When he got back to Stambul he thought within himself that, after having escaped from so many dangers, God would, at least, visit him with no more affliction, but, content with what had already befallen him, would suffer him to attend to his business in peace for the small remainder of his days.
Wherefore he at once sought out worthy Ali Hojia, his one faithful friend, to whom he had confided the keeping of his treasures.
Ali received him kindly. "Well, and so thou hast just come, Muhzin," said he; "of a truth, I had given thee up for lost. Every evening have I prayed that thou mightest return."
And then Muhzin told him how ill he had fared, and what a fool the vision had made of him, and said that henceforth, he would believe no more in visions, even if their beards were made of moonbeams.
"And that will be wise of thee, Muhzin," said Ali Hojia. "Did I not tell thee not to go? If thou hadst remained at home here thou wouldst not have been robbed and made a fool of. And now thou hast made of thyself a laughing-stock and a beggar. Yet grieve not. For a week a table shall be spread in my house for thee, and then other merciful Mussulmans will care for thee to the end of thy days."
"I thank thee for thy goodness, Ali," said Muhzin; "but I will not be a beggar. Produce my hidden treasures, and I will trade with them as before. I will live honourably."
"Then, where are these treasures of thine?" asked Ali, exceedingly amazed.
"Why, with thee, of course," replied Muhzin.
Ali Hojia shook his head. "Muhzin, my friend, thy misfortunes have robbed thee of thy wits, so that thou knowest not what thou sayest. Thou hast just told me that thou wert robbed on thy journey, and now thou sayest I have treasures of thine which I have never seen. I tell thee what—go now and have a little sleep and clear thy mind somewhat. After that I will gladly see thee again."
And with that worthy Hojia very gently pushed Muhzin from his door, and shut it in his face.
The unfortunate merchant now fell into absolute despair. He himself began to doubt whether he was in his senses, or whether he had indeed turned crazy, and the hidden treasure was a dream, a phantom, like the rest.
In his despair he flew to the Grand Vizier, cast himself at his feet, and told him the whole story.
"Hast thou a witness who saw thee give thy treasures to Hojia?" inquired the Grand Vizier.
"Allah alone, none other. Truly we were such good friends, one body and one soul."
"Then keep still till I have spoken to the Sultan."
When the Grand Vizier had spoken to the Sultan about the matter, Soliman commanded him to proclaim at every corner of every street, through the public criers, that a certain merchant, Muhzin by name, recently returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca, had drowned himself at night in the Bosphorus. His dead body had been found by the fishermen; if, therefore, the dead man had any friends or relations who wished to bury him with due respect, they were to come for him, otherwise the corpse would be buried in the common cemetery reserved for the poor.
Naturally Ali Hojia was the last person to come forward to bury Muhzin; on the contrary, he did not show himself at all, but several days afterwards he secretly visited the cemetery of the poor, and there discovered the flat tomb on which two rough stones had been rolled, and on one of these stones the name of Muhzin had been coarsely smeared.
But Muhzin was cast by the Sultan into the prison of the Seven Towers, so that he might not be able to show himself, even if he had a mind to. There, however, he was well treated and lacked nothing.
Soliman, moreover, got from the merchant an exact description of his deposited treasures, piece by piece, with all their distinguishing marks, and made an inventory of them. Then he commanded the Grand Vizier to make friends with Hojia under some pretext or other.
The Grand Vizier went very cautiously to work, and having frequently had occasion to observe the wisdom of the learned lawyer, promised to present him to the Sultan.
The Sultan condescended to enter into conversation with the lawyer, and expressed himself delighted at his dialectical skill. Presently he got into the habit of asking his opinion concerning various ticklish points of law in cases about which even the members of the Divan had different opinions, and always he gave great weight to the words of Ali. At last he so far extended his favour towards him as to appoint him Chief Almoner, and raise him high among the dignitaries of the Seraglio.
So much favour absolutely blinded Hojia, it was now six months since the death of Muhzin had been proclaimed, and no doubt he thought no more about it.
One day the Sultan perceived in the girdle of Hojia a rosary just like one which was mentioned in the inventory of the merchant's stolen treasures. It was made of coral beads of the size of filberts, engraved all round with sacred texts, and the larger beads were encrusted with diamonds.
The Sultan admired the string of beads. "What a splendid bead-string thou hast," said he. "In the whole of my treasury I have not the like of it. The coral is extraordinarily beautiful, and the workmanship priceless."
Ali was transported with joy, and made haste to offer to the Sultan the jewel which was so fortunate as to have won the favour of the Grand Signior.
The Sultan graciously condescended to accept the present, and gave Hojia instead of it three purses of gold, far more indeed than the jewel was worth, and invited him the next day to the Dzsirid Square, where a splendid entertainment was to be held.
Hojia was even more delighted by this distinction than by the Sultan's gift; he would be able to appear on the Dzsirid in the suite of the Sultan.
The Dzsirid was the one open space in the Seraglio where the Turkish magnates diverted themselves with pike-casting, dart-throwing, and other manly sports. The Sultan himself often took part in these pastimes. The best of shooting grounds also formed part of the Dzsirid.
