PRETTY MICHAL

A FREE TRANSLATION OF MAURUS JÓKAI'S ROMANCE
"A SZÉP MIKHÁL"

BY
R. N. BAIN

NEW YORK
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
104 & 106 Fourth Avenue

Copyright, 1892, by
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY.

All rights reserved.

THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
RAHWAY, N. J.

CONTENTS.

PRETTY MICHAL.

CHAPTER I.

Wherein is shown how sagely the Rev. Master Fröhlich brought up his motherless daughter, pretty Michal.

In the days when the Turkish Sultan ruled in Hungary as far as Ersekujvar and Eger, the German Kaiser from Eger to the Zips country, and George Rakoczy, Prince of Transylvania, from Zips to the Szeklerland—all three of whom were perpetually fighting among themselves, sometimes two against one and sometimes all together indiscriminately, so that the inhabitants had a very lively time of it—in those days (somewhere about 1650) the learned and reverend Master David Fröhlich was the pride of the Keszmár Lyceum and Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy there. Master Fröhlich knew everything which could be reasonably expected of a man. He knew how to calculate solar and lunar eclipses. He knew how to take the old town-clock to pieces when it got out of order and put it together again. He could fix the weather for a whole year beforehand. He understood the aureus calculus and could cast a horoscope with any man living. He knew by heart which trades could be carried on best in each of the twelve months. He had at his fingers' ends the arcana and secret properties of all herbs and plants, could explain sympathies and antipathies, nay, he could be implicitly trusted in the manufacture of amulets.

But his most difficult science was that of which we are now about to speak.

He had one beautiful daughter whom he had brought up without the help of a mother, and that, surely, is a feat of which any man might be proud! His wife had died on the very day on which she had given birth to the child, and the widower had forthwith steadily set before himself the problem of educating the girl without the slightest female intervention.

The way in which he managed by artificial contrivances to find a substitute for mother's milk was a miracle of itself; but even that was as nothing compared with the masterly system of education which he himself invented and applied, in order to make his daughter grow up a discreet and modest maiden, despite the grievous want of maternal supervision. For he would neither marry again, nor trust his daughter to female nurses and servants, nor even admit any of his own kinswomen into the house.

He inaugurated his system at her very baptism, by giving his daughter the name of Michal. At first hearing, everyone, of course, takes this for a man's name, never suspecting that a damsel lurks behind it; perhaps only one among a thousand even knows that it is a girl's name after all. Was not one of the wives of King David called Michal?—she, I mean, who laughed when she saw the great King dancing in the street. So the reverend and learned gentleman christened his little daughter Michal, arguing that the Evil One would not so lightly venture to tackle a name with such a masculine ring about it.

Then he personally instructed his daughter in all good things from her babyhood upward. She never went to school. Everything, from the alphabet to the catechism, she learnt at home. Later on, as the damsel's mind grew stronger, he taught her not only the Latin and Greek tongues, but all the sciences which are useful and necessary in life; e. g., the tabular calculations as to how much meat, butter, meal, peas, grain, salt, etc., a prudent housewife should dispense for two, four, eight, sixteen, etc., persons per day, week, or month, so that the domestics may neither suffer hunger nor yet overload their stomachs (N. B., salt must be particularly well looked after lest the mice get at it, for everyone knows that when mice eat salt they multiply prodigiously); item, wherewith to feed the livestock; how much meal and bran should be got in exchange from the miller for so much wheat; how to prepare yeast, knead dough, bake bread, not forgetting to always turn the tub toward the north. And bread making in the Highlands of North Hungary was a serious business in those days, for rye meal was often scarce, and bread had to be made of spelt, buckwheat, sweet peas, and other disgusting things. Galen especially recommends bean meal bread. Dioscorides, on the other hand, prefers a judicious admixture of onions. Nay, in hard times, when no corn is to be had, poor people must be prepared to make bread of dried quinces, medlars, elderberries, hips and haws, and fungus, while the clergy and people of quality must be content with honey bread, maize bread, or even oil cakes. Flesh bread, too, of which Pliny so much approves, may be used occasionally, or curd bread, which was the favorite dish of Zoroaster. The Rev. Master Fröhlich also taught his daughter how to preserve fruit, and how to convert it into blue, green, red, and yellow jellies, without using any injurious pigments.

Moreover in these sciences beer brewing was also included, for the ladies of Keszmár were wont to make their own ale. Every citizen there owed his beer to his wife and daughter. No one ever thought of getting it from the inn.

Nor was that all. It was part of every good housewife's business in those days to keep in store all manner of medicines, and to know how to concoct health-giving cordials from hundreds of wonder-working herbs. To them the medical science was far from being the finger and thumb work which our modern doctors make it, who, after prescribing you a dozen doses or so of ipecacuanha against fever, hold themselves absolved from all further responsibility. Our grandmothers had efficacious cordials against every malady under the sun, and in cases of serious illness they dosed the patient with the infallible elixir known as Galen's specific, the principal ingredients of which were Oriental pearls, red coral, and emeralds powdered fine, cubeb balsam, lignum aloes, muscat blossoms, frankincense, musk, bezoar, manus Christi, flesh-colored rose leaves, oil of cinnamon, and kirmis berries. Extraordinary, indeed, was the amount of knowledge which the housewife of yore had to carry about in her noddle!

And besides the generally recognized alphabets of our own days there were, at that time, three-and-thirty other symbols, the signification whereof every good cook was bound to know by heart before she could mix her ingredients. An oval with a stroke through it meant "salt"; a square with a cross beneath it, "cream of tartar"; a square with a horn, "oil"; a horseshoe, "spirits of wine"; an oblong, "soap"; one triangle, "spring water"; two triangles, point to point, "distilled water"; a crown with a star, "regulus stellatus." Without a knowledge of this science, no woman was regarded as perfect.

And then again the various kinds of aquavitæ! Nowadays most of us do not even know the proper meaning of the term; then, their manifold and salutary effects were universally recognized and appreciated. Everyone knew, for instance, that they kept the blood warm and fluid; removed all venom; dried up all sluggish humors; strengthened the memory, etc. Then there were various mysterious oils, the most costly of which was victriol (quite a different thing from vitriol), which our great-grandmothers called "potable gold," to say nothing of a multitude of waters, vinegars, acids, antidotes, plasters, and pastils no reputable housewife could afford to be without, for was she not the natural doctor and nurse of the whole family?

And the art of cookery was not a whit less abstruse than the art of pharmacy. The stomachs of our ancestors were accustomed to very complicated dishes. Cookery was a more difficult science than metaphysics.

Then, too, the whole charge of the garden lay upon the housewife's shoulders, and gardening was by no means the simple affair it is nowadays. Our great-grandmothers, in their gardening capacity, knew a whole host of things which have long since been forgotten. To prevent the fruit falling from the tree before its time, they bored a hole in the roots and drove through it a whitethorn peg; to prevent the cherries from ripening too soon, they surrounded the roots with unslacked lime; when they wanted scarlet pippins, they softened the grafts in pike's blood, and when they wished to propagate aromatic fruit, they bored a hole in the trunk of the tree and filled it with fragrant oil. Our grandmothers were so clever that they could compel a pear tree to bring forth grapes; they could grow citrons as large as your head, figs with almond kernels inside and the letters of the alphabet outside, and even nuts without shells. They knew how to graft medlars on coffee trees, which then produced an entirely new fruit, exceedingly luscious and fragrant. When they wanted the bitter almond to bear sweet almonds, they took counsel of Theophrastus and drove iron nails into the roots. They knew the good and bad effects of winter upon all kinds of garden produce. Even the simple, unsophisticated potato, only just introduced from America, and called by them adenes cardensis, was powerless against their innumerable artifices. Our great-grandmothers knew and cultivated scores of vegetables the very names of which are unknown to their posterity. All their dishes were pungent with the most exquisite spices. They carried on a regular trade in all manner of wholesome herbs and pigment plants. Saffron alone was taken by the ton to the Zips markets, and thence exported to Turkey. The kitchen garden was a veritable gold mine to the thrifty housewife.

Nor must the flower garden be forgotten. In those days a speculation in tulips was going on which can only be compared with the Bourse speculations of our own days. The horticulturist had to carry about in his head a whole dictionary of French botanical terms if he meant to make a living. A lady gardener who understood her business had to know what species of flowers could be planted and sown under the zodiacal signs ♈, ♉, ♊, or ♋, ♌, ♍; to which the signs ♎, ♏, and ♐ are baleful; and how seldom those flourish which are planted under the signs ♑, ♒, and ♓; in fact, she had to have her almanac at her fingers' ends. The floral art had its own literature and its own professors, who disposed of tulips and carnations to the value of millions, and sent whole fleets laden with bulbs and plants to China and America. Nay, the most distinguished writers of Europe did not deem it beneath their dignity to dabble in the flower trade, just as the writers of our own day dabble in politics.

