And now let us see what became of Aranka and Feriz.
At last they were beneath one roof together—this roof was a little better than the roof of a tomb, but not much, for it was the roof of a dungeon. They could only see each other through a narrow little window, but even this did them good. They were able to press each other's hands through the iron bars, console each other, and talk of their coming joys and boundless happiness. The walls of the prison were so narrow, so damp, the narrow opening scarce admitted the light of day; but when the youth began to talk of his native land, Damascus, rich in roses, of palm-trees waving in the breeze, of warm sunny skies, where the housetops were planted with flowers, and the evergreens give a shade against the ever-burning sun, at such times the girl forgot her dungeon and fancied she was among the rose-groves of Damascus, and when the youth spoke of the future she forgot the rose-groves of Damascus and fancied she was in heaven.
Days and days passed since the departure of Dame Béldi, and there were no news of her. Every day the spirits of the girl declined, every evening she parted more and more sadly with Feriz, and every morning he found it more and more difficult to comfort her. And now with great consternation the youth began to perceive that the girl was very pale, the colour of life began to fade from her round, rosy cheeks, and there was something new in the brightness of her eyes—it was no earthly light there which made him tremble as he gazed upon her. The youth durst not ask her: "What is the matter?" But the girl said to him:
"Oh, Feriz! I am dying here; I shall never see your smiling skies."
"I would rather see the sky black than thee dead."
"The sky will smile again, but I never shall. I feel something within me which makes my heart's blood flow languidly, and at night I see my dead kinsfolk, and walk with them in unknown regions which I never saw before, and which appear before me so vividly that I could describe every house and every bush by itself."
"That signifies that thou wilt visit unknown regions with me."
"Oh, Feriz, I no longer feel any pleasure in those lands of yours, nor am I glad when I think of your palms, and as often as I see you darkness descends upon my soul, for I feel that I am going to leave you."
"Speak not so, joy of my existence. Grieve not God with thy words, for God is afflicted when the innocent complain."
"I am not complaining. I go from a bad into a good world, and there I shall see you in my dreams."
"But if this bad world should become better, and you lived happily in it?"
Aranka sadly shook her pretty, angelic head.
"That it is not necessary for this world to grow better you can see from the fact that the good must die while the wicked live a long time. God seeks out those that love Him, and takes them unto Himself, for He will not let them suffer long."
Feriz shuddered. What could have put these solemn, melancholy thoughts into the heart of this girl, this child? It was the approach of Death, the worm-bitten fruit ripens more quickly than the rest. Slow, creeping Death had seized upon the childish mind and made it speak like the aged—and sad it was to listen to its words.
"Cheer up," said Feriz, with an effort, skimming with his lips the girl's white hand which she thrust out to him through the bars. "Thy mother will soon be here; thy father will sit on the throne of the Prince as he deserves; thou wilt be a Princess, and I will strive and struggle till I am high enough to sue for thee, and then I will lay my glory and renown at thy feet, and thou shalt be my bride, my queen, my guardian angel."
The girl shook her head sorrowfully.
"And we will walk along by the banks of the quiet streams in those ancient lands where not craft but valour rules, where the wise are only learned in the courses of the stars and the healing virtues of the plants, not in the science of the rise and fall of kingdoms. There from the window of my breeze-blown kiosk, which is built on the slopes of Lebanon, thou wilt view the whole region round about. Above, the shepherds kindle their fires in the blackness of the cedar forests; below, the mountain stream runs murmuring along, and all round about us the nightingale is singing, and what he singeth is the happiness of love. In the far distance thou seest the mirror of the great sea, and the white-sailed pleasure boat rocks to and fro on the transparent becalmed billows, and the moon looks down upon the limitless mirror, and a fair maiden sits in the pleasure-boat, and at her feet lies a youth, and both of them are silent, only a throbbing heart is speaking, and it speaks of the happiness of love."
A couple of tears dropped from the eyes of the girl—the future was so seductive—and that picture, that fair country, she did not seem to be regarding them from the earth, it seemed to her as if she was looking down upon them from the sky and regretting that she was forced to leave—the beautiful world.
Aranka adored her father. The man who was respected for his virtues by a whole kingdom was the highest ideal of his child. When Feriz began to speak of him, the girl's face brightened, and at the recital of his heroic deeds the tears dried up in her flashing eyes; and when the youth told her how the great patriot would return, glorious and powerful, supported by the mightiest of monarchs, and how he would throw open the prison doors of his children and be parted from them no more, then a smile would gradually transfigure the girl's face, and she would feel happy. And then she would steal apart into her own dungeon, and kneel down before her bed, and pray ardently that she might see her father soon, very soon.
And she was to see him before very long.
Paul Béldi's body was now six feet deep in the ground, and his soul a star farther off in the sky—to see him one must go to him.
Paler and paler she became every day, her waking moments were scarcely different from her dreams, and her dreams from her waking moments. The provost-marshal now had compassion on the withered flower, and allowed it on the sunny afternoons to walk about on the bastions and breathe the fresh air. But neither moonlight nor fresh air could cure her now.
Frequently she would take the hand of Feriz Beg and press it to her forehead. "See how it burns, just like fire! Oh, if only I might live till my father comes. How he would grieve for me!"
Feriz Beg saw her wither from day to day, and still there was no sign of liberty. The youth used frequently to walk about the courtyard half a day at a time, like a lion in a cage, beating the walls with his forehead at the thought that that for which he had been striving his whole life long, and the possession whereof was the final goal of his existence, was drawing nearer and nearer to Death every hour, and no human power could hold it back!
The wife of the provost-marshal, a good, true woman, nursed the rapidly declining girl. Medical science was then of very small account in Transylvania; the sick had resort to well-known herbs and domestic remedies based on the experience of the aged; they trusted for the most part to our blessed mother Nature and the mercy of God.
The worthy woman did all she could, but her honest heart told her that the arrival of Aranka's father, and the sooner the better, would do more good than all her remedies. That would transform the invalid, and joy would give her back her failing vital energy.
Feriz Beg had not been able to speak to Aranka for two days; the girl had suffered greatly during the night, and Feriz was condemned to listen to the moaning of his beloved, and to hear her in the delirium of fever through the prison windows without being able to go to her, without being able to wipe the sweat from her forehead, or put a glass of cold water to her lips, or whisper to her words of comfort, and had to be content with knowing that she was with those who carefully nursed her.
Oh, it is not to the dying that death is most bitter.
By the morning the fever left her. The rising sun was just beginning to shine through the narrow round window and the sick girl begged to be carried out into the open air and the warm morning sunshine. She was no longer able to walk by herself, and they carried her out on to the bastions in an arm-chair.