On this occasion the Sultan also took part in the shooting; and very badly he shot, not once did he hit the mark. Wherefore he began to grow angry, and, as is the way with marksmen under such circumstances, he blamed the mark, the bowstring, the quiver, and the burning sun for his bad shooting, and at last burst forth against the ring on his finger as the cause of all his wide shooting. For it was the custom of the archer to wear on his finger a serpent-shaped spiral ring, so as to gain a firmer hold of the bow-string, and be able to make the bow twang to its full extent at the proper time.
The Sultan kept on grumbling at his ring, saying that it was badly made and caught in the bow-string every time, so that he could not let it go quickly enough, and with that he snatched it off, and cried, "Give me another ring!"
His attendants hastened to offer their own rings to the Grand Signior. The Sultan tried them all one after another.
"That won't do, that won't do! Ah! nobody makes such good archery-rings as the goldsmith Sulassan used to make, and he is dead now. But is there none here who has a ring made by Sulassan?"
At this question, Ali Hojia eagerly rushed up to the Sultan, and signified that he possessed a ring which was a production of the dead master. Would the Padishah deign to accept it from him?
Soliman did deign to accept it. This was the choicest jewel which the merchant had described to him. He accepted it from Hojia, put it on his finger, and thenceforth shot so skilfully at the mark that every one applauded him, and none more so than Ali Hojia.
After the sports in the Dzsirid, the Sultan sent for Muhzin. In his hand was the string of beads, and on his finger was the ring, and he was praying with the Koran before him.
Astonishment overcame the merchant when he saw his lost jewels in the possession of Soliman. He cast himself at the Sultan's feet, and, catching hold of the hem of his garment, exclaimed: "Oh, my lord, the ring and the string of beads which thou holdest in thy hand are mine."
The Sultan asked him what was written on each one of the beads and how many stones were in the ring, and the merchant answered each question exactly, whereupon the Sultan sent him back to the Seven Towers.
On the following day he sent for Hojia.
He discoursed with him on all manner of juridical questions which had come before the Divan, and took the opinion of the learned lawyer upon them all. Amongst other cases, he suddenly put this one to him: a certain man had grossly abused the confidence of a friend, who had confided his property to his care while he was on his travels, and robbed him of everything; what did such a man deserve for such a monstrous act of treachery?
Now, it is notorious that the greatest sinners are the most rigorous judges of offences similar to their own in others, and it is even possible that it never occurred to Hojia that he himself had been guilty of a like offence. Besides, his sin was buried deeply away in the tomb of Muhzin, and nobody knew anything about it.
So the jurist replied to the Sultan that such an extraordinary offence demanded an extraordinary punishment, and the sinner deserved nothing less than pounding to death in a mortar.
"Thou hast pronounced thine own condemnation," cried the Sultan. Then he clapped his hands, and four Izoglans came running in and bound Hojia hand and foot, took from him his keys, searched his dwelling thoroughly, and found in it the whole of the treasure which had been confided to him by his friend the merchant.
The confounded Hojia, who fancied he was bathing in the sunlight of the highest favour, and never reflected that in the sunlight everything becomes transparent, in his terror confessed everything, and also said that he was the apparition who, after fastening on a beard smeared over with a phosphorescent unguent, had come to the room of the sorrowing Muhzin and practised on the unfortunate mourner the accursed trick which had well-nigh robbed him of life and reason. It was he, too, who had stolen the body of Eminha from its tomb.
The Sultan immediately summoned a meeting of the Divan, laid the case before the Viziers, and told them of the punishment which the Hojia himself had said that a crime like his deserved.
The Viziers answered that Hojia's opinion was just. The crime was indeed of a new sort, and it was right, therefore, that he should be the first to taste the proper punishment for it.
By the Sultan's command, therefore, a huge mortar was cut out of marble, a huge pounding pole with four handles thereto being at the same time made to match the mortar.
Ali Hojia, meanwhile, was attired in a purple robe, with a golden turban on his head, and a bespangled girdle round his body, and so they cast him into the mortar. Then four Bostanjis seized the pounding beetle, and raising it by its four handles, rammed it with all their might into the mortar at a sign from the Aga of the Bostanjis. A frightful yell arose from the mortar, tapering off into an unspeakable, indescribable whistling shriek. The Bostanjis raised the pounding beetle a second time, and a second time they rammed it home. But now only a muffled groan responded to the impact. The third stroke was followed by a ghastly whimper, and after the fourth stroke there was no response but the crunching of bones.
And so they went pounding away with their pestle till they were tired out, and by that time all that remained in the mortar was a shapeless mash of blood and bones and silk and gold filigree.
Thus did Sultan Soliman punish the deceiver.
Eighty years ago the French traveller Tavernier saw this very mortar, so terrible a memorial of Ottoman justice, standing in the door of the Hall of the Divan.
V
LOVE AND THE LITTLE DOG
What can there be in common between love and a little dog? Well, listen! and I'll tell you.
