Part 44 (1/2)
The waggish crowd pressed upon them from all sides, and while the funeral car with its canopy, its cortege, and its banners surrounded the door, one of the buxom wenches fell upon the neck of the drabant and kissed and hugged him, while a giant raven with a pointed beak forced his tankard on the headsman's a.s.sistant, and compelled him to drain it to the dregs, finally bonneting him with the empty tankard.
All this lasted for a single brief instant, but it was quite long enough for the cloister door to open and close again. What had happened in the meantime was known only to the initiated.
Then the fools' procession went on more noisily than ever.
When they arrived at the Miskolcz gate, the superrector Zwirina and his halberdiers barred the way.
”Whither are you going?” said he to the carnival horseman.
Simplex held a quill to his mouth, and squeaked through it in a thin, chirpy, birdlike voice:
”We are going to bury the dead carnival.”
But Augustus Zwirina was a knowing man, and he had his suspicions.
”Let me see if this carnival is really dead,” said he.
And with that he tore the cover from the face of the figure lying in the coffin.
The fellow representing the carnival rose in his bier, distended his broad mouth, and grinned in the superrector's face. He was an honest brushmaker's apprentice. The whole crowd burst into roars of laughter and derisive yells. Everyone instantly guessed that the superrector had sought for Valentine Kalondai in the carnival's coffin.
Old Zwirina was very angry and ashamed.
”You may take him to h.e.l.l, if you like!” cried he to the crowd of revelers, and, by way of jocose emphasis, he gave the backward part of the carnival horse a spanking thump, but received a kick in return which sent him sprawling into the mud. The horse, which lost one of the red slippers of its hind feet in consequence, then bolted off like mad, while Simplex yelled like a c.o.c.kney horseman on a runaway nag, tugged at the reins, and implored the laughing crowd to stop the beast. But the mob only chivied the horse all the more, till it had far outdistanced its panting escort. When at last he arrived in the neighborhood of the churchyard, Simplex blew his trumpet with all his might, and at the shrill sound two stout lads leaped up out of the cemetery ditch, leading after them a horse saddled and bridled.
”Valentine!” cried Simplex, ”ecce tuum Bucephalum!”
Then the man forming the hinder part of the carnival steed sprang quickly forth from beneath the horsecloth. It was not the Turk Ali, but Valentine Kalondai.
The condemned convict threw himself upon the horse and galloped off.
Simplex and the comrades who had a.s.sisted him in the execution of this stratagem threw their masquerading costumes into the churchyard ditch, and after making a wide circuit of the town, returned to it by the Leutschau gate as if they knew nothing at all about it.
The Turk Ali had exchanged roles with Valentine in the gates of the cloister.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII.
The Lenten penance succeeds the carnival revels.
When they brought the news to Augustus Zwirina that Valentine Kalondai had happily escaped, the big fat man suddenly grew blue in the face, and was struck down with apoplexy on the spot. So swiftly did death overtake him that he had not even time to make his will.
This extraordinary case made a huge sensation throughout the town.
Whole processions of acquaintances thronged the house of mourning, and in the courts of the Zwirinas there was wailing and woe.
Now the courtyard of the Kalondais was only separated from that of the Zwirinas by a narrow part.i.tion wall. When then Dame Sarah heard the lamentations in her neighborhood, and learnt the cause thereof, viz., that her son had managed to escape and that the superrector had died of grief in consequence, she planted herself in the pa.s.sage, and, despite the keenness of a February morning, began to sing the psalms in which King David celebrates the humiliation of his enemies. The louder grew the lamentations next door, the louder she sang her revengefully exultant psalms.