It was certainly much more beneficial for young women to read about such things than to fill their heads with the scandal and tomfoolery of these later times.

If, however, they must needs know something about love and antipathy, they could gather from these sage botanical records that the fig tree and the rue love each other, for which reason it is advisable to plant rue close to fig trees, especially as it keeps away those sworn enemies of figs, the frogs; that the asparagus loves the reed and the rosemary the sage, for which reason whoever sets about planting rosemary must first of all rub his hand well with sage leaves, so that the young transplants may thrive; that the orange tree loves the cypress and the vine the cherry tree, and that the lily thrives beside the rose, but also beside the garlic—'tis only a matter of taste. On the other hand, there are plants which hate, which absolutely cannot endure each other. For instance, when one plants the noble anthora close to the wild najollus, it dries up and withers, despite the most constant care; the angelica and the hemlock infallibly throttle each other; while the antipathy of the vine to the colewort goes so far that when a man who has drunk a little too much wine eats of the colewort he instantly becomes sober, and if you mix a little wine in the pot where the colewort is boiling it will never get soft, stew it as long as you will.

Now pretty Michal mastered all these sciences not only with edifying assiduity, but even with real enthusiasm; she found pleasure, employment, and profit therein. Her books, her science, and her flowers not only rejoiced her heart, they filled her pockets likewise. Her garden especially was a veritable gold mine, for while in those days a goose cost only a shilling and a young ox ten shillings, no one considered paragon tulip bulbs dear at ten pounds a piece. But (and this in Pastor Fröhlich's opinion was the greatest gain of all) the flowers and the books left the damsel no time for idle pranks; to this end the whole pedagogical system of the reverend gentleman had been directed from the very first.

Whenever his lectures called him away from home, the professor took down his grammars, lexicons, and other folios before he started, and gave Michal as much to learn by heart as would occupy her the whole time he was away at the Lyceum; then he locked the house door and walked off with the key in his pocket. The very first thing he did when he came home again was to make her repeat the set task from beginning to end. Such a method is infallible. A servant-maid, a governess, may deceive the cleverest cross-questioner, the ancient folios never. They tell him at once whether the damsel's eyes have been fixed on the book all the time, or whether they've been straying about elsewhere.

In this way pretty Michal picked up a very considerable store of general information.

Sundays and festivals were the only days on which she left the house, and then she used to walk to church by her father's side. On such occasions she wore a coffee-brown frock, with a collar reaching to the chin, and sleeves which hid the very tips of her fingers. The other girls prided themselves on the taste with which they adorned their girdles, but pretty Michal's girdle could not boast of as much as a silver buckle. Her parta, as the headdress of the Hungarian maidens is called, was quite black, and over it was thrown a veil which completely covered her face in front, and hung down so far over her shoulders behind that it was absolutely impossible to make out whether her twin long, pendent pigtails were blond or chestnut-brown. Her eyes, too, were not permitted to declare whether they were black or blue. During service they were well hidden behind their long lashes, for she modestly kept them fixed upon her prayer-book the whole time, and if she raised them during the sermon it was only to rivet them upon the preacher. Moreover, the very wise and proper regulation which not only separated the sexes, but made the men sit right behind the women, prevented her from ogling anybody even if she had a mind to. As for the students, they sat so high up in the choir that they could see nothing from thence but the notice-boards and the Decalogue.

Further, the reverend gentleman never took Michal to weddings or other entertainments, the canonical prescriptions forbidding a clergyman's daughter to dance. In fact, he did not even let her make the acquaintance of other girls, for fear she should get a liking for the frivolous ways of the gossiping minxes.

We must not forget to mention, too, that his house was so constructed as to exclude by anticipation every possible temptation. All the windows of pretty Michal's bedroom looked out upon the courtyard, which was shut in on two sides by the blank walls of the opposite houses, while the third side opened into the garden, which was cut off from the outer world by a still higher wall richly embroidered with iron nails and sharp spikes. Thus, pretty Michal's heart might be regarded as a stronghold which no foe could capture either by force or by fraud; and in the light of a foe was regarded every mortal of the masculine gender who did not happen to be a favorite of the reverend gentleman.

CHAPTER II.

Wherein is shown how the evil dragon brought to naught all the sage devices of our reverend friend.

The Rev. Professor David Fröhlich had a very particular favorite, who can also be said to have deserved that rare distinction. The name of this young man was Henry Catsrider—a very curious name, certainly, yet the bearer thereof had very little ridicule to fear in consequence, for his big, strong frame inspired his fellow-scholars with respect. For the noble art of wrestling (commended of old, remember, by no less a person than Aristotle) had never been neglected in our schools, and in the art of wrestling no one could vie with Catsrider except a young Calvinist from Kassa called Valentine Kalondai. The latter, however, could well hold his own, even against Catsrider, and a very pretty sight it was to see them contending together on the village green, each hugging the other closely and planting his chin firmly on his opponent's shoulder. Catsrider had long, coarse, light hair, twisted up into a knot on both sides of his head, and a waxed and pointed mustache.

Unhappily, although the Hungarian lad was quite a match for the Zipser in all corporeal exercises, in mental contests he was far inferior to him. There, indeed, Catsrider stood without a rival. He was always eminent-issimus in every science, while Valentine Kalondai was constantly at the bottom of his class.

Ex moribus—in morals—there was also all the difference in the world between the two students. Valentine Kalondai was no despiser of wine and music. He even lived on friendly terms with folks like the Silesian Simplicissimus, whom everyone else looked down upon as a loafing vagabond, who could do absolutely nothing but blow the trumpet; while Catsrider was the model of a well ordered youth. It was now ten years since he had come, a poor boy, to Keszmár, and all that time he had conscientiously supported himself by the labor of his hands. He meant to take orders, and therefore diligently studied theology; but, besides that, he served in the house of the Rev. David Fröhlich and assisted that gentleman in his Museum Physicum, wherefore the professor loved him dearly, and long ago destined him to be pretty Michal's consort in her journey through life.

Valentine Kalondai, indeed, had no need to appropriate a very great amount of learning. He had a rich widowed mother at Kassa, from whom, when he came of age, he was to take over his patrimony. He had only been sent to the Keszmár Lyceum to pick up as much knowledge as might be necessary for a citizen of Kassa who hoped one day to be elected sheriff of his native town; he only required to learn as much Latin as his late father of blessed memory, who likewise had held that dignity, and part of whose office it had been to pronounce over delinquents the capite plectetur, or the more merciful harum palczarum, and correspond with pen as well as with cannon with the Imperialist generals, though it certainly must be admitted that he could give a better account of himself with the cannon than with the pen. Valentine therefore had no call to learn absolutely more than he chose.

Henry, on the other hand, was obliged to turn night into day in order to cut a decent figure at the examination which preceded his ordination; and, to do him justice, he passed through it with the utmost distinction. He was immediately afterward presented to the living of Nagy-Leta—which fortunately happened to be vacant at that very time—naturally on condition that during the year of grace, conceded as usual to the widow of the late incumbent, he was to make no claim whatever upon the resources of the benefice. On that solemn day, the Rev. David Fröhlich invited the new pastor to dinner to meet the superintendent and the presbyters.

After the meal was over, pretty Michal was also allowed to appear at table, first, to be complimented by the superintendent on account of the banquet they had all enjoyed so much—whereupon her face, ruddy enough already from the kitchen fire, grew ruddier still—and secondly, that she might just moisten her lips with a little wine in honor of her father's guests.

When the guests had all withdrawn, pretty Michal had the tables cleared away by the maids, and very carefully put all the soiled napkins and tablecloths into the cupboard, and all the old ancestral pottery and glazed earthenware upon the dresser. When all this had been done, the professor bade his little daughter remain in the room. He had something to say to her.

The learned gentleman was in a very good humor, not only in consequence of the exhilarating drinks he had drunk, and the lively table-talk he had freely indulged in, but also on account of something else besides.

He lit his pipe and began to smoke, although he was still wearing his reverende, which ought, properly speaking, never to betray the faintest odor of tobacco.

"My daughter Michal," said he at last, with a sly assumption of gravity, "we did not finish our pensum to-day. And the rule is: 'Nulla dies sine linea!' What does that mean?"

"One should never let a day pass without doing one's allotted task," answered Michal.

"Then bring hither your exercise-book."

The damsel dutifully obeyed. In the kitchen all that it was necessary to do had already been done, so the voice of science could be listened to without self-reproach. She sat her down therefore and took up her pen, or, as our ancestors would then have said, her calamus.

"It is wholesome to exercise the mind after a long meal," said the learned gentleman from the midst of the clouds of smoke which enveloped him, "but it would not be well if every day was spent in such junketing: 'Qui amat vitam longam, amet mensam brevem!' Write that down in your book and translate it."