My dear friend Toni was head over ears in love with a pretty little girl whom I did not love at all. This was not because I prefer falling in love with ugly little girls, or because I consider it superfluous to love a girl who is already loved by another fellow, but simply because one eye of this particular girl was black and the other blue.
"Toni," I said, "look out for yourself! This double sort of eye bodes no good. With one of them she'll ogle you, and with the other some one else. The blue eye may be faithful to you, the black one may deceive."
Toni replied I was quite wrong. In his opinion these two eyes harmonized admirably; they reminded him, he said, of bright dawn and starry night. Indeed, properly speaking, he alone would be the faithless one, as he would now be loving a blue eye and a black one at the same time.
Still, I did not like the business at all, and as I felt sure that Toni would be considerably the loser by it, I was determined to save him if I could.
"It will be the worse for you if you take her," I said. "For one thing, you will not be able even to call her your better half. With those contradictory eyes she will, at the very utmost, only be your better two quarters. Depend upon it, she must have been formed from the ribs of two different men. Have nothing to do with her, Toni, my boy!"
Whereupon Toni became abusive, and told me never to regard him as a friend again.
"Who are you to talk to me like that?" he cried. "You are not my father, or my mother, or my elder brother, or my married sister, or even my godfather, are you? Who are you to ride roughshod over my happiness? I don't care a rap what you say, and stand out of my way, or I'll punch your head. I mean to have her in any case now."
So, as I certainly could not say that I was his father, or even his godfather, I had to stand aside and let him go galloping headlong downhill towards the Vale of Matrimony without the brake on. If he were particularly fortunate, he might, perhaps, plump into a ditch when halfway down, and so come off cheaply with a broken arm; if, however, he were doomed to be unlucky, he would plunge to the bottom of the valley and break his neck.
Nevertheless, he was lucky, and fell off his high horse when he was only halfway down.
One evening he came to me full of a great resolution.
"Well, old chap, I'm not going to marry Nelly after all."
"She has jilted you, I suppose?"
"No. Something happened when I was with her last, that's all."
"Well, we had been strolling in the garden for an hour or more, mooning and spooning, and I had also been reciting verses to her, and she had laughed at them, and it seemed to me that only the angels could laugh like that, when suddenly there came bouncing towards us a little pet puppy, a tiny beast about five weeks old, just able to patter along the ground with his little paws, who wagged his little tail and fawned upon Nelly in the most comical manner when he got up to her, at the same time sticking up one little ear high in the air, and holding the other little ear down. Why he should do so I didn't know; perhaps he had been taught it, I thought. Nelly thereupon stooped down towards the little dog, and, seizing the point of its little erected ear with two of her pretty snow-white fingers, raised it into the air. The little puppy wriggled and whined, but Nelly, smiling all the time, threatened it with the index finger of the other hand. 'Come! stop it, stop it! no whining! It's not pretty,' she said, till the poor little creature gradually grew quiet, and remained suspended in the air by its ear. Then Nelly put it on the ground again, and the little puppy, softly whimpering, tripped off again, while Nelly never ceased smiling at it. Well, after that I scarce waited to get into my overcoat and wish her good-bye. I think that's all the leave-taking she deserves, and don't suppose I shall ever meet her again. No, my friend, my ears could never stand such manœuvres."
Thus it was that the little puppy-dog saved my friend Toni from a life-long danger.
VI
THE RED STAROSTA
CHAPTER I
THE JUDAS-MONEY
Have you ever heard of the Bialystok Dominion? There lie the huge Sylvan wildernesses of Lithuania, the native home of the Ure-ox, the ancestor of horned cattle, the king of all oxen; in every other part of Europe it has been exterminated. They are now the quarry of the Russian Tsar, and only the Romanovs and their guests possess the privilege of hunting them down.
But Bialystok is still more famous for its wondrously beautiful Palace, which worthily bears the name of "the Polish Versailles." Built in the Italian renaissance style, embellished within and without by the sculptures and the paintings, the bronzes and the mosaics of the most eminent masters, surrounded by the most lovely ornamental gardens in the world, in which the exotic trees in winter time have whole wooden houses built around them, so that pomegranate and citron trees bloom in the open air during the spring, and Bruin comes from the depths of the surrounding forests to pluck the citrons from the trees and roar over his unaccustomed food—the Palace of Bialystok is one of the most wonderful places in the world.
And this famous Palace is connected with no one family name. At every fresh human generation it carries a different family name on its forehead. It has belonged successively to the Moskowskis, the Potoccy, the Branickis, and the Czernuskis. And popular tradition says that before it belonged to them it was the possession of the "Red Starosta."
But whether purchased or won by confiscation it never descended from father to son, for there was this odd thing about it, that its proprietor never had male issue, and consequently it always passed through his daughter to his son-in-law. To explain this condition of things, popular tradition tells the following story:—
In the days of the Red Starosta, the Jews had great influence in the Grodno district; indeed, it would be difficult to imagine Poland without them. Bialystok was their head-quarters, and there they had their synagogue. The Starostas allowed them to multiply and get rich, just as a highly practical agriculturist allows the bees to collect their stores throughout the summer, and when the autumn winds begin to blow does not treat them after the manner of ungrateful and unreasonable bee-keepers, who smoke out the industrious insects with sulphur, no, but in the most approved modern fashion he subtracts the honey, leaves the bees just enough to live upon, and then puts back the empty cells into the hive that the bees may fill them full again.