It was a beautiful autumn morning, a sort of transparent light rested upon the whole region, giving a pale lilac blue to the sunlit scene. Where the road wound down from the Szekler hills a light cloud of dust was visible in the morning vapour; it seemed to be coming from the direction of Szamosújvár.
"Ah! there is my mother coming!" whispered Aranka, with a smiling face.
The young Turk held his hand before his face and fixed his eagle eyes in that direction; and when for a moment the breeze swept the dust off the road, and a carriage on springs drawn by five horses appeared, he exclaimed with a beating heart:
"Yes, that is indeed the carriage in which they took away thy mother."
Aranka was dumb with joy and surprise; she could not speak a word, she only squeezed Feriz Beg's hands and fixed her tearful eyes upon him with a grateful look.
The carriage seemed to be rapidly approaching. "That is how people hasten who have something joyful to say," thought Feriz, and then he began to fear less boundless joy might injure the life of his darling.
Soon the carriage arrived in front of the fortress and rumbled noisily over the drawbridge. Aranka, supported by the arm of Feriz, descended into the courtyard. They pressed onward to meet the carriage, and the smile upon her pallid face was so melancholy.
The glass door of the carriage was opened, and who should come out but Kucsuk Pasha.
There was nothing encouraging in his look; he said not a word either to his son or to the girl who clung to him, but the castellan was standing hard by, and he beckoned to him.
"In the carriage," said Kucsuk, "is the prisoner for whom I left my son as an hostage; take her back, and look well after her, for she is very ill."
Dame Béldi lay in the carriage unconscious, motionless.
Aranka, paler than ever and trembling all over, asked:
"Where is my father?"
Kucsuk Pasha would have spoken, but tears came instead of words and ran down his manly face; silently he raised his hand, pointed upwards, and said, in a scarce audible voice: "In Heaven!"
The gentle girl, like a plucked flower, collapsed at these words. Feriz Beg caught her moaning in his arms, she raised her eyes, a long sigh escaped her lips, then her beautiful lips drooped, her beautiful eyes closed, and all was over.
The beloved maiden had gone to her father in Heaven.
For some time past God's marvels had been multiplied over Transylvania. No longer were they disquieting rumours which popular agitators invented for the disturbance of the public peace, but extraordinary natural phenomena whose rapid sequence stirred the heart of even the coldest sceptic.
One summer morning at dawn, after a clear night, an unusually thick heavy mist descended upon the earth, which only dispersed in the afternoon, spread over the whole sky in the shape of an endless black cloud, and there remained like a heavy motionless curtain. Not a drop of water fell from it, and at noonday in the houses it was impossible to see anything without a candle.
Towards evening every bird became silent, the flowers closed their calices, the leaves of the trees hung limply down. The people walking about outside began to complain of a stifling cough, and from that time forth the germs of every disease antagonistic to nature were seen in every herb, in every fruit; even the water of the streams was corrupted. The hot blood of man, the earth itself was infected by a kind of epidemic, so that weeds never seen before sprang up and ruined the richest crops, and the strongest oaks of the forest withered beneath the assault of grey blight and funguses, and the good black soil of the fruitful arable land was covered with a hideous green mould.
For three whole days the sky did not clear. On the evening of the fourth day the stifling stillness was followed by a frightful hurricane, which tore off the roofs of the houses, wrenched the stars and crosses from the steeples of the churches, swept up the dust from the high-roads, caused such a darkness that it was impossible to see, and bursting open the willow trees, which had just begun to bloom, drove the red pollen before it in clouds, so that when the first big rain-drops began to fall they left behind them blood-red traces on the white walls of the houses. "It is raining blood from Heaven!" was the terrified cry. Not long afterwards came the cracking thunderbolts flashing and flaming as if they would flog the earth with a thousand fiery whips, while one perpendicular flash of lightning plumped right down into the middle of the town, shaking the earth with its cracking concussion, so that everyone believed the hour of judgment was at hand.
Nevertheless the storm had scattered the clouds, and by eventide the sky had cleared, and lo! before the eyes of the gaping multitude a gigantic comet stood in the firmament, all the more startling as nobody had been aware of its proximity because for three days the sky had been blotted out by clouds.
The nucleus of the comet stood just over the place where the sun had gone down, and the blood-red light of evening was not sufficient to dim the brightness of the lurid star; it appeared as if it had just slain the sun and was now bathing in its blood.
The comet was so long that it seemed to stretch across two-thirds of the firmament, and the end of it bulged out broadly like a Turkish scimitar.
"The sword of God!" whispered the people with instinctive fear.
For two weeks this phenomenon stood in the sky, rising late one day and early the next. Sometimes it appeared with the bright sun, and in the solar brightness it looked like a huge streak of blue enamel in the sky and spread around it a sort of febrile pallor as if the atmosphere itself were sick: on bright afternoons the sun could be regarded with the naked eye.
The people were in fear and terror at this extraordinary phenomenon, and when the blind masses are in an unconscious panic then a storm is close at hand, then they are capable of anything to escape from their fear.
In those days the priests of every faith could give strange testimony of the general consternation which prevailed in Transylvania. The churches were kept open all day long, and the indefatigable curers of souls spoke words of consolation to the assembled hosts of the faithful. Magyari, the Prince's chaplain, preached four sermons every day in the cathedral, which was so crowded at such times that half the people could not get in at all but remained standing outside the doors.
One evening the church was so filled with faithful worshippers that the very steps were covered with them, and all sorts of Klausenberg burgesses intermingled with travelling Szeklers in a group before the principal door, and after the hymn was finished they clapped to their clasped psalm-books and began to talk to each other while the sermon was going on inside.
"We live in evil times," said an old master-tanner, shaking his big cap.
"We can say a word about that too," interrupted a Szekler, who was up in town about a law-suit, and who seized the opportunity of saying what he knew because he had come from far.
"Then you also have seen the sword of God?" inquired a young man.
"Not only have we seen it, my little brother, but we have felt it also. Not a single evening do we lay down to rest without reciting the prayers for the dead and dying, and scarce a night passes but what we see the sky a fiery red colour, either on the right hand or to the left."
"What would that be?"
"Some village or town burning to ashes. They say the whole kingdom is full of destroying angels; one never knows whose roof will be fired over his head next."
"God and all good spirits guard us from it."
"We hear all sorts of evil reports," said a gingerbread baker. "Yesterday I was talking to a Wallachian woman whose husband was faring on the Járas-water on a raft taking cheese to Yorda. He was not a day's journey from his home when the Járas turned, began to flow upwards, and took the Wallachian back to his house from which he had started."
A listening clergyman here explained the matter by saying that the Aranyos, into which the Járas flows, was greatly flooded just then, and it was its overflow which filled up the Járas; in fact it was Divine Providence which brought the Wallachian back, for if he had been able to go on farther, the Tartars would certainly have fallen upon him and cut him to pieces.