Michal wrote and translated at the same time: "Let him who would see many days keep a spare table!"

"The Italians say: 'La cucina piccola fa la casa grande, la tavola e un ladrone segreto!' Write that down also and tell me what it means."

The damsel recited as she wrote: "A small kitchen enlarges a house, but a liberal table is a secret thief!"

"That is what Petrus Novus said to Hugotius Fagiola when the latter lost two cities because of a single banquet. Write: 'Plures interierunt vinolentia quam violenta!' How would you construe that?"

"More men have perished through wine than through violence."

"Very good! Nevertheless on extraordinary days extraordinary things must happen, and to-day has been no ordinary day, for it has seen a clergyman ordained and a maiden sued for."

In an instant every trace of color had vanished from pretty Michal's face.

The learned gentleman puffed away tremendously, and quoted these saws in the midst of volumes of smoke.

"What saith Dubravius? 'Si qua voles nubere apte, nube pari!'—Wilt thou marry well, so marry within thy station! Again Ambrosius, in answering the question what one should look for in a consort, saith: 'Ammorem, morem, rem'—Love, morals, means."

A good maxim, truly, but for all that the damsel did not write it down in her exercise-book.

"And here we have a wooer who possesses all three. He brings love with good morals and has somewhat besides. His station in life indeed is not very illustrious, for, like me, he is only a parson. But Macrobius saith, 'Amores sunt sicut flores'—Maidens are like flowers, that is to say, they soon wither; and as Drexelius Trismegistus hath it, 'Sæpius ima petet melius qui scandere novit'—He often sinks into the depths who seeks the heights. Write that in your book, my daughter, 'tis a golden precept! Nor be appalled at your suitor's poverty. Cyprian saith: 'Paupertas dura sed secura et sine cura'—Poverty is hard, but hardy, and has naught to care for. Write that down also, my daughter Michal!"

But pretty Michal did not record these golden maxims, either in the original or yet a translation. On the contrary she laid her pen aside and said: "I don't like him!"

The reverend gentleman gave a great start of astonishment. "That is a paradox. To love no one—that is possible; but not to love a particular person—that is absurd. Have you then any idea what love is? 'Amantes sunt dementes'—Lovers are demented. What don't you like about him? His red hair, eh? 'Homo rufus rare bonus, sed si bonus valde bonus'—A red-haired man is rarely good, but if good then very good indeed. Or perhaps you don't like him because he belongs to another nation? Nay, but mark what the wise Queen Christina used to say: 'There are only two kinds of nations on the whole earth, the god-fearing and the godless.' If you don't like him now, you'll learn to like him by and by. The Italians say: 'Amore noné senza amaro'—Love is not without bitterness. Every good girl has to be shoved out of doors by her parents, because she would much rather stay at home than go away; but later on she is very grateful to them for getting her off their hands."

But pretty Michal, thanks to her much learning and her long domestic sway, had grown up with such a stout heart that in this one thing she even dared to gainsay her father and all his philosophic authorities to boot, for she said to the reverend gentleman:

"Nevertheless, I can't like him who desires my hand from you because I don't like him, and I don't like him because I like another."

On hearing these words, the scholar let his pipe fall from his mouth.

"That is indeed an argumentum ad hominum," said he. "You love another, eh? Where on earth did you pick him up? Where did you set your eyes upon him? When have you spoken to him?"

The maiden cast down her eyes and said nothing.

This was too much. The learned professor rose from his chair straightway, and said in an austere, dictatorial voice: "Write in your book, 'Virginitas dum aspicitur, inficitur'—Where maidenhood is concerned mere inspection is infection. Whom have you allowed to look into your eyes?"

"No one," answered Michal.

"No one! Where then have you spoken to anyone?"

"Nowhere."

"But if you have spoken to no one, neither with your eyes nor yet with your mouth, how could you possibly have fallen in love with anyone? Make a clean breast of it. You know that the smallest lie is a greater sin than the greatest crime honestly confessed. In what way have you been carrying on this intrigue?"

"By writing."

"Has anyone written to you then?"

"Yes, and I've replied."

"But how is that possible? My house is barred and bolted night and day. You cannot even look out upon the street. You were never allowed to go anywhere without me. The garden is protected by a moat. A suspicious character could not possibly get in here unless he flew down from the sky."

"It came down from the sky."

"It! What do you mean by it?"

"The dragon."

At first the professor's mind wandered off to the dragon which St. George had scotched, but perhaps not quite killed; but he bethought himself and asked, "A paper dragon,[1] I suppose?"

[1] Sárkany, like its German equivalent Drache, means a kite as well as a dragon.

"Yes. They were flying a dragon in the market-place, and I was watching it for a long time. Suddenly it fell into our garden, and remained hanging on an apple tree. I went to take it down, and when I had it in my hand I saw that it was covered all over with verses addressed to me, and they were so lovely that I cannot find words to describe them."

"Lovely! pshaw! profane scribble I call them. Does not Macrobius say: 'Ignibus iste liber quod ipse ignibus liber!'—Into the flames with that book if thou wouldst escape the flames thyself! And what makes you think that these shameless verses were addressed to you?"

"They were no such thing. Had they been shameless verses I should have thrown them away. They were beautiful, true-hearted verses, with my name written over every one of them, for there is no other girl here called Michal. I tried to answer them."

"To answer them! How?"

"I fastened what I wrote to the dragon with the written side turned inward, then, with the help of the pack-thread which still remained attached thereto, I let it mount up again."

"But suppose he to whom it belonged never got it?"

"He most certainly got it, for the next day he sent me the answer."

"Again by means of the dragon?"

"No. The next day he wrote me by the balloon."

The balloon in question was a large inflated box bladder, covered over with calf skin. The youth of the town used this balloon in their athletic exercises, knocking it into the air with their fists, and otherwise disporting themselves therewith.

"I see it all now. The rascal placed his letter inside the balloon, and threw it into our garden. You took out your letter, stuck in your reply, and pitched the balloon back again."

To think that neither Theophrastus nor Trismegistus should have foreseen such a case: an aërial correspondence, carried on without the intervention of the post-office!

"And how far has this precious correspondence proceeded?"

"We have both sworn eternal fidelity to each other."

"There we have it! What is the use of bolts and bars and all human wisdom? So you have pledged away your hand without your father's consent. Don't you know that among the Protestants the consent of the parents is requisite to a marriage; without it, no betrothal is valid and no wedding can be solemnized?"

"Then has he who demands my hand from you brought with him the written consent of his father to his marriage with me?"

"He has no father; he is an orphan."

"You said just now that the smallest lie was a greater sin than the greatest crime honestly confessed. And I say that he, my suitor, has lied. He has a father who is a rich man of high degree."

"Who told you so?"

"The dragon and the balloon. He boasted of it to a friend, and the heavenly posts have brought me tidings thereof."

Now, indeed, the reverend gentleman was as fairly caught as ever the devil was by a witch's foot. To this reply there was absolutely no rejoinder.

"I'll take him to task for it to-morrow," said he, "and meantime I postpone the inquiry. After it is over, however, I shall require the name of this rascally seducer. And now, my daughter Michal, proceed to your chamber and consider yourself in arrest there for the next four and twenty hours."

And thus ended the festive day on which Henry Catsrider was ordained a priest.

CHAPTER III.

Wherein is clearly shown that he who tends the sheep is much more honorable than he who slaughters them.

Next morning the reverend gentleman sent for Henry and submitted him to a very severe cross-examination, which lasted for more than an hour. When Henry at last departed, he was not only as red as a boiled crab, but he made his exit head foremost and somewhat precipitately; from which circumstance the maid-servants, who were listening all the time at the kitchen door, drew various conclusions.

Immediately afterward the reverend gentleman's bell rang three times, which signified that Miss Michal was wanted in the library.

The reverend gentleman was in full canonicals; he united in himself at that moment both the paternal and the maternal authority. He was surrounded by open books, like a general in the midst of his staff; other books, bound in pigskin, stood on the shelves like a phalanx drawn up in battle array, and on the cupboards and presses stood stuffed birds and the skeletons of various animals, like so many witnesses or accusers. The human skeleton in the corner seemed particularly on the alert. The electrical machine was also in readiness to contribute its flashes; but the only being among all these objects which gave any sign of life was the big clock, on the top of which stood a little dog, which kept time with the pendulum by wagging his tail and thrusting out his tongue.

Michal, during the whole of the following examination, fixed her eyes steadily on the mechanical dog; and ever afterward, when she looked back upon that momentous interview, she always saw before her the figure of the little dog wagging his tail and thrusting out his tongue.