The bees themselves regard this method as perfectly normal, for otherwise they would leave the hive and go into the forest and fill the stumps of trees with honey. But then the bears would eat them and it, so that, after all, it is very much better for the bees to have to do with the bee-keepers.
On one occasion the Red Starosta (he was just about to marry for the third time, and wanted a lot of money rather badly for the wedding feast) hit upon a new method of obtaining a voluntary contribution by attacking the Jews in their synagogue on one of their holy days. Every one of them was compelled to pay liberally. There were a good many treasures concealed in the synagogue, and these also they had to hand over. The Jews lamented and paid up; they had not even courage enough to curse.
But in the strong-box of the sanctuary there was a secret drawer, and in this secret drawer there was a single piece of silver. Now, when this secret drawer was opened by the Starosta, the Rabbi, Jitzchak Ben Menachim, quickly seized the coin and thrust it into his mouth. They could only get it out again by breaking his teeth, while a heyduke squeezed his throat tightly the whole time so that he should not swallow it.
What merit could there be in suffering so much for the sake of a single piece of silver? The whole thing was no bigger than a Mary-dollar, which is only worth 5 polturas.[15] On one side of it was a fig-tree with the inscription: "Jerusalem the Holy," in Hebrew letters, with a burning altar beneath the fig-tree with the words: "Shekel: Israel." On the obverse side was a crowned head with the inscription: "Melach Herodes."
[15] Worth about 6d.
When this silver piece had been taken from the Rabbi, the whole congregation began to rend their garments and cast ashes on their heads. Then they abased themselves before the Starosta and implored him to give them back their one piece of silver. They promised to give him for it twice as much, eight times as much as he had already extorted from them, thereby betraying the secret that this piece of money was of great value to them.
"Why is this silver coin so precious to you?" inquired the Starosta.
At this question every Jew present closed his mouth so tightly that not even a sigh escaped from it.
"Very well," said the Red Starosta, "you won't tell me, eh? Then I'll find a way of making your Rabbi tell me."
So the Red Starosta flung the Rabbi into a dungeon, and for a whole week he experimented upon him with the latest and most approved instruments of torture. But Rabbi Jitzchak Ben Menachim remained steadfast. Neither fire, nor water, nor the Spanish boot could extract from him the secret of the piece of silver.
Now the Rabbi had a grown-up son, Jaikef by name. On the eighth day he could endure no longer the spectacle of his father tortured there before his eyes, so he went to the Starosta and said to him—
"Let my father go free, and I will tell you the secret of the silver coin."
And thus Jaikef told the story whose preliminaries are well known to us all.
There was once a Jew named Judas Iscariot, who sold to the Priests of Jerusalem "The Son of Man," the "King of Nazareth," above whose head on the cross was nailed the inscription "I.N.R.I." The price paid to him for this was thirty pieces of silver. But when they crucified "the Master" on Golgotha, he repented him of what he had done and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the Priests. They would not accept them. Then he flung down the money in the Temple, and went and hanged himself on a maple-tree. But the Priests resolved with the rejected money to buy a portion of land from the Potters. The Priests entrusted the business of the purchase to Kramoi-Chita Anselm, and this enterprising man beat down the price to nine and twenty pieces of silver, the thirtieth piece he kept for himself. His son Nathan inherited it from him. Solomon, the son of Nathan, inherited it in his turn, till at last, in the period of the exodus of the Jews from Palestine, it fell into the possession of Joisef Zedek, who brought it away with him. This one remaining piece of Judas-money puts power and riches into the hands of the Jews. This is their living hope, their talismanic treasure—and now Jaikef gave the secret away.
"Then it is a very good thing that I have got it," said the Red Starosta, and, as promised, he set free the Rabbi, at the same time telling him that as he now knew the secret of the piece of silver, he would not give it back to the Jews for all the treasures in the world.
The Rabbi Jitzchak Ben Menachim thereupon, first of all, cursed his own son:
"As thou couldst not close thy mouth, henceforth thou shalt open it in vain."
And the curse was accomplished. From that time forth poor Jaikef was expelled from every Jewish threshold, not a single Jew would thenceforth give him meat and drink, whilst the law of the Talmud forbade him to eat food prepared by Christians. So he starved to death.
But upon the Red Starosta the Rabbi Jitzchak Ben Menachim pronounced this curse—
"A manchild shall never be borne in thy family!"
And this curse also took root and abided.
Henceforth the mortars on the terrace in front of the Palace of Bialystok never thundered forth in honour of the birth of an heir male.
Of girls there were plenty and to spare, but what's the good of a girl to an ancient Lithuanian ancestral house? Up to her twelfth year she is allowed to trot about like other little kids, and then they clap her into a convent, where she is taught gold and silver embroidery till she reaches a marriageable age, when they bring her home again. What else can she talk about except saints and angels!