"I have experienced everything in my time," said the oldest of the burgesses, "war, plague, flood and pestilence, but there's only one thing I am afraid of, and that is earthquake, for a man cannot even go to church to pray against that."
At that moment the preacher in the church began to speak so loudly that those standing outside could hear his words, and, growing suddenly silent, they pressed nearer to the door of the church to hear what he was saying.
The right rev. Magyari was trouncing the gentlemen present unmercifully: "God prepares to war against you, for ye also are preparing to war against Him. You have broken the peace ye swore to observe right and left, and ye shall have what you want, war without and war within, so that ye may be constrained to say: 'Enough, enough, O Lord!' and ye shall not see the end of what you have so foolishly begun."
Magyari already knew that Teleki, at the Diet of Szamosújvár, had announced the impending war.
Just at this very time two men of the patrician order in sable kalpags were seen approaching, in whom the Klausenbergers at once recognised Michael Teleki and Ladislaus Vajda, and so far as they were able they made room for them to get into the church through the crowd; but the Szekler did not recognise either of them, and when Ladislaus Vajda very haughtily shoved him aside with his elbows, he turned upon him and said:
"Softly, softly, sir! This is the house of God, not the house of a great lord. Here I am just as good a man as you are."
Those standing beside him tried to pull him aside, but it is the peculiarity of the Szeklers that they grow more furious than ever when people try to pacify them; and on perceiving that Ladislaus Vajda, unable to make his way through the throng, began to look about him to see how he best could get to his seat, the Szekler cried in front of him:
"Cannot you let these two gentlemen get into the church? don't you see that the lesson is meant for them?"
Teleki meanwhile had forced his way just over the threshold, and taking off his kalpag, exposed his bald, defenceless head in the sight of all the people, with his face turned in the direction indicated by the boisterous Szekler.
Magyari continued his fulminating discourse from the pulpit.
"Nobody dare speak against you now, for your words are very thunderbolts and strike down those with whom you are angry—nay, rather, men bow the knee before you and say, 'Your Excellency! Your Excellency!' but the judgment of the Lord shall descend upon you, the Lord will slay you, and then men will point the finger of scorn at you and say: 'That is the consort of the accursed one who betrayed his country!—these are the children of that godless man!' And your descendants will blush to bear the shameful name you have left them, for then the tongue of every man will wag in his mouth against you, and they will cry after your posterity: 'It was the father of those fellows who betrayed Transylvania and plunged us into slime from which we cannot now withdraw our feet' ..."
"Come away, your Excellency!" said Ladislaus Vajda to Teleki, whom the parson seemed to have seen, for he turned straight towards him as he spoke.
"What are you thinking of?" Teleki whispered back; "the parson is speaking the truth, but it doesn't matter."
"Whither would ye go, ye senseless vacillators!" continued Magyari, "who empowered you to make the men of Transylvania fugitives, their wives widows, and their children orphans? Verily I say to you, ye shall fare like the camel who went to Jupiter for horns and got shorn of his ears instead."
"It may be so," said Teleki to Vajda, "but we shall pursue our course all the same."
The parson saw that the Minister of State was paying attention to his discourse, so he wrinkled his forehead, and thus proceeded:
"When King Louis perished on the field of Mohács, the Turkish Emperor had the dead body brought before him, and recognising at the same time the corpse of an evil Hungarian politician lying there, he struck off its head with his sword, and said: 'If thou hadst not been there, thou dog! this honest child-king would not be lying dead here.' God grant that a foreign nation may not so deal with you."
Teleki scratched his head, and whispered:
"It may happen to me likewise, but that makes no difference."
Shortly afterwards another hymn was sung, the two magnates put on their kalpags and withdrew, and the emerging crowd of people flowed along all around them, among whom the Szekler, as recently mentioned, followed hard upon the heels of the two gentlemen with singular persistency, lauding to the skies before everyone, in a loud voice, the sermon he had just heard, so as to insult the two gentlemen walking in front of him as much as possible.
"That was something like a sermon," he cried, "that is just how our masters ought to have their heads washed—without too much soap. And quite right too! Why saddle the realm with war at all? Why should Transylvania put on a mustard plaster because Hungary has a pain in its stomach? What has all this coming and going of foreigners to do with us? Why should we poor Transylvanians suffer for the sake of the lean foreigners among us?"
Ladislaus Vajda could put up with this no longer, and turning round, shouted at the Szekler:
"Keep your distance, you rascal, speak like a man at any rate; don't bark here like some mad beast when it sees a better man than itself."
At these words the Szekler thrust his neck forward, stuck his face beneath the very nose of the gentleman who had spoken to him, looked him straight in the face with bright eyes that pricked like pins, and said, twisting his moustaches fiercely:
"Don't you try to fix any of your bastard names on me, sir, for if I go home for my sword I will pretty soon make you a present of a head, and that head shall be your own."
Ladislaus Vajda would have made some reply, but Teleki pulled him by the arm and dragged him away.
"Nothing aggravates your Excellency," said the offended gentleman.
"Let him growl, he'll be all the better soldier if we do have war; never quarrel with a Szekler, my friend, for he always has a greater respect for his own head than for anyone else's."
And so the two gentlemen disappeared through the gates of the Prince's palace.
The Prince himself was present at this sermon, and it produced this much impression that he enjoined a fast upon his whole household and then went to bed. In the night, however, he awoke repeatedly, and had so many tormenting visions that he woke up all his pages, and it was even necessary at last to send for the Princess herself, and only then did he become a little calmer when she appeared at his bedside; in fact, he kept her with him till dawn of day, continually telling her all sorts of sad and painful things so that the Princess's cries of horror could be heard through the door.
In the morning, after the Princess had retired to her own apartments, she immediately summoned to her presence Michael Teleki, who, living at that time at the Prince's court as if it were his own home, was not very long in making his appearance, and obeyed the command to be seated with as much cheerful alacrity as if he had been asked to sit down at a banquet, though well aware that a bitter cup had been prepared for him which he must drain to the dregs.
"Sir," said the Princess, "Apafi was very ill last night."
"That was owing to the fast, he isn't used to such practices. Generally, he has a good supper, and if he departs from his usual course of life he is bound to sleep badly. Bad dreams plague an empty stomach just as much as an overburdened one."
"And how about an overburdened conscience, sir? I have spent the whole night at his bedside, only this instant have I quitted him; he would not let me leave him, he pressed my hand continually, and he talked, soberly and wide-awake, of things which I should have thought could only have been talked about in the delirium of typhus. He said that that night he had stood before the judgment-seat of God, before a great table—which was so long that he could not see the end of it—and at this table sat the accusing witnesses, first of all Denis Banfy, and then Béldi, Dame Béldi and their daughter, and eldest son, who died in prison; Kepi, too, was there, and young Kornis, and old John Bethlen, and the rest of them; all these familiar faces were before him, and as tremblingly he approached the throne of God they all fixed their eyes upon him and pointed their fingers at him. Sir, it was a terrible picture."