"My daughter Michal," began the scholar, "I have spoken to the candidate of faith and love, and learnt everything from him. On my asking him whether he had a father, he answered yes. What is he? A man of position who dwells at Zeb, and is the chief judge of the place. I asked him why he had left his father and given himself out for an orphan. He said he had done so because his father was a Catholic, while he himself desired to become a Protestant clergyman. Such a desire is certainly most praiseworthy. A young man who is ready to eat the bread of affliction rather than be false to his conscience reveals a great character. Moreover this answer is the best defense to the charge you have brought against him, viz., that of daring to make a proposal of marriage without his father's consent. The law does not recognize the consent of a Catholic father, but only of a Protestant. Therefore Henry Catsrider stands absolved from the accusation that he knowingly perpetrated a fraud. Reticence after all is not falsehood. Then, too, his new confession of faith releases him from all parental authority, thus putting the father completely out of court."

The big folios and the stuffed birds signified their approval by saying nothing, and the skeleton also was silent as to the fact that his own head had formerly been severed from his body because he had put into practice similar subtleties in his lifetime; only the automatical dog kept on wagging his tail, as if to say, "No, no!" and professing his scorn of the professor's sophisms by thrusting out his tongue.

Michal answered not a word.

"Thus all your negations are confuted, and now let us hear your affirmations. What is the name of the young man who has presumed to make you a declaration of love?"

"Valentine Kalondai."

The learned man no sooner heard this name than he smote violently with the palm of his hand on the volume of Macrobius lying open before him.

"'Quis hominum?'—What sort of a man is he?"

"An honest man!" cried Michal, with flashing eyes.

"What do you know about it? You only go by his outward appearance. 'Quanta especies sed cerebrum non habet'—a handsome face but no brains. 'Non bene casta caro quæ bene pasta caro'—Well fed, ill bred. But I have had occasion to learn something about the fellow's inner man. 'Flocci, nihili'—A feather brain, a nonentity. 'Classis primæ exultimis'—Always the first in his class, counting from the bottom. And how about his morals? He is a wine-bibber. 'Ubi vinum intrat, ibi ratio exit'—When the wine's in, the wit's out. He is a dancer and a serenader. He goes about with musicians and other lewd fellows. All that, indeed, might have been overlooked; but do you know what the trade of his parents was, ay, and still is? Did he confess that to you in his sinful correspondence? And this trade, remember, he must carry on to his dying day, for he does not know enough—far from it—to raise him to a higher rank. Do you know whose wife you would be if your senseless wish were to be fulfilled?"

The girl grew pale. There had been nothing said about this in the correspondence.

The professor took down his note-book and read out the name and description of the accused:

"'Parentes, Sarah, vidua macellarii'—Sarah, the butcher's widow. His father was a butcher, and he will be a butcher too. People who work in blood! What do you say to that? Can the daughter of the clergyman become the wife of a butcher? And when she has to choose between a man who tends the sheep of the Lord and a man who slaughters cattle, how can she possibly give her hand to the latter? Have I brought you up all these years only that your lot may be an eternal shedding of blood? To wake up with blood every day, and every day to lie down with blood! Every day to smell blood on the hand of him who embraces you! To be bound to a man whose calling in life it is to lay violent hands on God's creatures! Have you really the courage to choose such a lot?"

The mechanical dog wagged his tail and put out his tongue.

It seemed to Michal as if everything was turning round and round: the portraits of the scholars, the stuffed birds, even the skeleton with its clattering joints. How could she defend herself against so many?

The scholar saw from the corpse-like pallor of his daughter's face the crushing impression his words had produced upon her. It was in a much gentler voice that he now continued:

"Now go to your room, or rather to your little garden, and think over what I've just been saying. Write first of all in your copy book: 'Fathers have their children's welfare more at heart than the children themselves.' Yet the decision shall rest with you alone. Your fate is in your own hands. I'll do no violence to your feelings. If indeed there be really more strength in your heart than I ever anticipated, show it now! If you have the courage to knit your life to those who work in blood, give us a specimen of it at home here. You have two pretty doves in a cage. I bought them for you on your birthday. Slaughter them with your own hand and make some broth of them; you may prepare it any way you like. It doesn't matter to me now. I shall then know your decision. Go now, and think the matter over!"

Pretty Michal went down into the garden and walked to and fro among the rose trees. In the middle of the path was the dovecote, and in it were the two fan-tailed pigeons which she had to slaughter, she who had never had the heart to kill so much as a kitchen fly. If she could have had her own way she would have liked everyone to have been a vegetarian. And now she was to kill her favorite doves.

She had no one to whom she could turn for advice, no one to whom she could pour out her griefs. Here was a case in which neither the philosophers, nor the calf-bound polyhistors, nor yet her daily playfellows, the flowers, could be of the slightest assistance. She had no other friends than the flowers, and they could only tell her what they knew themselves, e. g., that the virginal lily loves the garlic, although the one exhales perfumes and the other stinks; and the noble anthora withers away whenever it is planted beside the najollus for although the latter certainly has splendid blossoms, (the corolla is a helmet whereon sit two doves), it nevertheless brings destruction upon its fair neighbor—and so on ad nauseam.

And then she began thinking that perhaps the feeling which had been nourished in her breast by this exchange correspondence was not exactly love after all. She had only seen the young man from afar, only spoken to him in her dreams. She might easily renounce him. She had no mother to tell her difficulties to, and from her father she had learnt nothing but cold prudence. Mathematics is a pitiless science. According to mathematics, love is not a number which counts, but a mere cipher. Among geometrical figures you will find every conceivable shape but nothing in the shape of a heart. She could get no further information about her lover. The games of ball in the market-place were now forbidden, and who knew but what poor Valentine was locked up besides? It was so easy to find a pretext. Perhaps he had renounced her himself already. Perhaps he had gone back to his native place.

Should she therefore sacrifice her favorite doves for his sake?

At noon the same day Michal brought both the doves to her father, not roasted or stewed on a dish, but alive in their cage, whereupon the professor kissed his dutiful little daughter on both cheeks.

Three weeks later he united pretty Michal and Henry Catsrider in holy wedlock, and gave them both his parental as well as his sacerdotal blessing.

Valentine Kalondai had had no opportunity of doing anything desperate in the meantime. After the assembled Consistory had publicly upbraided him for all the sins he had hitherto committed—to wit: his dancing in the woods; his keeping a big dog; his propensity to all kinds of idle jesting; his playing truant at church; his consorting with fiddlers and trumpeters; tussling with night watchmen; making the beadle drunk and dressing him up in woman's clothes; smoking in the streets, etc.—he was sent to jail for a week, and then solemnly expelled from the Keszmár Lyceum with the consilium abeundi, and thus prevented from doing anything whereby he might perhaps have prevented the consummation of his rival's wedding. So the ceremony was performed without let or stay, and pretty Michal became the wife of the man who tended the Lord's flock instead of the man who slaughtered the sheep.

CHAPTER IV.

Wherein are described all manner of robbers and dangers, wherefrom the righteous are wondrously delivered.

Henry had made up his mind to take his young wife to Zeb immediately after the wedding, before settling down at the parsonage of Leta. It was ten years since he had seen his father, who was naturally full of wrath and sorrow at the disappearance of his son. But a fair daughter-in-law would, no doubt, be the best mediator between them. At any rate, there was no harm in trying, for the old man was very rich and Henry was his only son. Many a wrinkled brow has been stroked smooth again ere now by the soft hand of a pretty woman.

The learned Professor Fröhlich himself fully approved of this plan, for although the books of the philosophers are full of golden maxims which demonstrate that all earthly treasures are but dross, nevertheless, in this practical world of ours, where one can get nothing without money, a little money is ever so much better than any amount of golden maxims.

Besides, the old gentleman had very little of the good things of this world to bestow upon his daughter. Alchemy could no more make gold then than it can now.

It was as much as he could do to dower the bride with new gowns and underlinen, and here, too, he looked rather to simplicity than to splendor. Instead of giving his daughter silk and satin robes, he impressed upon her the wise saw: 'Mulier superbe amicta, in facie picta, in sermone ficta—non uni vitio est addicta'—The woman who flaunts in frippery, paints her face, and talks mincingly, is the slave of more than one vice already. The husband must see to the rest, and the husband in this case was but a poor, hungry parson, whose benefice for a whole year to come would be but an empty title. During all that time he must be content with a curate's pay. After that, however, he would certainly do very well, especially if his father helped him with a little ready money to go on with.