How different with the male children. A boy is taught by his papa all manner of sensible things. You can take him off with you to hunt bears and wild boars and elks. He'll not learn much about the book of martyrs from his chums, perhaps, but all the more knowing will he be in the folklore of the chase, in the mythology of the ancient Lithuanian deities. He will know all about Bagán, the protector of the brute creation, who makes the cattle fruitful; about the White God, Belim, who gives rich increase to the earth; about the goddess Vastrulia, who gives luck in love; while in the day of battle and the hour of danger he must call upon Father Dedka! At great banquets, too, Holyada will defend him from the disgrace of being the first to fall down drunk, while Lado will send him good dreams.
A girl would not understand this—it is part of the lore of the ancients.
And besides that, a girl does not pass the name of her father on to her children, so that if the grandson hears the name of his grandsire, he will ask—who is that?
So the curse of the Rabbi Jitzchak Ben Menachim was accomplished in the families of the Castellans of Bialystok. At every great funeral, when they carried forth the head of the family, they hung up his ancestral shield on the corner of his tomb as a sign that the family history had run out. And thus it went on through half a century, during which time the lords of the Castle never let the Judas-money out of their hands. The rich Jews of Grodno offered them a million for it, but in vain. They would not give up the talisman even for that.
The last magnate proprietor was Prince Moskowski. When his wife was in good hopes of offspring he made a vow that if she bare him a son he would give the Judas-money as a donation to the Blessed Virgin. And sure enough a son was born.
The Prince, faithful to his vow, bestowed the Judas-money upon the Monastery of Supraseli which was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.
And then the Rabbi of Bialystok, the descendant of Jitzchak Ben Menachim, on the original curse thus becoming void, imposed a fresh curse on the head of Prince Moskowski: "Thy son and thy son's son," said he, "shall become the lowliest serfs in the Russian Empire!"
And to a Lithuanian noble family this was an even more terrible curse than the former one.
CHAPTER II
VACCINATIO SPIRITUALIS
The Starosta Prince Moskowski believed in the operation of a curse; it was the only weapon of a homeless people.
He had no other son but this one, and he himself remained a widower.
If he had had five or six sons he would have snapped his fingers at the whole thing as an old wife's story, for the curse could not have taken effect on the whole lot of them. But as he only had one, Destiny might very easily get the better of him. This one lord would inherit the vast Bialystok estates, the splendid castle and its treasures, yet what if all this would not save him and his descendants from becoming serfs in the end.
The Starosta guarded this son of his so jealously from his very cradle that he never so much as cast eyes on a peasant. He did not even know whether such a thing even existed. His servants were all chosen from the Szlachta, or gentry. A Szlachzić, even in a menial livery, is still a gentleman.
But even then the father could not rid him of his fear.
He went to take counsel of the Bishop.
The Bishop told him to bring up his son for the priesthood, then he could not possibly become a serf. But this solution did not please the Starosta, although it would have been the very best way to break the force of the curse. It is true that if his only son became a bishop he could have no sons, and then of course no grandson of the Starosta could become a serf, because he would have no grandsons at all. But he wanted the branches of the Moskowski family tree to go on growing.
So he consulted yet another dignitary, the High Treasurer of Cracow. What was he to do, he asked, to stay the operation of the curse and prevent his son and his grandsons from becoming the lowliest serfs in the Russian Empire?
The High Treasurer advised him to open a deposit account in the name of his son to the amount of a million thalers at the Bank of England, where no power on earth could get at it. He would thereby provide against every eventuality. To whatever extremities his son and his grandsons might be reduced, they would never be obliged to do the labour of serfs so long as they had a million to their credit at the Bank of England.
But the Starosta did not like that expedient either. He could produce the million easily enough, but he had no confidence in the Bank of England. Not very long before there had been a conspiracy to rob the Bank of England, and it had been within a hair's breadth of succeeding. Moreover it was a fact within living memory that on the occasion of the invasion of the Stuart Pretender there had been such a run on the Bank of England that it had been obliged to pay its customers over the counter in shillings and sixpences. Why, at that rate, if any one clean-shaved himself and went to the Bank to draw out the million, and they were obliged to pay him down on the nail in Polish small change, he might be able comfortably to tuck his beard within his girdle by the time he was able to get home.
Now, there happened to be a Protestant clergyman in the domains of the Starosta who dwelt in the county town, the Rev. Gottlieb Klausner by name. He was the pastor of the Lutheran community. His flock mostly consisted of handicraftsmen and mechanics who had emigrated to Lithuania from Brandenburg.
The only thing the Starosta knew about the Lutheran clergyman was that he never bothered him with inconvenient demands. He and his flock alike were quiet, inoffensive persons. They never advertised their profession of faith by anything in their outward dress and bearing; they never prayed publicly in the streets; they never rang bells, for their meeting-places had no belfries.
Nevertheless, one day the pastor visited the Starosta in his splendid princely palace.
The Starosta received the reverend gentleman cordially.
Gottlieb Klausner first of all apologized for the inconvenience he was causing, and then craved permission to acquaint his Excellency with the great errand which had emboldened him to appear before him.