"Does your Highness fancy that I am an interpreter of dreams?" asked Teleki maliciously.
"Sir, this is more than a dream—it is a vision, a revelation."
"It may be so; the souls of the gentlemen enumerated are, no doubt, in Heaven, and it is possible that countless other souls will follow them thither."
"And will the soul that shed their blood ascend thither too?"
"Will your Highness deign to speak quite plainly—I suppose you mean me? Of course, I am the cause of all the evils of Transylvania. Till I came upon the scene, none but lamb-like men inhabited this state, in whose veins flowed milk and honey instead of blood! King Sigismund, Bethlen, Bocskai, George Rákóczy, for instance! Under them only some fifty or sixty thousand men lost their lives in their party feuds and ambitious struggles! Fine fellows, every one of them of course, everyone calls them great patriots. But I, whose sword has never aimed at a self-sought crown, I, who am animated by a great and mighty thought, a sublime idea, I am a murderer, and responsible not only for those who have fallen in battle, but also for those who have died quietly in their beds, if they were not my good friends."
"There was a time, sir, when you used every effort to prevent Transylvania from going to war."
"That was the very time when your Highness pleaded before the Prince for war in the name of your exiled Hungarian kinsfolk. Other times, other men."
"I knew not then that such a desire would lead to the ruin of so many great and honourable men."
"You feared war, and yet you fanned it. He who resists a snow-storm is swept away. Not the fate of men alone, but the fate of kingdoms also is here in question. Apafi may console himself with the reflection that God regards us both as far too petty instruments to lay upon our souls what He Himself has decreed in the fullness of time, and what will and must happen in spite of us, for the weeping and mourning which we listen to here is also heard in Heaven. The mottoes of our escutcheons go very well together. Apafi's is 'Fata viam inveniunt,' mine is 'Gutta cavat lapidem.' Let us trust ourselves to our mottoes."
The Princess, with folded arms, gazed out of the window and remained in a brown study for some time. And now, as though her thoughts were wandering far away, she suddenly sighed: "Ah! this Béldi family so unhappily ruined, and how many more must be ruined likewise!"
"Your Highness!" rejoined the Minister, without moving a muscle of his face, "when, in time of drought, we pray for rain the whole day, does anybody inquire what will become of the poor travellers who may be caught in the downpour? Yet it may well happen that some of them may take a chill and die in consequence."
"I don't grasp the metaphor."
"Well, the whole Principality is now praying for rain—a rain of blood, I admit—and there is every sign that God will grant it. I do not mean those signs and wonders in which the common folks believe, but those signs of the times which rivet the attention of thinking men. Formerly there was a large party in Transylvania which had engaged to uphold an indolent peace, and which had so many ties, amongst the leading men both of the Kaiser and the Sultan, that Denis Banfy could at one time boldly tell me to my face that that Party was a hand with a hundred fingers, which could squeeze everything it laid hold of like a sponge. And lo! the fingers have all dropped off one by one. Denis Banfy has perished—they say I killed him. Paul Béldi has died in prison—they say I have poisoned him. God hath called John Bethlen also to Himself. Kapi has died. The boldest of my enemies, Gabriel Kornis, has also died in the flower of his youth—naturally they attribute his death to me likewise. All those, too, who opposed war in the Diván have disappeared one by one. Kucsuk Pasha has been shot down by a bullet at Lippa. Kiuprile Pasha has been stifled by his own fat; and the youngest of the Viziers, Feriz Beg, has gone mad.
"Gone mad!" cried the Princess, covering her face with her hands; "that noble, worthy youth who loved Transylvania so well?"
"Do you not see the hand of God in all this?" asked the Minister.
"No, sir," said the Princess, rising with a face full of sadness and approaching the Minister so as to look him straight in the face while she spoke to him, "it is your hand that I see everywhere. Denis Banfy perished, but it was you who had him beheaded. Béldi is dead, but it was you who drove him to despair. It was you, too, who threw his family into prison, and only let them out when the foul air had poured a deadly sickness into their blood. And Feriz Beg has gone mad because he loved Béldi's daughter, and she is dead."
"Very well, your Highness, let it be so," replied the imperturbable Minister. "To attribute to me the direction of destiny is praise indeed. Believe, then, that everything which happens in the council chamber of this realm and in the heart of its members derives from me. I'll be responsible. And if your Highness believes that that flaming comet, which they call the Sword of God, is also in my hand—why—be it so! I will hurl it forth, and strike the earth with it so that all its hinges shall be out of joint."
At that very moment the palace trembled to its very foundations.
The Princess leaped to her feet, shrieking.
"Ah! what was that?" she asked, as pale as death.
"It was an earthquake, madame," replied Teleki with amazing calmness. "There is nothing to be afraid of, the palace has very strong vaults; but if you are afraid, stand just beneath the doorway, that cannot fall."
On recovering from her first alarm the Princess quickly regained her presence of mind.
"God preserve us! I must hasten to the Prince. Will not you come too?"
"I'll remain here," replied Teleki coolly. "We are in the hands of God wherever we may be, and when He calls me to Him I will account to Him for all that I have done."
The Princess ran along the winding corridor, and, finding her husband, took him down with her into the garden.
It was terrible to see from the outside how the vast building moved and twisted beneath the sinuous motion of the earth; every moment one might fear it would fall to pieces.
The Prince asked where Teleki was; the Princess said she had left him in her apartments.
"We must go for him this instant!" cried the Prince, but amongst all the trembling faces around him he could find none to listen to his words, for a man who fears nothing else is a coward in the presence of an earthquake.
Meanwhile the Minister was sitting quietly at a writing-table and writing a letter to Kara Mustafa, who had taken the place of the dead Kiuprile. He was a great warrior and the Sultan's right hand, who not long before had been invited by the Cossacks to help them against the Poles, which he did very thoroughly, first of all ravaging numerous Polish towns, and then, turning against his confederate Cossacks, he cut down a few hundred thousands of them and led thirty thousand more into captivity.
To him Teleki wrote for assistance for the Hungarians.
Every bit of furniture was shaking and tottering around him, the windows rattled noisily as if shaken by an ague, the very chair on which he sat rocked to and fro beneath him, and the writing-table bobbed up and down beneath his hand so that the pen ran away from the paper; but for all that he finished his letter, and when he came to the end of it he wrote at the bottom in firm characters:
"Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinæ!"
Mustafa puzzled his brains considerably when he came to that part of the letter containing the verse which had nothing to do with the text, which the Minister, under the influence of an iron will struggling against terror, had written there almost involuntarily.
When the menacing peril had passed, and the pages had returned to the palace, he turned to them reproachfully with the sealed letter in his hand.
