said Valentine jocosely, to Henry, "is it to-day with you or to-morrow? Your eyes look as crooked as if you had not slept all night. I fear me you will not strike where you aim."

Henry had indeed been drinking hard all night to keep up his spirits.

"Well! How shall I do up my hair?" asked Valentine, sitting down on the little stool, and tying up his locks with the self-same white fillet (it was red now) which Michal had wound round her tresses.

"Will it do so?"

"A little higher!" said Catsrider.

"What! higher still? Well! how will that do for you?"

This nonchalance made the headsman perfectly furious. He had no opportunity of reveling in the mental agony of his foe, for, even on the very threshold of death, Valentine only bantered him. In ordinary times it was not in Valentine's nature to behave thus, but now a feeling of mad disdain had come over him, whereby he expressed the utter scorn he felt for all his enemies.

"Now, master headsman, pray don't keep me waiting."

Rage filled Henry's heart, and rage is a bad marksman. He raised his sword, and the blow fell just where the hair on Valentine's head was coiled in its thickest folds. The false blow made Catsrider lose his balance. He stumbled, fell sprawling, and struck his head so hard against the corner of the coffin intended for Valentine that he remained lying there senseless.

The mob raised a fearful howl when, after the blow had descended, they saw the delinquent spring up while the executioner lay prone on the ground.

"Let him go free!" cried some; "when the headsman misses his blow the delinquent should be reprieved." Others, however, were for the headsman's apprentices taking up the sword and completing the sentence.

During this uproar Valentine looked down from the lofty scaffold. He saw the excitement of his enemies on the dais, and heard them cry:

"Down with him!"

He saw a desperate woman attempting to force her way through the crowd, and recognized in her his mother. He threw a glance at his slain beloved, and then an idea suddenly flashed through his brain.

"Hither, Valentine, hither!" It was the voice of Simplex.

Valentine sprang down from the scaffold among the crowd.

"After him, seize him!" cried the members of the town council to the drabants surrounding the scaffold.

The throng was very dense. Each man pressed hard upon his neighbor. But when Valentine broke through, a path was made for him which closed immediately on his pursuers. Not one of the crowd laid hands on him. Simplex and his comrades covered his flight.

He escaped from the crowd, and ran along the street with his pursuers hot upon his heels, headed by the superrector with his gold-headed stick of office raised aloft, the headsman (who had in the meantime recovered) with his drawn sword, and the drabants with their halberts.

At the end of the street Valentine found an open door, through which he darted. This door closed behind him, and when the pursuers came up and loudly demanded admission, it suddenly reopened and out stepped the Prior of the Jesuits, Father Hieronymus, with the charter in his hand. They could tell it by the long pendant seals.

"Be off!" cried he, "this house is an asylum!"

It was the cloister of the Jesuits. The secular authorities were debarred from crossing the threshold by their own charter.

So wondrously fulfilled was the prophecy of the prior, that the seed which Valentine had sown when he subscribed this document would one day turn out to his advantage.

When, however, they brought the news to Dame Sarah that her son had fled to the cloister of the Jesuits, and now remained beneath their protection, the poor lady was quite overcome and said:

"Would that he had rather died by the side of his Michal!"

CHAPTER XXXVI.

There were two persons who made it their special business to watch the cloister: Augustus Zwirina, who sent a drabant, and Henry Catsrider, who sent one of his own apprentices.

The headsman had another reason, besides mere personal vengeance, for cutting off Valentine's head. His own neck was in danger. The world is so bad that even the headsman has enemies. Report said that Henry was drunk when he came to execute the law's sentence, and that was why he missed his aim. And the executioner has his own executioner also, who strikes him in the face in the middle of the market place, if he commits a fault sufficiently grievous to carry deprivation from his office along with it.

Therefore Henry bowled up at the windows of the cloister every evening, and threatened to quarter Valentine alive when he got him into his hands.

The watchers allowed no suspicious person to leave the cloister unsearched. It happened once that a servant died at the cloister. As they were carrying the corpse away to be buried, the town council ordered the coffin to be searched to make sure that Valentine was not being smuggled out in that way, and a stringent order was issued forbidding people to go out at night without lanterns, under the penalty of imprisonment.

At last the judgment of the Supreme Tribunal on the asylum question reached Kassa.

The judgment ran as follows: "Whereas the Jesuits have the right of asylum for their cloister, but whereas it is forbidden them to forcibly detain those of another persuasion, it is now hereby declared that the privilege of sanctuary can only be accorded to Valentine Kalondai on condition that he consents to be received into the bosom of the Catholic Church as a priest, but if he remains in his former faith he is to be handed over to justice. Three days' grace, moreover, are allowed to the said Valentine Kalondai, within which time he is to come to a decision."