He was such a long time coming to the point that the Starosta fancied he was going to beg for a church-tower full of bells at the very least. Yet all that he wanted, after all, was permission to send his son abroad to complete his studies. He had brought the deed of permission with him in his pocket, written in the fairest caligraphy, it only needed the hieroglyphics of the magnate at the bottom of it and the impression of his seal.
This was very quickly done, but to-day the great man was curious and wanted to know all about it.
"What is your son's Christian name, your Reverence?"
"Henry."
"How old is he?"
"Sixteen."
"Just as old as my lad. Then, how old may your Reverence be."
"Forty-seven, by the favour of God."
"Just my age. Perhaps we were born on the same day."
"I came into the world on the festival of St. John Chrysostom."
"So did I. That's very right. And why, then, do you want to send your son abroad? And so far too? It is to the Sorbonne at Paris, isn't it?"
"In order that he may perfect himself in the sciences."
"And why need he perfect himself in the sciences?"
"In order that he may not become a serf."
At these words the heart of the Starosta began to beat fiercely.
"Then he cannot be a serf if he becomes a scholar, eh?"
"No. At all times and everywhere a scholar is a gentleman."
"Your Reverence has no doubt heard of the curse with which a Rabbi threatened me?"
"Every one knows of it."
"And do you suppose that it can be fulfilled?"
"Everything is possible in this world."
"But, according to your reasoning, a scholar can never become a serf."
"And I maintain my contention. Great estates may be called in again by those who bestowed them; brilliant escutcheons may be torn to pieces by the hand which embellished them; but the knowledge which dwells in our heads and our hearts neither king nor emperor can take away, and if we leave knowledge to our sons as an inheritance, no power on earth can make our sons serfs. Pardon me for elevating my words into such a bold discourse."
"You elevate me at the same time, my brother in the Lord! But come! you have kindled a bright idea in my brain. I will educate my son as a scholar likewise. He has both the mind and the will for it. I have kept him from poring over books hitherto, but now let us send him abroad with your son. Let your Henry be his guardian and comrade. I shall know then that he is in good hands. And I'll pay the expenses of the pair of them. They shall live in the same room and eat off the same dish. My son and your son shall be treated exactly alike. Let them fare as youths studying abroad must fare, and let the best scholar be the best gentleman. Is it agreed, brother?"
Gottlieb Klausner gratefully stretched out his hand towards the Starosta, who hastily drew back his own, fancying that the pastor was about to kiss it. He might have spared himself the trouble. A Lutheran pastor never kisses the hand of one of his own sex. The Starosta, however, immediately afterwards embraced the pastor.
"Good, my brother! We are agreed then. But I do this under one condition. I ask a service of your Henry. I'll take care that there shall be a regular postal service hither from France and Germany twice a week, and your Henry must write to you every post about himself and my son, and let us know how they are and what progress they are making."
"My son will certainly not neglect to do so."
"Bring your son hither that I may make his acquaintance."
"This very day I will bring him."
"And now, hearken, my brother. You and I are both old fellows, and hitherto each of us has celebrated his birthday alone with his son. Henceforth we shall be quite alone. Let us henceforth keep our birthday in each other's company."
But the two old men did not only keep their common birthday together, but when their two sons had departed on the common path of learning, the homely pastor went up to the Castle twice a week with the letter he had received from his son, that he might read it aloud to the Starosta. And the Starosta always compelled him to remain to dinner. And though he might have a brilliant host of guests staying with him, the Rev. Gottlieb Klausner, in his simple black cassock, always sat at the Starosta's right hand. The only change took place when a priest of the Starosta's own religion happened to be his guest. Then Klausner sat at the left hand of the Starosta, but there also he was treated with great distinction. And just before the bumpers began to go round, the latest letter received from Henry was always read to the general delectation.
And Henry's letters certainly were amusing. There was no frothy effusiveness, no cheap claptrap in them as is generally the way with students' productions, and for that very reason they were all the more genuinely interesting. They were full, indeed, of the comical adventures, without which a student's life is inconceivable, and no mystery was made of the scrapes and exploits which fell to his lot, but at the same time the distinctions which the two youths gained at the Sorbonne were duly enumerated.
It occurred to none of the guests to ask the reverend gentleman why he had sent his son to the Sorbonne instead of to Heidelberg, where Lutherans generally go to college.
But once when these scholastic testimonials were passing from hand to hand among the army of guests, an inquisitive guest remarked that in young Moskowski's testimonial he was described as "eminent" in such sciences as "mathematics," "geometry," "chemistry," and "mineralogy." What need, he added, had a Moskowski to grub about amongst such things as these. He was not going to be a miner, was he? Whereupon the reverend pastor, with philosophical composure and prophetic inspiration, replied: "A man never knows what sciences may be useful to him one day."
This was the vaccinatio spiritualis, the inoculation of the mind—against the infection of the serf distemper.
CHAPTER III
FACE TO FACE
The two youths spent two years in the foreign University. They studied together and they caroused together. They fought for each other, and they wrote each other's dissertations. When they spent all their money they wrote verses, and whichever of them was able to borrow a livre or two, always shared it with the other. And whenever the Philistines were too much for them they bolted into the next town.
