Part 54 (1/2)
”Softly, softly, sir! This is the house of G.o.d, 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.
”n.o.body 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 G.o.dless 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 Mohacs, 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.' G.o.d 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 p.r.i.c.ked like pins, and said, twisting his moustaches fiercely:
”Don't you try to fix any of your b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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.