Meanwhile a journey had to be undertaken, and a journey in those days was no joke. The mountain roads could only be crossed on horses or mules, and the beasts, drivers and all, had to be hired. Then, for security's sake, you had to wait till a regular caravan had assembled, for the whole region was blackmailed in those days by three powerful bands of robbers, whose leaders were called Janko, Bajus, and Hafran. Janko was famed for his physical strength and agility, Bajus for his craft and cunning, but Hafran, or Raven, as the Slovacks called him, for his ferocity. Each of them commanded from fifty-five to sixty men. Sometimes they all united and fought regular pitched battles with the soldiers and police sent out to capture them. It was, therefore, not advisable for single families or small parties to undertake long journeys like that from Keszmár to Zeb. One had to make arrangements months beforehand, and wait till the dealers in cloth, haberdashery, and spices were ready to set out with their wares for Eperies; these were then usually joined by a dozen or so of butchers and cattle-dealers from Lower Hungary, as many cattle-drovers, half a dozen strolling fiddlers, sundry Slovack linen and oil merchants, and some thirty students traveling homeward in vacation and provided with stout bludgeons; thereto were, of course, to be added the drivers of those who had to make the journey by horse or mule, or pay for the transport of their goods, so that the whole caravan generally numbered one hundred and fifty strong, and the robbers would think twice before venturing to attack so large a party. On this occasion, moreover, Fortune added to their company a Polish nobleman who had been on a visit to his kinsmen in Hungary, and was returning home with an escort of forty men-at-arms. Whoever was disposed to go a two days' journey from Keszmár might safely commend his soul to God in such a goodly company.

Now although the good and learned Professor David Fröhlich could not endow his daughter with much worldly wealth, yet by way of compensation he gave her richly of what he himself possessed, for his parting present was a sack-load of wonder-working medicinal herbs. Among them was the "weapon balsam," which he fully directed her how to use in case her husband was wounded by the way. In such a case she was first of all to stick into the wound a piece of wood of the same shape as the weapon which had inflicted it, and then draw it out and anoint it with the balsam. The wound would then infallibly heal—in course of time. In case, however, of a gunshot wound, when the bullet remained in the body, she was to beat flat and bind upon the wound a leaden bullet which had previously shot a wild boar, for it is well known that all such bullets attract and draw out all other bullets. In one corner of the sack he stuck that valuable counselor in all the ills of life, the book "Georgica Curiosa," which was an inventory of all the healing herbs with which the sack was filled. Nay, his love for his daughter made the worthy man part with even his most precious talisman—the plague amulet. This was a little blue silk cushion filled with the leaves of herbs beneficial against the plague, and inscribed with the following charm in letters of gold: "Longe, tarde cede, recede, redi!" which is really a very good charm, for it means that one should hasten away as far and as soon as possible from the place where the plague prevails, and not return for a long time after it is all over. This amulet the learned man had worn, fastened by a silken cord round his neck, night and day for years. Now, however, he said good-by to it, and the tears came into his eyes as he tied it round his daughter's white neck, and whispered tenderly:

"Never take it off, my dear, never take it off! It was your mother's."

Then the great scholar, after carefully observing the aspects of the seven planets, was very particular to calculate beforehand a day which, owing to a propitious conjunction, would be a very favorable day for traveling, for warfare, for the donning of new clothes, for courtships, and for making visits and purchases.

He took leave of his son-in-law and his daughter on the previous evening, for the caravan was to depart before sunrise, while Orion was in the ascendant, at which time the learned man would already have surrendered his limbs to repose. Now, all the world knows that whoever is involuntarily aroused from his slumbers at such a time will wake up every day at the self-same hour for a whole year afterward and not be able to go to sleep again: such a contingency therefore was to be guarded against at any cost.

Pretty Michal wept long and sore when the time came to say good-by. She wept for her good, affectionate father, for her flowers, her serving-maids, her little room which looked out upon the garden, her kitchen, bright with burnished copper vessels; but the ungrateful little thing did not weep very much for the learned books she left behind her, though, indeed, she could never cease to think of those with whom she had had her daily conversation for years. Nay, she so managed as to leave behind her the whole sack-load of medicinal herbs collected with such wisdom, "Georgica Curiosa" to boot. Instead of that she took with her one of her fan-tailed pigeons, which she dexterously smuggled into her long pocket.

The amulet fastened round her neck she held in high honor, not because it was a febrifuge, but because it was the solitary memento of her mother which she possessed.

Her husband, also, was motherless. He, too, had never known a mother's love.

Perhaps, too, she shed a few tears as she threw behind the fire a certain carefully folded up bundle of papers. They were the billets-doux which had reached her through the aërial post. She held them tightly in her hand till the mules jangling their bells stood before the door. Longer than that she could not hold them. She fancied she had destroyed them when she had burnt them, but, alas! the burning of those letters was only so much labor lost.

But joy always follows after sorrow.

Michal was going on a journey for the first time in her life. For the first time in her life she was to see field and forest beneath the open sky. Set in a frame of the most beautiful landscape, even her husband looked better than he had ever looked before. Never had she thought him so agreeable, and he cut quite a stately figure on horseback; indeed, she scarcely recognized him as the same being who used to trip so humbly after the professor with his books under his arm, for he could sing cheerily among the students who walked along by his side, and his merry laugh was heard from one end of the caravan to the other.

The city walls of Keszmár and the well-known mountains had long ago been left far behind, and Michal kept thinking to herself that she was now her own mistress, and that she had a master who was at the same time her slave. The house that she would henceforth call her home would have a very different appearance from the one she had just left. There would be no one to supervise or keep her in order; she would have no other monitor but her own conjugal virtue. She would be a model of a wife, upon whom all eyes should be fixed, and of whom people would say: "Try and be like that God-fearing lady, learn from her sobriety, decency, piety, frugality, and domestic economy; learn from her how to speak sensibly in four languages, and still more sensibly to keep silence." Thus she tried to discern, through the enigmatical gloom of the future, the joys and delights that her soul longed for, so as the better to accommodate herself to her new position.

She was the only woman in the whole company.

A driver had been assigned to her, who was to lead her mule by the bridle whenever the path went through a brook or over a stone, and stimulate it whenever it had to clamber up the steep mountain-side. He was an enigmatical Slovack lad, with bast shoes and a hat with a brim drawn deep down over his eyes. "Gee!" and "Whoa!" were the only sounds he ever uttered, and these were naturally addressed to the mule.

The character of the region had suddenly and completely changed. Mountains, pine forests, and roaring waterfalls succeeded one another in rapid succession.

The numerous company sat them down on the fresh grass at the foot of a shady tree by the side of a purling brook, and everyone produced his knapsack, his wallet, or his flask. The wealthier of them shared their good fare with the students, who expressed their thankfulness by singing merry songs. There was one student who particularly distinguished himself by his facetiousness, and whom everyone called Simplex. He, too, introduces himself under that very name in his contemporary memoirs, from which we have borrowed many of the data of this our veracious history. He was an itinerant student, drummer, and trumpeter, and a wag and good fellow to boot. He soon succeeded in gaining Henry's goodwill, and he also favored the young bride with his company from time to time, taking the whip out of the hands of the sleepy driver and rating him soundly in Polish, which the other endured without a murmur.

The jests of Simplex put the company in high good-humor. Even Michal caught the contagion of the general merriment. The spicy, fresh air seemed to relieve her mind of sorrow.

Suddenly, on reaching the summit of a lofty mountain, another panorama unfolded itself before their eyes. The steep mountain wall was succeeded by a deep glen, and the tops of the huge pine trees massed together below seemed to the naked eye to be a meadow of a wonderful green perpetually in motion. In the distance arose lofty rocks, piled one above the other and split up by chasms full of ice and snow. The path wound steeply down into this glen, where it was already night, and by the side of the path ran a mountain stream, which, pouring forth from the crevices of the granite rocks, plunged downward in a hundred glistening columns like a crystal organ.

But it was not this splendid sight, but another, very strange and very terrible, on the other side of the way, which riveted pretty Michal's attention.

In the crevice of a projecting rock a lofty stake had been firmly planted; on the top of the stake was a wheel, and on the wheel lay something distantly resembling the shape of a man. The hands and feet hung loosely down; the neck and skull were thrown backward and reclined half over the tire of the wheel. Large black birds swept slowly round and round, and though startled by the approaching hub-bub were not scared away.

It never so much as entered into pretty Michal's mind what this strange object could be, she had absolutely no name for it.

"What's that?" cried she with a shudder, involuntarily reining up her mule.

But Henry was not there to answer her question. He had ridden on in advance with the students, who had now begun to sing in order to cheer the caravan during its perilous descent into the glen.

"That is the sign-post of the glen," said the driver; "don't look in that direction, my lady!"

Michal turned her head toward the speaker, but she immediately felt that it would have been far better for her to have riveted her sorrowing gaze on that nameless, hideous object, than to have looked into the eyes of him who had just addressed her, for the sight of him filled her with unutterable anguish. Now for the first time she recognized him. The silent, ragged driver was Valentine Kalondai!

"By the five wounds of Christ, it is Valentine!" murmured Michal in a voice stifled with emotion.

"Then you have recognized me at last?"

"What do you want here?"

"To accompany you."

"Wherefore?"