Heinrich's last letter to his father was written from Utrecht. There both of them gained their promotio. Casimir became a baccalaureat of philosophy, Heinrich a doctor of medicine.
The Rev. Mr. Klausner told the Starosta that his little Heinrich had appropriated the new science, according to which doctors were no longer to plague their unfortunate patients with bitter draughts at the rate of a pint a dose; but went about with little white pillules, the size of millet seeds, in their pockets, and wrought marvellous cures on the principle of similia similibus.
"Very well," said the Starosta, "as your son Heinrich has become a doctor, I will make him my family physician, with a salary of 2000 thalers, on condition that he bleeds me in the first quarter of every month, and gives me some of his drugs. For I invented homœopathy before Herr Hahnemann, inasmuch as whenever wine gets into my head I drink still more to get it out again. That's my view of similia similibus. Tell your son what I say."
Gottlieb Klausner thereupon took up his pen and informed his son what a brilliant opening had thus come in his way at the very beginning of his career. He would be sure of a post as soon as ever he got home, with a nice salary of 2000 thalers. Moreover, he would ride in a carriage, and give his orders to the cook, for he would have to taste of every dish before it was presented to the Starosta, according to the wont of princes, lest they be poisoned in their meat or drink. How many a man would envy him such an office!
And now the two accomplished young men were summoned back to Lithuania.
All the way to the boundary hillock of the Bialystok domain they travelled in a peasant's cart; but there a noble cavalcade awaited them, with the Major Domo of the Starosta at their head.
The great gilded carriage of the Starosta, which was only used on the greatest occasions of State, was sent to meet the young men, and to it the four most reliable nags from the Starosta's stables were harnessed, which went at a slow, dignified, parade step. On the box sat a coachman in the national costume, and a couple of heydukes clung on to the straps behind.
The Major Domo ought to have pronounced a solemn greeting; but he never had the opportunity, for no sooner had the two youths leaped from the cart, than a rush was made upon them by the mounted Szlachta, who took possession of them uproariously, every one who could pressing up to, embracing, and kissing them. Besides the youths, there leaped from the cart a huge mastiff, the indispensable attribute of University students, who seemed to be greatly attracted by the Major Domo, and kept taking vigorous leaps at him. The gentleman in question was wearing a bear-skin kaczagány, which the noble beast had evidently determined to tear from his shoulder by hook or by crook, and in the mean time the fine oration the poor Major Domo had prepared for the occasion escaped him altogether.
The new arrivals were really two very nice young fellows—both of them heroic-looking figures, though entirely different from each other.
Casimir was dark, with fiery-black eyes. His head was entirely covered with curly hair, he had a luxuriant forelock hanging over his forehead, and such a thick, luxuriant crop of hair that it would have blunted the edge of a descending sword. His thick eyebrows drew near to each other like bushy-headed serpents—perhaps, also, they would have seized each other had they not been separated by the powerful authoritative nose, which was the characteristic feature of the Moskowski family. Such an aquiline nose you would not have met with in the whole Sarmatian race, and it was fitly accompanied by the protuberant red mouth and the pronounced double chin, which were also hereditary peculiarities. He was his father's own son, though of a somewhat higher type.
Heinrich, on the other hand, was an excellent specimen of the type of masculine beauty peculiar to the German race. His thick, leonine, dark-red hair rolled over his shoulders in luxuriant masses. His face was ruddy, his forehead white, he had a small and delicate nose, with sensitive nostrils, large bright-blue eyes, above which the thin straight eyebrows seemed to have been added by a painter's brush. His mouth was large, but his lips were finely chiselled, and a large brown mole at the corner of the lips gave a peculiar expression to the mouth.
There was no fear of mistaking one of them for the other.
And the dog, too, was a fine dog. He belonged to that race of mastiffs which in the Hungarian Corpus Juris bears the name of "sinkorán," the keeping of which is forbidden in Hungary by a special paragraph of the code.
When the fêted gentlemen had been released from the embraces of the young cavaliers, and the Major Domo from the jaws of the sinkorán, the next thing was for them to take their places in the State carriage. The noble youths carried Casimir on their shoulders to the carriage, and set him down on the back seat. Heinrich also was carried on men's shoulders to the carriage—only in his case it was not the cavaliers, but the heydukes who performed that office, and they placed him in the front seat face to face with Casimir.
"Why may I not sit by my friend's side?" asked Heinrich.
"What an odd question!" said the Major Domo. "Here you have been to half a dozen colleges, and learnt so much, and yet you don't know that! A subject cannot sit down by the side of his Prince; and when they ride together in the same carriage his proper place is the front seat."
Of course, it was the regular thing.
Moreover, as the place beside Casimir on the back seat remained empty, the big mastiff leaped into the carriage, and occupied the place of honour by his master's side.
"Then is a dog allowed to sit down by a nobleman?" inquired Heinrich, indignantly.
"Certainly, for the sinkorán is also a noble animal."