"Where have you been? Not one of you can be found when you are wanted. Take this letter at once, with an escort of two mounted drabants, to Varna, for the Grand Vizier."
And then he began to walk up and down the room as if nothing had happened.
In the most secret chamber of the Diván were assembled the Viziers for an important consultation. The impending war was the subject of their grave deliberations. For as Mohammed had said, there ought to be one God in Heaven and one Lord on earth, so many of the Faithful believed that the time for the accomplishment of this axiom had now arrived.
Those wise men of the empire, those honourable counsellors, Kucsuk and Kiuprile, were dead. Kara Mustafa, an arrogant, self-confidant man, directed the mind of the Diván, and everyone followed his lead.
The Sultan himself was present, a handsome man with regular features, but with an expression of lassitude and exhaustion. During the whole consultation he never uttered a word nor moved a muscle of his face; he sat there like a corpse.
One by one the ambassadors of the Foreign Powers were admitted. The orator of Louis XIV. declared that the French King was about to attack the Kaiser with all his forces; if the Sultan would also rise up against him, he would be able to seize not only all Hungary but Vienna likewise.
The Sultan was silent. The Grand Vizier, answering for him, replied that Hungary had long since belonged to the Sultan, and no doubt Vienna and Poland would shortly share the same fate. The Sultan could only suffer tributary kings on the earth.
The ambassador drew a somewhat wry face at these words, reflecting that France also was on the earth; then he withdrew.
After him came the envoys of Emeric Tököly, offering the blood and the swords of the Hungarian malcontents to the Sultan if he would help them to win back Hungary.
This time the Sultan replied instead of Mustafa.
"The Grand Seignior greets his servants, and will be gracious to them if they will help him to win back Hungary."
The envoys noticed that their words had ingeniously been twisted, but as they also had their own arrière-pensées in regard to the Turks, they only looked at each other with a smile and withdrew.
Then came the Transylvanian embassy—gentle, mild-looking men, whose orator delivered an extraordinarily florid discourse. His Highness, Michael Apafi, they said, and all the estates of Transylvania, were ready to draw their swords for the glory of the Grand Seignior and invade Hungary.
Mustafa replied:
"The Grand Seignior permits you to help your comrades in Hungary."
The orator would like to have heard something different—for example, that the crown of Hungary was reserved for Michael Apafi, the dignity of Palatine for Teleki, etc., etc., and there he stood scratching his ear till the Grand Vizier told him he might go.
Ha, ha! the Turkish policy was written in Turkish.
After the foreign envoys came the messengers from the various pashas and commandants in Hungary, who brought terrible tidings of raids, incursions, and outrages on the part of the Magyar population against the Turks. The Grand Vizier exclaimed angrily at every fresh report, only the Sultan was silent. Last of all came the ulemas.
On their decisions everything depended.
Very solemnly they appeared before the Diván. First of all advanced the Chief Mufti in a long mantle reaching to his heels, and with a large beehive-shaped hat upon his head; his white beard reached to his girdle. After him came two imams, one of whom carried a large document in a velvet case, whose pendant seal swung to and fro beneath its long golden cord; the other bent beneath the weight of an enormous book—it was the Alkoran.
The Alkoran is a very nice large book, larger than our corpus juris of former days, and in it may be found everything which everyone requires: accusatory, condemnatory, and absolvatory texts for one and the same thing.
The Mufti presented the Alkoran to the Sultan and all the Viziers in turn, and each one of them kissed it with deep reverence; then he beckoned to one of the imams to kneel down on a stool before the Diván and remain there resting on his hands and knees, and placing the Koran on his back, began to select expressly marked texts.
For seventy years he had thoroughly studied the sacred volume, and could say that he had read it through seven hundred and ninety-three times. He, therefore, knew all its secrets, and could turn at once to the leaf on which the text he wanted to read aloud could be found.
"The Alkoran saith," he read with unctuous devotion, "'the knot which hath been tied in the name of Allah the hand of Allah can unloose!' The Alkoran saith moreover: 'Wherever we may be, and whatever we may be, everywhere we are all of us in the hand of Allah.' Therefore this treaty of peace is also in the hand of Allah, and the hand of Allah can unloose everything. Furthermore, the Alkoran saith: 'If any among thy suffering father's children implore help from thee, answer him not: come to me to-morrow, for my vow forbids me to rise up to-day; or, if any ask an alms of thee answer him not: to-day it cannot be, for my vow forbids me to touch money; or, if anyone beg thee to slay someone, answer him not: to-morrow I will help thee, for my vow forbids me to draw the sword to-day; verily the observance of thy vow will be a greater sin to thee than its violation.' Moreover, thus saith the Alkoran: 'The happiness of the nations is the first duty of the rulers of the earth, yet the glory of Allah comes before it.' And finally it is written: 'Whoso formeth a league with the infidel bindeth himself to wage war upon Allah, yet vainly do the nations of the earth bind themselves together that they may live long, for let Allah send his breath upon them and more of them are destroyed in one day than in ten years of warfare: kings and beggars—it is all one.'"
At each fresh sentence the viziers and the ulemas bowed their heads to the ground. Mustafa could not restrain a blood-thirsty smile, which distorted his face more and more at each fresh sentence, and at the last word, with a fanatical outburst, he threw off the mask altogether, and with a howl of joy kissed repeatedly the hem of the Chief Mufti's mantle.
The Mufti then unclasped the velvet case which contained the treaty of peace, and drawing forth the parchment, which was folded fourfold, he unfolded it with great ceremony, and placing it in the hands of the second imam that he might hold it spread open at both ends, he exhibited the document to the viziers.
It was a long and beautiful script. The initial letter was as big as a painted castle and wreathed around with a pattern of birds and flowers. The whole of the first line of it was in ultramarine letters, the other lines much smaller on a gradually diminishing scale, and whenever the name of Allah occurred, it was written in letters of gold. The Sultan's name was always in red, the Kaiser's in bright green letters. At the foot of it was the fantastic flourish which passed for the Sultan's signature, which he would never have been able to write, but which was always engraved on the signet ring which he wore on his finger.
"Lo! here is the treaty," said the Mufti, pointing to the document, "from which, by the command of Allah, I will now wash off the writing."
Thereupon he drew across the document a large brush which he had previously dipped into a large basin of water in which sundry chemicals had been dissolved, and suddenly the writing began to fade away, the Sultan's name written in red letters disappeared instantly from the parchment, then the lines written in black ink visibly grew dimmer. The Kaiser's name written in bright green letters resisted more obstinately, but at last these also vanished utterly, and nothing more remained on the white parchment but the name of God written in letters of gold—the corrosive acid was powerless against that.
Deep silence prevailed in the Diván, every eye was fixed with pious attention on the bleaching script.