"To serve you if you should need anything, to defend you if you should be in danger, and, finally, to find out whither they are taking you."

"Valentine," said the girl, withdrawing the reins of the mule from the youth's hand, "it is sin to act thus. You will disgrace us both. I am dead to you now. If you have ever loved me, bury me! Bewail me as one who has died in the Lord. Make me not as one of those who will hereafter rise up and accuse you before God! I am now a married woman. I have plighted my troth to another. Not even for your sake will I lose my hope of salvation. I beseech you by the tender mercies of God not to pursue me. Remain here and forget that you ever saw me! Here, in this frightful glen, where I know not what awaits me, though I feel that it is full of horror, I cannot pray to God to protect me from all danger while you are by my side. I would not have the heart to go into those terrible depths if I felt myself laden with sin and perjury. If you love anything which belongs to me, oh, love my soul! If you would preserve me from harm, be jealous of my honor! Remain behind, I say, and follow me no further!"

The young man opened his lips to say something in reply, but not a word came forth, only a long-drawn sigh; a hot breath in the cold autumnal air was it, or, perhaps, a part of his very soul? Then he pulled his hat deeper down over his eyes and remained standing in the way, while Michal on her mule ambled further on.

"Jacky, my boy!" cried a jesting voice in the ear of the startled driver, and at the same time someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was Simplex, the merry trumpeter.

"How far you have dropped behind your mistress!"

"Yes, and I will drop back still further, friend Simplex. She has recognized me. She has driven me away. I have now but one favor to ask of you. If you are really my friend, prove it by doing me a great service. I cannot accompany her further. You do so in my stead. If any evil befall Michal, stand by her and save her. You have your wits about you and know the region thoroughly. Be near her as long as possible. Let me know how it befalls, be it good or evil. You will find me at Kassa, in my mother's house."

Nowadays we should hurl back such a commission at the suggester's head. Nowadays everyone looks after himself, and no one is such a fool as to run after a woman whom a second person loves and a third person has married. But in former days men were different. Besides, they had not so much to do then as they have now, and a social law was then in force which has long since become obsolete, the law of friendship. It was not codified, yet its authority was universally deferred to and folios were written about it. This law of friendship gave a man the right to demand great things from his neighbor, and those who obeyed this law were bound together by stronger ties than any ties of kinship. We shall presently give many examples to show how much in those days the unwritten law of friendship was needed, a law passed by no parliament, sanctioned by no monarch, enforced by no tribunal, yet everywhere valid and effectual.

The trumpeter, contemptuously dubbed Simplex, promised to do all that his friend required of him and gave him his hand upon it, whereupon he hastened to overtake the lady, who was now some distance ahead.

But Valentine Kalondai remained standing on the hillside listening till the clattering of the horses' hoofs had quite died away. Then he turned and walked slowly off, to the great joy of the crows and ravens, who so long as he stood there did not venture to resume their banquet beneath the gallows. Meanwhile Michal was trying to overtake her husband, who was well on in front surrounded by the merry students.

The road became rougher and rougher as it wound down into the valley. The broad, well-wooded mountain-sides confined it within a precipitously shelving glen. The brook zigzagged across it and tore out the rolling stones, so that the very mules had to pick their way cautiously along. At first the way wound among large blocks of stone, but presently it ended abruptly at a yawning chasm among the rocks. Here the mountain stream plunged, roaring and foaming, down into a dizzy depth. Beyond the bridge the path reappeared, but now it was confined more than ever between two steep rocky walls, down the smooth slaty sides of which the moisture trickled continually, diffusing a misty, cavernous sort of smell over the whole of the dark rocky defile, which was overshadowed by nodding pine trees. The mules no longer picked their way among rocks, but among bones. All around lay the skeletons of men and of horses inextricably mixed together.

"Is this a burial-ground?" asked Michal of her Henry, not without a shudder.

But Henry had no answer ready. He said that he had never been that way before; he had gone to Keszmár by another road over the mountain ridge, a road which you could only pass on foot. But Simplex was at hand and he explained the mystery of the bones strewing the way, as he had heard it during his wanderings in the mountains from the lips of his guides.

Many years ago, the troops of the Prince of Transylvania, with some Turkish auxiliaries, had blockaded a regiment of Imperial cavalry in this defile, and after breaking down the bridge leading to the glen had massacred the whole lot without mercy. There was no place to bury the dead, and so they had lain there ever since. The students, from sheer mischief, now picked up two or three of the skulls and trundled them along the road. No doubt they were not the first who had amused themselves by playing bowls with dead men's bones.

"If Hafran were to catch you here, he and his merry men would play at bowls with your heads also," cried Simplex, without however either spoiling their good-humor or putting Michal in a better humor.

In the evening twilight they came to the kopanitscha, where it was advisable to stay the night. It consisted of a group of houses formed of the trunks of trees, surrounded by a palisade of sharp stakes, with loopholes at regular intervals. A low door, made of heavy beams, led into the palisade, where, as the neighing of horses promptly testified, other travelers had already arrived.

The door was opened to their knocking, and the first arrivals, among whom were the students and the young married couple, were admitted. Far behind toiled the merchants and drivers with their cattle and heavily laden wagons, and last of all came the Polish nobleman and his armed retainers.

There were enough barns and out-houses to accommodate them all. Hay for fodder and straw for bedding were also to be had in abundance. The host was cooking flesh in a large caldron on an open hearth. One wing of the house was already occupied by a company of Polish merchants, bringing cloth and spices to the Eperies market, and accompanied by an escort of twelve hired soldiers, in helmets and coats of mail, armed with swords and blunderbusses.

The wife of the kopanitschar, or host, a good-looking young person, immediately took charge of the pastor's wife, whom she led into her own private room, that she might not have to listen to the loose talk which would certainly flow from the unwashen mouths of so many men.

"For no one will close an eye here the whole night through," remarked the worthy woman confidentially. "Here in the mountains lurk Janko, Hafran, and Bajus, all three of them!"

Michal asked who these three worthies were.

The hostess told her they were three robber chiefs, each more terrible than the other. Hafran was cruel, Bajus a crafty rogue, but Janko a true hero who knew not fear.

How the eyes of the woman sparkled when she mentioned Janko!

Michal asked her whether she was not afraid to live in so lonely a place with so many robbers about.

"Oh! Janko will do us no harm," said the young hostess, smiling; and Michal was still such a child that she gave no heed to the woman's sparkling eyes and smiling lips.

The hostess then began to tell her how powerful the robbers were. People were forever hanging, beheading, and breaking them on the wheel, and yet they never seemed to grow less. The militia of three counties combined with the Imperial troops were not strong enough to root them out of the mountains. And then she kept Michal awake till long after midnight by telling her of the adventures and exploits of the robbers, and the terrible fate which awaited them at the hands of the vihodar of Zeb.

"Who is he?" asked Michal.

What! not hear of the vihodar! He was the headsman of Zeb, a man famed far and wide. They call him the vihodar. Every child knows of him; but bandits, witches, and painted damsels know him best of all. Michal's idea of these last three species of mankind was very vague; she had never even heard tell of them before. She, too, told the hostess whence she came, whither she was going, and how she had only been married the day before, and this was the first night that she and her husband had ever slept under the same roof.

About midnight Henry Catsrider came to his wife, and told her that the region was not safe. The mountain path over which they had to go was occupied by a band of robbers, and the number of the robbers was great. It is true the caravan was also numerous, but the members of it could not agree among themselves as to what was the best thing to be done. The Polish nobleman, who had many musketeers with him, said that he had not come all that distance to be shot down like a dog. He would send to Janko and offer him a ransom if he would let him pass through the glen unmolested. He was also willing to pay a ransom for all who cared to join him. But the merchants and the drovers would not agree to this, asserting that however willing the robbers might be to negotiate when they had to do with armed noblemen or poor ambulant students, they certainly would not allow wealthy merchants and fat drovers to escape scot free. Not to defend themselves, therefore, would be to lose everything. The fact is they had been over-persuaded by the Polish merchants, who had brought with them twelve Imperial soldiers, and were firmly persuaded that they could keep the robbers at bay. All they wanted was rainy weather.

"Why do they want rainy weather?" asked Michal.

"I'll tell you," whispered the kopanitschar's wife. "When it rains the robbers cannot fire, because their lunts won't burn and the powder gets moist. These twelve soldiers, however, have new-fangled muskets, which are fired, not with a lunt, but by a flint; the flint strikes upon a piece of steel, the steel gives out a spark, and the spark fires the powder. They say that these cunning firearms come from France. The soldiers would like to try them against the robbers, and they only want rainy weather in order that the robbers may not be able to fire upon them in return."

"But," remarked Henry, "the question is which party we ought to join, the Polish nobleman's, who trusts in the clemency of the robbers and will pay them a ransom, or the merchants', who rely upon their firearms?"