With this politic document both the Jesuits and the Zwirina faction were very well satisfied. The former calculated that the delinquent who had escaped from the scaffold would much rather submit to the tonsure than lose his whole head, and would rather renounce the friendship of Calvin than dear life itself, and this they thought would be a great triumph for them. But this very thing would have been no small triumph to Zwirina and Co. also, for the whole Hungarian party, which consisted for the most part of Calvinists, would be humbled to the dust by such an apostasy. As a renegade, Valentine Kalondai would be as good as dead and buried.

When Dame Sarah heard of this judgment, she said to Simplex, who since the days of her calamity had been a constant visitor at her house: "Go to my son, and tell him that I would rather see his head severed from his body than his soul separated from my soul. He will understand what I mean."

But Simplex had something else to say to Valentine, of which Dame Sarah knew nothing.

Two days of the respite had already elapsed; the third was Shrove Tuesday, the day of fools.

Valentine had as yet not declared his resolution, but he had now only till vespers to do so. If he still remained silent, then it would be taken as a sign that he preferred to submit to the sentence of death.

Henry Catsrider had had the scaffold reërected. Valentine could see it from the cloister window.

No one else, however, troubled himself about it, for it was the last day of carnival, and all the world was thinking of the carnival frolics. All day long boisterous masks paraded the streets—men disguised as women, all sorts of guys dressed up on horseback; and in the evening, they all met together to carry out the carnival and bury him. The lads vied with one another as to who should make the greatest fools of themselves. One lengthened his legs with stilts, another made himself up as a giant. There were some who stuck themselves all over with feathers, and strutted about like birds, while others stuffed themselves out till they were as big as barrels. One trumpeted, another rattled, a third drummed away on a huge frying-pan.

The most attractive mask of all, however, was the carnival horse, which consisted of two men. The first man made up the fore part of the horse; he wore the horse's head, which was true to nature and as large as life, while the other, who planted his head in the middle of the first man's body, composed the rear part of the horse; both were covered with a large horsecloth, on which lay a saddle with the dependent stirrups, and the whole thing looked exactly like a real horse. The man in front had all the fun of the thing. He could trumpet whenever he felt inclined, he drank whatever people liked to give him, and he held a large whip in his hand, with which he struck at everyone who came too near him. But the poor fellow who formed the rear part of the horse had a much harder billet. He saw nothing and heard nothing, and was obliged to scramble along in a stooping position wherever the man in front chose to lead him; and if his leader did not look well after him, he got from everyone of the passers-by a sounding thump on the hindermost part of his person. It was not easy, therefore, to find someone willing to accept this rôle, and generally some lubber of an apprentice, who had failed in everything else, was pitchforked into it.

Now just at that time there was no such apprentice in all the guilds of Kassa, so that there was absolutely no one to take up this unpleasant rôle but the poor, good-natured Turk Ali, who could be persuaded to do anything, and everyone could see his red slippers peeping out from under the horsecloth as the carnival steed pranced along. It was an open secret that the carnival horseman who rode this steed was Simplex himself.

Behind the carnival steed came the carnival himself in a cart drawn by two oxen. He lay in a red coffin, which was covered all over with fools' caps, bells, and masks. Giants with heads as large as barrels and gigantic storks walked alongside of him, carrying his escutcheon on a pole, and behind the coffin marched a roystering band of apprentices made up as buxom wenches, who offered their tankards to everyone who passed and would absolutely take no denial.

The carnival's funeral procession stopped before the dwelling of every guildmaster and every clergyman. The leader of the procession pronounced a loud eulogium on every notability, to which the notability in question responded by refilling the empty tankards with wine or beer. On each such occasion the fool's sacristan awoke the carnival in his coffin, lifted up the pall and gave him a drink. The carnival was also an apprentice, and he certainly had one of the very best billets, for all he had to do was to lie still and drink.

When the carnival's funeral procession arrived in front of the cloister of the Jesuits, the two armed watchmen, the drabant and the headsman's assistant, were still standing there, one on each side of the door.

The waggish crowd pressed upon them from all sides, and while the funeral car with its canopy, its cortége, and its banners surrounded the door, one of the buxom wenches fell upon the neck of the drabant and kissed and hugged him, while a giant raven with a pointed beak forced his tankard on the headsman's assistant, and compelled him to drain it to the dregs, finally bonneting him with the empty tankard.

All this lasted for a single brief instant, but it was quite long enough for the cloister door to open and close again. What had happened in the meantime was known only to the initiated.

Then the fools' procession went on more noisily than ever.

When they arrived at the Miskolcz gate, the superrector Zwirina and his halberdiers barred the way.

"Whither are you going?" said he to the carnival horseman.

Simplex held a quill to his mouth, and squeaked through it in a thin, chirpy, birdlike voice:

"We are going to bury the dead carnival."

But Augustus Zwirina was a knowing man, and he had his suspicions.

"Let me see if this carnival is really dead," said he.

And with that he tore the cover from the face of the figure lying in the coffin.