And then the procession, amidst the crack of pistol-shots, proceeded towards the castle.
In the castle gate a triumphal arch awaited the new arrivals, and the notabilities of the place were grouped around the entrance, the damsels arrayed in white and the peasantry in gala costumes.
When they reached the gate of the castle, it was not Heinrich's face that was red, but his forehead, and his eyes seemed rather to be green than blue.
He saw his father among the deputation. He could easily make him out—one black cassock was very prominent amidst the dazzling-bright Polish parade costumes.
He did not wait for the carriage to stop, but leaped from it, and rushed up to the old man, embracing him again and again with great ostentation, and kissing him in the sight of every one. The clergyman did not betray the least emotion.
When the congratulatory addresses came to an end, the Major Domo shouted to Heinrich—
"Come, doctor! Get in!"
"I am going with my father."
"But I am going on foot," said the clergyman.
"Then, I'll go on foot with you."
They did not press him further. Every one's head was full of something else. The ladies praised the young squire. What a fine fellow he was, they said. The girls flung flowers into the carriage, which went so slowly that the foot-passengers could easily keep up with it.
Father and son trudged on together among the ranks of the pedestrians.
Presently the old man began speaking to his son in the Latin tongue, so that the people might not understand him.
"My dear son, you well remember, no doubt, that I have always looked upon lying and deception as the greatest of sins; and from your childish years upwards you have always had a great inclination thereto. You know how many hazel twigs I have worn out upon you in endeavouring to eradicate that evil tendency. But I see that even now you are not cured of it. Look, now! the moment you beheld your poor father amidst a group of gentlemen, you immediately leaped from the gilded carriage, ran up to me, embraced me, called me carissime pater, pinned yourself on to my cassock, and accompanied me on foot. You thought you would deceive me by all this hypocrisy. Yet all this ostentation of filial piety was only because you were obliged to sit in the State carriage opposite to your comrade, instead of by his side, and your pride was wounded in consequence. That was why your heart suddenly conceived such a fondness for your father. Look me straight in the face, and tell me if it was not so."
"Yes, it was."
"Exactly; it was your pride that suffered. I do not count pride among the more deadly sins, although I know that Petrus Lombardus elevated this opinion into the rank of a dogma. We Protestants are content with the definition of John the Evangelist, who saith that every falsehood is a deadly sin. Yet pride is not falsehood, but the true image of every man. It is the very eye of his soul. Moreover, as a philosopher, you must know very well that whoever attaches himself to a master must make submission his business. A colonel is a big man; but when the general speaks it is for the colonel to listen; and if the general says to him, 'Go through fire,' or, 'Go through water,' he must submit and obey. If a man who has been born poor would drink and make merry, he must first renounce his pride. When you wanted to choose a career, I left you a fine choice. You had only to please yourself. You might have become a clergyman, like myself, in the usual way. True, we cook with water and do not throw away our crusts, and when we wear out our clothes we turn them, and so wear them again; but, on the other hand, the clergyman always sits in the front seat, and gives place to no son of man, unless it be the Son of God. But this haughty poverty seemingly is not to your liking. You say to yourself, 'Dat Galerius opes, dat Justinianus honores.' Well, you have got what you sought. Wealth, a life of comfort is in your hands. Galerius has given them to you. He who wants to wear a bedizened hat must be prepared to doff it right and left—to high and low. I need take off my capillum to no man. Why do you oscillate like a pendulum? A man must make his own position. If you don't like subjection, turn back, go to Göttingen, go through a whole course of theology—then come here, be my curate, and then perhaps in ten years' time you may get a living somewhere. But if you want to live in splendour and comfort, go back to the carriage, and sit on the back seat face to face with your lord and master, for that is your proper place."
Heinrich, very red in the face, went back to the slowly lumbering carriage, and again took his place in it opposite his youthful comrade. And thus they went to the town together, and right into the castle.
CHAPTER IV
THE CDT-TABLE AND THE CHALLENGING GLOVES
The coming home of young Squire Casimir was celebrated with great solemnity at the palace of the Starosta. The thunder of the mortars, the roll of the drums, the blare of the trumpets, announced to the thronging crowd the moment when the parade carriage rolled over the drawbridge. In front of the gate stood a guard of honour of the assembled heydukes, under the command of the Castellan. The Starosta himself had come as far as the hall door to welcome his son.
Casimir, according to ancient custom, received his father's greeting on bended knee, and kissed his uplifted hand, whereupon the old man, thrusting his powerful palm into his son's well-thatched poll, lugged him to his feet by his hair, and, slapping his face gently at the same time, said: "Come, come, you have put on a mighty fine fleece since last I saw you." But immediately afterwards he kissed him on both cheeks, and the kiss obliterated the slap.
Heinrich got neither kisses nor slaps, he simply didn't count at all.
A hundred guests were in the large hall, all of them prominent noblemen and priests, and all of them embraced the young gentleman in turn, while Heinrich they only patted on the shoulder, and while every one said: "Vitam pana!"[16] to the nobleman's son, they only greeted the son of the pastor with: "Badz zdrow!"[17]