"Join neither," said the hostess. "An idea occurs to me. I am sorry for that pretty young creature. She was only married yesterday. I'll be bound to say she has not kissed her husband yet. You must not go with the merchants, for the danger will be very great. I know Janko. When he is attacked he is like a bear with a sore head. He cares not a fig for muskets, and does not value his life at a boot-lace. It would not be becoming for you to be mixed up in a skirmish. It is not a clergyman's business to fight. But neither must you join the Polish nobleman and trust to the clemency of the robbers. I know Janko. The sight of a pretty woman makes him like the very devil. He would rather leave a sack of gold untouched than a pretty woman. I should not like you to fall into his hands. But I have a third plan ready. It would not do at all for a large company, but two or three people might very well try it. My husband will lead you over the mountain ridge, but let the horse, the mule, the drivers, and the baggage go on with the Polish nobleman; and when they pass over the bridge where Janko bars the way, and when the blackmail has been levied, the drivers can halt at the Praszkinocz csarda with the beasts and the baggage. Meanwhile my husband will guide you so securely to the csarda that not a hair of your head shall be rumpled."

Michal thought the advice good. It was the best way of escaping two great dangers.

They put together in all secrecy what they needed most, entrusting the remainder of the baggage to one of the drivers (the other had evidently run away, for Henry could find him nowhere); the host brought alpenstocks, bast shoes with nails in the soles, which they put on forthwith, and they all set out in the gloom of twilight.

Suddenly they remarked that they were four. Simplex, the trumpeter, was trotting on behind them. He said that as he was not inclined to send his flesh to market he preferred scaling the mountains with them to accompanying the merchants or the magnate.

Michal had no objection. It was only one familiar face the more, and he had quite won her heart by his gayety and good-humor. Besides that, he could help her to talk to the guide, who was a native Pole and therefore unintelligible without an interpreter, for Simplex could patter Polish very well.

The wish of the Polish merchants was gratified: it began to rain. Scarcely was the little group half an hour's journey from the kopanitscha, scarcely had it begun to ascend the footpath, when it was enveloped in so dense a mist that only the experience of its guide saved it from being lost in the wilderness.

The experienced mountaineer comforted them with the assurance that the mist would not be long in their way, for it was nothing but a descending cloud. They would soon be able to look down upon it with a clear sky over their heads. By sunrise they would be among heights never visited by clouds.

Simplex, on this occasion, approved himself a highly useful traveling companion. To prevent the young wife from growing weary on the slippery way, he hewed down with his hanger two young pine trees and made a litter out of them, on which weary Michal was made to sit, while he and the guide bore her between them over the most difficult parts of the way.

The kopanitschar spoke Polish with the trumpeter in order that the lady might not understand what they were talking about. He said to him that if either of them were to slip, litter-bearers, lady, and all would infallibly plunge headlong into the abyss, the bottom of which could not be seen for the mists, though they could hear the murmuring of the mountain stream far below them. Or if they lost themselves in the thick mists and strayed into a chasm or a snowdrift, whence not even a chamois could force his way out again; or if they met the man-eating bear which haunted the forests; or if they fell foul of the robbers' camp, then God have mercy on their souls!

And while the young bride was thus sitting between them on her litter, she took the fan-tailed pigeon from her pocket, and fed it out of her hand and gave it drink from her lips, unconscious of the thousand deadly perils which surrounded her, and whispered caressingly: "My dovey, my darling little dovey!"

The young morning was now beginning to dawn, for the mist was growing lighter and snow fell instead of rain; they had already reached the Alpine regions.

"We are on the right road," murmured the kopanitschar; "there goes the track of the bear through the juniper tree, and yonder is the place by which the hares, the wild goats, and the buffaloes go up every morning to drink out of the mountain tarn. We are close upon the Devil's Castle."

But surely he must have been mistaken! How can that be the right way which leads to the Devil's Castle?

"What is that shimmering in the bushes?" inquired Simplex anxiously.

"The eyes of a lynx," growled the guide; "he is on the lookout for young chamois."

But a lynx has two eyes, and there was only a single bright point shimmering there. It was the lunt of a musket, which someone was hiding beneath his mantle to prevent it from going out.

"Halt!" cried a voice from the bushes, and at a distance of only ten paces a wild shape sprang up, resting its heavy firearm on an iron fork fastened in the ground. The robber did not aim at the two rustically clad shapes who were carrying the litter, but at the gentleman who was following a considerable distance behind.

"Jesus, Maria!" cried Michal, "he is shooting at my husband!"

"Don't shoot at him, Hanack!" cried Stevey to the robber, "don't you see that he's a clergyman?"

The challenge was of use, the freebooter lowered his lunt. Possibly, too, he was somewhat taken back at finding himself face to face with three men, one of whom was armed with an ax and another with a hanger; besides, he was not quite certain whether his powder was wet or dry. He therefore used clemency and answered amicably:

"Oh! 'tis you, Stevey, eh? Whom are you leading?"

"A clergyman and his wife."

"Then it is a Lutheran! A lucky thing for him! Had he been a Papist, I should have chucked him down that hole. But when you get to where Hamis is keeping watch, tell him that you are guiding a Romish priest and his sister, for he is ready to flay a Lutheran alive."

"Don't be afraid," said the kopanitschar kindly to the lady, "a single robber will not think of attacking three men. This is the outermost picket, the camp is down in that deep hollow yonder."

They hastened onward, and now Michal begged her husband not to lag so far behind her.

The guide had calculated rightly that by ascending the steep upward path through the bear's track they would reach the mountain's summit before sunrise, by which time the clouds would lie below them. The mists over their heads now began to clear away. As the rays of the sun dissipated the snow clouds, it was as if millions of crystal needles were shimmering in the air, till a gust of wind suddenly swept them all away and revealed the clear blue sky. Then the sun came forth amidst the Alpine summits. At first, however, they did not see the sunrise to advantage, for their way led through a dense grove of young pine trees growing up among the charred stumps of a burnt forest. The litter was here of no use. They had to creep through the young undergrowth on all fours.

The guide now told the travelers to remain where they were; he would go ahead and look about to see if it was all right. With that he crept cautiously forward among the thick bushes, taking great care not to disturb the rustling leaves in the silent woods. In a little time he came back very crestfallen. It was not safe. The robbers were encamped close by the Devil's Castle.

Then Simplex also crept close to the extreme edge of the wood, and there saw with his own eyes, at the foot of the old tower rising above the steep precipices, forty men armed with muskets and axes lying on the grass round a fire, on which a substantial breakfast was broiling.

There are some insanely audacious ideas which only the extremity of despair can suggest, and Simplex was just the sort of man to whom such mad ideas would naturally occur. So now, too, he hit upon an expedient which none but a devil-may-care ex-student with a taste for adventure would ever have thought of.

"Listen, Stevey!" said he suddenly to the guide, "I'll scare away all the robbers!"

"Stop!" cried the terrified guide; "are you mad?"

But the deed was already done. Simplex took the trumpet from his shoulder and blew a mighty alarum that re-echoed far and wide through forest and dale, and then he cried aloud: "Run! the soldiers are coming!"

The robbers no sooner heard it than they sprang to their feet in terror. Many of them even took the precaution to discharge their firearms in the direction of the forest, so as to give the alarm to their remaining companions who were encamped all about. A general stampede ensued. Simplex kept on blowing his trumpet with all the strength of his lungs; the guide threw himself with his face to the ground, praying three different prayers simultaneously, and tossing his arms and legs about like an epileptic; while Henry Catsrider, in his agony, hastily climbed up a tree.

Now when pretty Michal saw the panic-stricken robbers scattering in all directions, the guide in convulsions, Simplex trumpeting with all his might and main, and her clerical husband hastily clambering up the nearest tree, she could not refrain from bursting into a hearty peal of laughter. If die she must, she might just as well have one more good laugh before she did die. It could make not the slightest difference.

But no sooner had the threatened peril been so marvelously averted than the laughter of the pretty lady infected the trumpeter to such a degree that he let his instrument fall to the ground; then the kopanitschar also rose from the ground and burst into a hoarse guffaw, and at last Henry Catsrider himself descended from his perch and also burst out laughing.

The young lady thought how funny it is when man and wife laugh in unison. It is perhaps a wife's greatest bliss to be able to laugh when her husband laughs, and weep when he weeps.

But the kopanitschar gave the trumpeter a violent blow on the back and said, half in jest and half in anger: "I'll never be your guide again as long as I live! May the vihodar of Zeb get hold of you!"

Michal thought to herself how strange it is when a husband suddenly breaks off in the middle of a peal of laughter as if he had had a cold douche. Must not a wife in such a case also cease laughing?

"But now we must pack off as quietly as possible while the road is clear," continued the kopanitschar. "We must not stop a minute till we get to Praszkinocz!"

