Part 25 (2/2)

”Then would you have me bring ruin upon my throne and my family for the sake of a woman?”

”Better perish for the sake of a woman than do that woman to death. If you shut your rooms against her, I will open mine wide to receive her, and then you can tell the Sultan if you like that I have taken her.”

Apafi felt that his wife's obstinacy was getting him into a hideous muddle. This audacious woman would listen to no reasons of state in any matter which interested her humanity.

What was he to do? He pitied the persecuted lady from the bottom of his heart, but the emissary of the Sublime Porte, Olaj Beg, had come to demand her with plenipotentiary power. If he did _not_ shelter the persecuted lady he would p.r.o.nounce himself a coward in the face of the whole world; if he _did_ shelter her, the Porte would annihilate him!

In the midst of this dilemma, one of the gate-keepers came in hot haste to announce that a band of Turkish soldiers was at that moment galloping along the road, inquiring in a loud voice for the Princess of Wallachia.

Apafi leant in dumb despair against a marble pillar whilst Anna quickly ordered her women to carry the unconscious lady to her innermost apartments and summon the doctor. She then went out on the balcony, and perceiving that the cava.s.ses had just halted in front of the palace, she cried to the gate-keepers:

”Close the gates!”

Apafi would have very much liked to have countermanded the order; but while he was still thinking about it, the gates were snapped to under the very noses of the cava.s.ses.

They began angrily beating with the shafts of their lances against the closed gate, whereupon the Princess called down to them from the balcony with a sonorous, authoritative voice:

”Ye good-for-nothing rascals, wherefore all that racket? This is not a barrack, but the residence of the Prince. Perchance ye know it not, because fresh human heads are wont to be nailed over the gates of your Princes every day as a mark of recognition? If that is what you are accustomed to, your error is pardonable.”

The cava.s.ses were considerably startled at these words, and, looking up at the imperious lady, began to see that she really meant what she said.

For a while they laid their heads together, and then turned round and departed.

Apafi sighed deeply.

”There is some hidden trick in this,” said he, ”but what it is G.o.d only knows.”

A few moments later a muderris appeared from Olaj Beg at the gate of the Prince, and, being all alone, was admitted.

”Olaj Beg greets thee, and thou must come to him quickly,” said he.

Anna had drawn near to greet her guest, but hearing that Olaj Beg summoned the Prince to appear before him, she approached the messenger, boiling over with wrath.

”Whoever heard,” she said, ”of a servant ordering his master about, or an amba.s.sador summoning the Prince to whose Court he is accredited?”

But Apafi could only take refuge in a desperate falsehood.

”Poor Olaj Beg,” he explained, ”is very sick and cannot stir from his bed, and, indeed, he humbly begs me to pay him a visit. There is no humiliation in this--none at all, if I am graciously pleased to do it.

He is an old man of eighty. I might be his grandson, he is wont to scold me as if I were his darling; I will certainly go to him, and put this matter right with him. You go to your sick guest and comfort her. I give you my word I will do everything to get her set free. For her sake I will humble myself.”

The Princess Apafi's foresight already suggested to her that this humiliation would be permanent, but, perceiving that her own strength of mind was not contagious, she allowed her husband to depart.

Apafi prepared himself for his visit upon Olaj Beg. With a peculiar feeling of melancholy he did _not_ put on his princely dolman of green velvet, but only the _kontos_ of a simple n.o.bleman, imagining that thus it would not be the Prince of Transylvania but the squire of Ebesfalu who was paying a visit on Olaj Beg. He went on foot to the house of Olaj Beg, accompanied by a single soldier, who had to put on his everyday clothes.

The dogs had been let loose in the courtyard, for the Beg was a great protector of animals, and used to keep open table in front of his dwelling for the wandering dogs of every town he came to.

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