Then, seizing a drawn sword, the Mufti raised it aloft and said:
"Having wiped away the writing which cast dishonour on the name of Allah, I now cut this document in four pieces with the point of my sword."
And speaking thus, and while the imam stretched the parchment out with both hands, the Mufti cut it into four pieces with the sword he held in his hand, and placing the fragments in a pan, filled it up with naptha from a little crystal flask.
"Lo! now I burn thee before the face of Allah!"
Then he passed an ignited wax taper over the pan, whereupon the naptha instantly burst into flame, and the fragments of the torn document were hidden by the blue fire and the white smoke. Presently the flame turned to red, the smoke subsided, and the parchment was burnt to ashes.
"And now I scatter thy ashes that thou mayst be dispersed to nothing," said the Mufti; and, taking the ashes, he flung them out of the palace window. The burnt paper rags, like black butterflies, descended gently through the air and were cast by the wind into the Bosphorus below.
No sooner was this accomplished than the pashas and viziers all leaped from their seats and drew their swords, swearing with great enthusiasm by the beard of the Prophet that they would not return their weapons to their sheaths till the crescent should shine on the top of the tower of the Church of St. Stephen at Vienna.
At that moment the door-curtains were thrust aside, and into the Diván rushed—Feriz Beg.
The face of the youth was scarce recognisable, his turban was awry upon his forehead, his eyes, full of dull melancholy, stared stonily in front of him, his dress was untidy and dishevelled, his sword was girded to his side, but its handle was broken. Nobody had prevented him from rushing through the numerous halls into the Diván, and when he entered the ulemas parted before him in holy horror. When the youth reached the middle of the room, he stood there glancing round upon the viziers with folded arms, just as if he were counting how many of them there were, one by one they all stood up before him—nay, even the Sultan did so, and awaited his words tremblingly.
Everyone in the East regards the insane with awe and reverence, and if a crazy fakir were to stop the greatest of the Caliphs in the way and say to him: "Dismount from thy horse, and change garments with me," he would not dare to offer any opposition, but would fulfil his desire, for a strange spirit is in the man and God has sent it.
How will it be then when the terrible spirit of madness descends upon such a valiant warrior, such a distinguished soldier as Feriz Beg, who, when only six-and-twenty, had fought a hundred triumphant battles, and frequently put to shame the grey beards with his wisdom. And lo! suddenly he goes mad, and stops people in the street, and speaks such words of terror to them that they cannot sleep after it.
The youth, with quiet, gentle eyes and a sorrowful countenance passes in review the faces of all who are present, and heartrending was the expression of deep unutterable anguish in his voice when he spoke.
"Pardon me, high and mighty lords, for appearing among you without an invitation—I who have now no business at all in the world anywhere. The world in which I lived is dead, it has withdrawn to Heaven far from me; all those who possessed my heart are now high above my head, and now, I have no heart and no feeling: neither love, nor valour, nor the desire of fame and glory; in my veins the blood flows backwards and forwards so that oftentimes I rush roaring against the walls round about me and tear carpets and pillows which have never offended me; and now again the blood stands still within me, my arteries do not beat at all, so that I lie stiff and staring like a dead man. I beg you all, ye high and mighty lords, who in a brief time will go to Paradise, to take a message from me thither."
The high lords listened horror-stricken to the calm way in which the youth uttered these words, and they saw each other's faces growing pale.
Feriz paid no attention to their horrified expressions.
"Tell to them whom I love, and with whom my heart is, to give me back my heart, for without it I am very poor. I perceive not the fragrance of the rose, wine is not sweet to my lips, neither fire nor the rays of the sun have any warmth, and the note of the bugle-horn and the neighing of my charger find no response in me. High and mighty lords, tell this to those who are above if I myself go not thither shortly."
There were present, besides Mustafa, Rezlán Pasha, Ajas Beg, Rifát Aga, Kara Ogli the Kapudan Pasha, and many more who promised themselves a long life.
The Grand Seignior had always made a particular favourite of Feriz, and he now addressed him in a gentle, fatherly voice.
"My dear son, go back home; my viziers are preparing to subdue the world with unconquerable armies. Go with them, in the din of battle thou wilt find again thy heroic heart and be cured of thy sickness."
An extraordinary smile passed across the face of Feriz, he waved aside the idea with his hand and bent his head forwards, which is a way the Turks have of expressing decided negation.
"This war cannot be a triumphant war, for men are the cause thereof. Allah will bring it to nought. Ye draw the sword at the invitation of murderers, deceivers, and traitors. I have broken the hilt of my own sword in order that I may not draw it forth. They have killed those whom I love, how can I fight in that army which was formed for them who were the occasion of the ruin of my beloved?"
At this thought the blood flew to the youth's face, the spirit of madness flamed up in his eyes, he rose to his full height before the Sultan, and he cried with a loud, audacious voice:
"Thou wilt lose the war for which thou dost now prepare, for thy viziers are incapable, thy soldiers are cowards, thy allies are traitors, thy wise men are fools, thy priests are hypocrites, and thou thyself art an oath-breaker."
Then, as if he were suddenly sorry of what he had said to the Sultan, he bent humbly over him and taking hold of the edge of his garment raised it up and kissed it—and then, regarding him with genuine sympathy, murmured softly:
"Poor Sultan!—so young, so young—and yet thou must die."
And thereupon, with hanging head, he turned away and prepared to go out. None stayed him.
On reaching the door, he fumbled for his sword, and perceiving when he touched it that the hilt was missing, he suddenly turned back again, and exclaimed in a low whisper:
"Think not that it will rust in its sheath. The time will come when I shall again draw it, and it will drink its fill of blood. When those who now urge us on to war shall turn against us, when those who now stand in line with us shall face us with hostile banners, then also will I return, though then ye will no longer be present. But ye shall look on from Paradise above. So it will be: ye shall look on ... Poor young Sultan!"
Having whispered these prophetic words, the mad youth withdrew, and the gentlemen in the Diván were so much disturbed by his words that, with faces bent to the earth, they prayed Allah that He would turn aside from them the evil prophesy and not suffer to be broken asunder the weapons they had drawn for the increase of His glory.
All the chief generals, all the border pashas, had received the Sultan's orders to gather their hosts together and lead them against the armies of the King of the Romans, and besiege the places which were the pretext of the rupture—to wit, the fortresses of Fülek, Böszörmény, and Nagy Kallá.
At the same time the Government of Transylvania also received permission to attack Hungary with its armies, as had already been decided at the Diet of Szamosújvár.
Vast preparations were everywhere made. The Magyar race is very hard to move to war, but once in a quarrel it does not waste very much time in splitting straws.
Teleki, too, had attained at last to the dream of his life and the object of all his endeavours, for which he had knowingly sacrificed his own peace of mind, and the lives of so many good patriots—he was the generalissimo of the armies of Transylvania.
The Hungarian exiles in Transylvania hailed him as their deliverer, and he saw himself a good big step nearer to the place of Esterházy—the place of Palatine of Hungary. And why not? Why should he not stand among the foremost statesmen of his age?
All the way to the camp at Fülek he was the object of flattery and congratulation; the Hungarians gathered in troops beneath his banner, colonels and captains belauded him. As for the worthy Prince, he did not show himself at all, but sat in his tent and read his books, and when he felt tired he took his watch to pieces and put it together again.
At Fülek the Transylvanian army joined the camp of Kara Mustafa.
Teleki dressed up the Prince in his best robes, and trotted with him and his suite to the tent of the Grand Vizier with growing pride when he heard the guards blow their trumpets at their approach, and the Grand Vizier as a special favour admitted them straightway to his presence, allowed them to kiss his hand, made the magnates sit down, and praised them for their zeal and fidelity, giving each of them a new caftan; and when they were thus nicely tricked out, he dismissed them with an escort of an aga, a dragoman, and twelve cavasses to see the whole Turkish camp to their hearts' content.
Teleki regarded this permission as a very good omen. Turkish generals are wont to be very sensitive on this point, and it is a great favour on their part when they allow foreigners to view their camps.
The dragoman took the Hungarian gentlemen everywhere. He told them which aga was encamped on this hill and which on that, how many soldiers made up a squadron of horse, and how many guns, and how many lances were in every company. He pointed out to them the long pavilion made of deal boards in which the gunpowder lay in big heaps, and gigantic cannon balls were piled up into pyramids, and round mortars covered with pitchy cloths, and gigantic culverines, and siege-guns, and iron howitzers lay on wooden rollers. The accumulated war material would have sufficed for the conquest of the world.
The gentlemen sightseers returned to their tents with the utmost satisfaction, and, overjoyed at what he had seen, the Prince gave a great banquet, to which all the Hungarian gentlemen in his army were also invited. The tables were placed beneath a quickly-improvised baldachin; and at the end of an excellent dinner the noble feasters began to make merry, everyone at length saw his long-deferred hopes on the point of fulfilment, and none more so than Michael Teleki.
One toast followed another, and the healths of the Prince and of Teleki were interwoven with the healths of everyone else present, so that worthy Apafi began to think that it would really be a very good thing if he were King of Hungary, while Teleki held his head as high as if he were already sitting in the seat of the Palatine.
Just when the revellers were at their merriest, a loud burst of martial music resounded from the plain outside, and a great din was audible as if the Turkish armies were saluting a Prince who had just arrived.
The merry gentry at once leaped from their seats and hurried to the entrance of the tent to see the ally who was received with such rejoicing, and a cry of amazement and consternation burst from their lips at the spectacle which met their eyes.
Emeric Tököly had arrived at the head of a host of ten thousand Magyars from Upper Hungary. His army consisted of splendid picked warriors on horseback, hussars in gold-braided dolmans, wolf-skin pelisses, and shakos with falcon feathers. Tököly himself rode at the head of his host with princely pomp; his escort consisted of the first magnates of Hungary, jewel-bedizened cavaliers in fur mantles trimmed with swansdown, among whom Tököly himself was only conspicuous by his manly beauty and princely distinction.
The face of Teleki darkened at the sight, while the faces of all who surrounded him were suddenly illuminated by an indescribable joy, and their enthusiasm burst forth in eljens of such penetrating enthusiasm at the sight of the young hero that Teleki felt himself near to fainting.
Ah! it was in a very different voice that they had recently cried "Viva!" to him, it was a very different sort of smile with which they had been wont to greet him.
Meanwhile Tököly had reached the front of the marshalled Turkish army, which was drawn up in two rows right up to the pavilion of the Grand Vizier, allowing the youth and his suite to pass through between them amidst a ceremonious abasement of their horse-tail banners. The young general had only passed half through their ranks when the Grand Vizier came to meet him in a state carriage drawn by six white horses.
From the hill on which Teleki stood he could see everything quite plainly.
On reaching the carriage of the Grand Vizier, Tököly leaped quickly from his horse, whereupon Kara Mustafa also descended from his carriage, and, hastening to the young general, embraced him and kissed him repeatedly on the forehead, made him take a seat in the carriage beside him, and thus conveyed him to his tent amidst joyful acclamations.
Teleki had to look on at all this! That was very different from the reception accorded to him and the Prince of Transylvania.
He looked around him—gladness, a radiant smile shone on every face. Oh! those smiles were so many dagger-thrusts in his heart!
In half an hour's time Tököly emerged from the tent of the Grand Vizier. His head was encircled by a diamond diadem which the Sultan had sent for all the way to Belgrade, and in his hand was a princely sceptre. When he remounted and galloped away close beside the tents of the Transylvanians, the Hungarians in Teleki's company could restrain themselves no longer, but rushed towards Tököly and covered his hands, his feet, his garments, with kisses, took him from his horse on to their shoulders, and carried him in their arms back to camp.
Teleki could endure the sight no more; he fled into his tent, and, throwing himself on his camp-bedstead, wept like a child.
The whole edifice which he had reared so industriously, so doggedly, amidst innumerable perils, during the arduous course of a long life—for which he had sacrificed relations, friends, and all the great and wise men of a kingdom, and pledged away the repose of his very soul—had suddenly collapsed at the appearance of a mere youth, whose only merit was the exaggerated fame of a few successful engagements! It was the heaviest blow he had ever staggered under. Oh! Fortune is indeed ingenious in her disappointments.
Evening came, and still Teleki had not quitted his tent. Then the Prince went to see him. Teleki wanted to hear nothing, but the Prince told him everything.
"Hearken, Mr. Michael Teleki! The Hungarian gentlemen have not come back to us, but remain with Tököly. And Tököly also, it appears, doesn't want to have much to do with us, for instead of encamping with us he has withdrawn to the furthest end of the Turkish army, and has pitched his tents there."
Teleki groaned beneath the pain which the distilled venom of these words poured into his heart.
"Apparently, Mr. Michael Teleki, we have been building castles in the air," continued Apafi with jovial frankness. "We are evidently not of the stuff of which Kings and Palatines of Hungary are made. I cannot but think of the cat in the fable, who pulled the chestnuts out of the fire with the claws of others."
Teleki shivered as if with an ague.
Apafi continued in his own peculiar vein of cynicism: "Really, my dear Mr. Michael Teleki, I should like it much better if we were sitting at home, and Denis Banfy and Paul Béldi and the other wise gentlemen were sitting beside me, and I were listening to what they might advise."
Teleki clenched his fists and stamped his feet, as much as to say: "I would not allow that."
Then with a bitter smile he watched the Prince as he paced up and down the tent, and said with a cold, metallic voice:
"One swallow does not make a summer. If ten or twelve worthless fellows desert to Tököly, much good may it do him! The army of the real Hungarian heroes will not follow their example, and when it can fight beneath the banner of a Prince it will not fling itself into the arms of a homeless adventurer."
"Then it would be as well if your Excellency spoke to them at once, for methinks that this night the whole lot of them may turn tail."
Teleki seemed impressed by these words. He immediately ordered his drabants to go to the captains of the army collected from Hungary who had joined Apafi at Fülek, and invite them to a conference in his tent at once.
The officers so summoned, with a good deal of humming and hahing, met together in Teleki's tent, and there the Minister harangued them for two good hours, proving to demonstration what a lot of good they might expect from cleaving to Apafi, and what a lot of evil if they allowed themselves to be deluded by Tököly, till the poor fellows were quite tired out and cried: "Hurrah!" in order that he might let them go the sooner.
But that same night they all fled to the camp of Tököly. None remained with Apafi but his faithful Transylvanians.
But even now Teleki could not familiarise himself with the idea of playing a subordinate part here, but staked everything on a last, desperate cast—he went to the Grand Vizier. He announced himself, and was admitted.
The Grand Vizier was alone in his tent with his dragoman, and when he saw Teleki he tried to make his unpleasant face more repulsive than it was by nature, and inquired very viciously: "Who art thou? Who sent thee hither? What dost thou want?"
"I, sir, am the general of the Transylvanian armies, Michael Teleki; you know me very well, only yesterday I was here with the Prince."
Just as if the two speakers did not understand each other's language, the dragoman had to interpret their questions and answers.
"I hope," replied the Grand Vizier, "thou dost not expect me to recognise at sight the names of all the petty princes and generals whom I have ever cast eyes on? My master, the mighty Sultan, has so many tributary princes in Europe, Asia, and Africa, that their numbers are incalculable, and all of them are superior men to thee, how canst thou expect me to recognise thee among so many?"
Teleki swallowed the insult, and seeing that the Grand Vizier was anxious to pick a quarrel with him, he came straight to the point.
"Gracious sir, I have something very important to say to you if you will grant me a private interview."
The Grand Vizier pretended to fly into a rage at these words.
"Art thou mad or drunk that thou wouldst have a private interview with me, although I don't understand Hungarian and thou dost not understand Turkish, or perchance thou wouldst like me to learn Hungarian to please thee? Ye learn Latin, I suppose, though no living being speaks it? And ye learn German and French and Greek, yet ye stop short at the language of the Turks, though the Turks are your masters and protectors! For a hundred and fifty years our armies have passed through your territories, yet how many of you have learned Turkish? 'Tis true our soldiers have learnt Hungarian, for thy language is as sticky as resin on a growing tree. Therefore, if thou art fool enough to ask me for a private interview—go home and learn Turkish first!"
Teleki bowed low, went home and learnt Turkish—that is to say, he packed up a couple of thousand thalers in a sack—and, accompanied by two porters to carry them, returned once more to the tent of the Grand Vizier.
And now the Grand Vizier understood everything which the magnate wished to say. The dragoman interpreted everything beautifully. He said the Sultan was building a fortress on the ice when he entrusted the fate of the Hungarians to such a flighty youth as Emeric Tököly. How could a young man, who was such a bad manager of his own property, manage the affairs of a whole kingdom? And so fond was he of being his own master, that he suffered himself to be exiled from Transylvania with the loss of all his property rather than submit to the will of his lawful Prince. The man who had already rebelled against two rulers would certainly not be very loyal to a third; while Apafi, on the other hand, had all his life long been a most faithful vassal of the Sublime Porte, and, modest, humble man as he was, would be far more useful than Tököly, whom the Porte would always be obliged to help with men and money, whereas the latter would always be able to help with men and money the Porte and its meritorious viziers—uti figura docet.
Mustafa listened to the long oration, took the money, and replied that he would see what could be done.
Teleki was not quite clear about the impression his words had made, but he did not remain in uncertainty for long; for scarcely had he reached the tent of the Prince than a defterdar with twelve cavasses came after him, and signified that he was commanded by the Grand Vizier immediately to seize Michael Teleki, fling him into irons, and bring him before a council of pashas.
Michael Teleki turned pale at these words. The faithless dragoman had told everything to Tököly, who had demanded satisfaction from the Grand Vizier, who, without the least scruple of conscience, was now ready to present to another the head of the very man from whom he had accepted presents only an hour before.
The magnate now gave himself up for lost, but the Prince approached him, and tapping him on the shoulder, said:
"If I were the man your Excellency is pleased to believe me and make other people believe too—that is to say, a coward yielding to every sort of compulsion—in an hour's time your Excellency would not have a head remaining on your shoulders. But everyone shall see that they have been deceived in me."
Then, turning towards the defterdar, he said to him in a firm, determined voice:
"Go back to your master, and say to him that Michael Teleki is the generalissimo of my armies and under my protection, and at the present moment I have him in my tent. Let anyone therefore who has any complaint against him, notify the same to me, and I will sit in judgment over him. But let none dare to lay a hand upon him within the walls of my tent, for I swear by the most Holy Trinity that I will break open the head of any such person with my cudgel. I would be ready to go over to the enemy with my whole army at once rather than permit so much as a mouse belonging to my household to be caught within my tent by a foreign cat, let alone the disgrace of handing over my generalissimo!"
The defterdar duly delivered the message of the enraged Prince to the Grand Vizier. Emeric Tököly was with him at the time, and the two gentlemen on hearing the vigorous assertion of the Prince agreed that after all Michael Apafi was really a very worthy man, and sending back the defterdar, instructed him to say with the utmost politeness and all due regard for the Prince that so long as Michael Teleki remained in the Prince's tent not a hair of his head should be crumpled; but he was to look to it that he did not step out of the tent, for in that case the cavasses who were looking out for him would pounce upon him at once and treat him as never a Transylvanian generalissimo was treated before; and now, too, he had only the Prince to thank for his life.
Teleki was annihilated. Nothing could have wounded his ambitious soul so deeply as the consciousness that the Prince was protecting him. To think that this man, whom the whole kingdom regarded as cowardly and incapable, could be great when he himself had suddenly become so very small! His nimbus of wisdom, power, and valour had vanished, and he saw that the man whom he had only consulted for the sake of obtaining his signature to prearranged plans was wiser and more powerful and more valiant than he.
Peering through the folds of the tent he could see that, faithful to the threatening message, the cavasses were prowling around the tent and telling the loutish soldiers that if Teleki stepped out they would seize him forthwith. The Szeklers laughed and shouted with joy thereat.
Then the magnate began to reflect whether it would not be best if he drew his sword, and rushing out, slash away at them till he himself were cut to pieces.