So they all took to their heels and tried to reach the Devil's Castle as quickly as they could, where the fires were still burning, and hacked and bloody pieces of bone, and half-roasted hunks of flesh on huge wooden spits, were scattered all about. The spring bubbling forth from the plateau formed, deep down in the valley below, a small lake covered with water lilies and the broad red flowers of the water clover. Hither came the wild beasts of the forest to slake their thirst.

From the foot of the ruin the valley sinks abruptly down toward the northwest, where it has quite a winterly aspect. The whole declivity is covered by a layer of snow, which the rays of the sun are never able to entirely melt. The sun only shows his face there for an hour at noon every day, and what is then melted quickly hardens into a coating of ice of a mirror-like smoothness. While on the southeastern side of the mountain snow and rain are always falling and clouds obscure the landscape, a bright sky smiles on the other side and you can see as far as Poland. In the valley beneath, at least two miles distant from the ruins of the Devil's Castle, lies the little village of Praszkinocz. A serpentine path winds down the slippery sides of the mountains into the village below, but few people ever use it, save an occasional charcoal-burner or wood-cutter.

"Alas, Stevey!" cried Simplex, shuddering at the sight of this perilous descent, "we shall never get off with a whole skin that way. 'Tis like the glass mountain of Prince Argyrus, and he, at all events, had an enchanted horse to fall back upon. If we creep down on all fours we shan't get there in two days, and what's to become of this delicate creature?"

"Have no fear, trumpeter," said the guide calmly, and he set to work felling a pine with his ax.

Meanwhile Simplex explored every hole and corner of the ruins to see if he could discover any hidden treasure which the robbers might have left behind, while Michal searched in the grass, which had been protected from the snow by the overhanging pine branches, for gentian and wood angelica, and great was her joy when she discovered some specimens of those wonder-working herbs.

But Henry stood aloof, holding his forehead with his hands as if his head ached.

As the pine branch fell to the last stroke of the ax, the roll of musketry suddenly began to resound from behind the mountains. The sharp volleys at once put an end to the composure of the party.

"Listen!" cried the guide; "the robbers have come to blows with the soldiers over there," and with that he dragged the fallen pine trunk to the edge of the declivity and poised it over the serpentine path, with the hewn-off end pointing downward.

"And now to horse, to horse! You, trumpeter, get up behind. His reverence must sit in the middle with his lady behind him, who must clip him tightly round the waist. Each one of us must hold fast to the branches on both sides, and draw up his legs so as not to get entangled in the wayside shrubs and briars. I'll sit in front and be coachman and pilot."

After thus assigning to everyone his place, the guide sat astraddle on the thick end of the trunk, and the three men jogged the dangerous vehicle along like a six-footed dragon till it toppled over the edge of the slope.

"Forward, dragon! in Heaven's name, forward!"

The pine trunk, once set in motion, glided down the smooth, mirror-like incline like a dart. The guide, spreading out his long legs, steered it right and left, and when it flew down a little too quickly, he sharply planted both his heels against the ground to slacken speed, and cried:

"Wo-ah, dragon, wo-ah!"

No gondolier, no coachman, could have steered or driven more skillfully. A single false shove, a single obstacle in the path, and all four of them would have been hurled into the abyss below and dashed to pieces.

But no footless serpent could have writhed more deftly down than the pine trunk. It was a sight worth seeing, this lightning-like flight down a mountain of glass.

"Holloah! hie! fly away, thou devil's steed!"

Silly Simplex, in a transport of delight, took the trumpet from his shoulder, and catching the mane of the pine tree firmly by one hand, blew a postilion-march with all his might.

"Holloah, ho! holloah, ho! This is the way the devil brings home his bride."

Michal, too, loosed her arm from her husband's neck and began to clap her hands for joy. What a rapture to fly down so swiftly! She feared nothing, she delighted in the very danger. Her heart was innocent. No sin oppressed her conscience. Well for her that she had had sense enough to shut her ears against the tempter. If only the shadow of a sin had now darkened her soul she would not have been so blithe in the midst of danger, but would have looked down with a shudder at the awful abyss which seemed both Death and Hell.

"Put your arms round me again or I shall fall off!" cried the man in front of her. His face was as pale as wax. A vertigo had seized him. And Michal had to hug him tightly lest he should lose his equilibrium, and she clasped him to her breast till they got to the bottom of the glen. The flight along the icy slope had lasted half an hour, on foot it would have taken them half a day at least to traverse it.

So they all thanked God that they had come off with a whole skin. And it was not long before they had to thank God for much more than that. At midday they were rejoined by their fellow travelers who had come through the valley, and fearful tales they had to tell of the dangers which they had encountered.

Janko, to whom a mounted messenger had been sent on beforehand to negotiate with the robbers, had granted the travelers a free passage thorough the defile, and the Polish nobleman paid for all those who accompanied him, students included, the ransom demanded. But in the meantime Hafran's robbers (it was these whom Simplex had scared away with his trumpet from the Devil's Castle) fell upon the Keszmár merchants who were marching far behind in the rear, cut down the drivers, tortured the merchants, and carried off the mules and pack-horses. But while they were thus making free with the booty, the twelve soldiers, armed with their new-fangled muskets which could be fired off even in rainy weather, fell upon the robbers, who could not shoot because of the wet. About forty of the freebooters bit the dust. Hafran, with the remainder, escaped by the skin of his teeth among the rocks, contriving to carry the whole of the spoil along with him, including the baggage of the young married people, who now had nothing left but what they were actually wearing. All the beautiful embroidery, lace, and fine linen which pretty Michal had worked and woven with her own hands, an inestimable treasure, had become the booty of these vagabonds.

"May the vihodar of Zeb break every one of them on the wheel!" cried the kopanitschar.

At these words Henry's face became fiery red.

But Michal threw her arms round his neck and consoled him.

"Let us thank God," said she, "for so marvelously delivering us from so great a peril."

She knew now what a great danger she had escaped, but she had no idea of the still greater danger that she was about to encounter.

CHAPTER V.

Which will be a short chapter but not a very merry one.

The young married people had now neither horse nor mule to carry them any further. They had to look about for some sort of vehicle to take them to Zeb, and the wagoner whom they hunted up at last swore by hook and by crook that he would go by sledge or not at all, for snow had fallen in Praszkinocz, and there was now a sledging track all the way. As they could not be choosers they of course consented. Simplex begged them to take his bundle with them, for he too wanted to get to Eperies. He had come off the luckiest of them all, for as he had carried his few worldly possessions slung over his shoulder, he had not been plundered by the robbers. The wagoner granted him his request, and even allowed him to run along behind the sledge and hang on by the trestle when he was tired.

He ran as long as the sledge-track lasted, but, as might have been anticipated (though the driver absolutely refused to believe in the possibility of any such thing), when they arrived at the foot of the mountain they saw that there was no more snow but only mud. Simplex had now to shove the sledge much oftener than mount behind it, especially when the road lay uphill. The clergyman also had to lend a hand occasionally, while the countryman in front dragged the horses along by main force. Thus, in addition to their other troubles, they were saddled with a sledge on muddy roads.

They had fallen far behind the caravan; even the carriers with the baggage were now a long way ahead of them. It was late in the evening before they saw in the distance the lofty church of Zeb with its copper roof, and the bastions of the city embowered in gardens. The wind wafted to their ears the sound of the evening Ave Maria, and a very comfortable sound it is to him who sits snugly by his own fireside. But it is far from pleasant to those who are outside the walls, for after the Angelus all the gates are closed, the bridges drawn up, and not a living soul that wanders in a bodily shape upon the earth is admitted within the city.

"We are shut out," growled the wagoner, scratching his head. "Now we shall have to sleep under some haystack. I only wish we had not taken that vagabond student's bundle into the sledge, that was what made us creep along so slowly."

But if Simplex had not helped to shove on the sledge they would not have got so far as this.

"Pray let us go on a little further," said the clergyman. He was walking along moodily by the side of the sledge. No one was inside it but Michal.

The sun had set. Its scarlet glare still lit up the summits of the distant Carpathians, but the only objects which they illuminated here below were one or two mansions scattered among the hills, the gates of the city, and a large, lonely building standing outside the walls. The walls and roof of this building shone blood-red in the evening twilight, but from the huge chimney issued volumes of pitch-black smoke. Glowing red clouds, betokening wind, accompanied the setting sun, and a flock of crows which had been startled from their resting-place flew, loudly croaking, out of the woods toward the town as forerunners of the approaching storm.

The flock of crows alighted on a dismal-looking scaffolding, which stood on a hill on this side of the red house. It consisted of roofless columns rising gauntly out of a square mass of masonry and united by four iron bars. From each of these four columns a huge iron hook boldly projected. The crows settled down in thick clusters on the iron bars. Nowhere in the whole region was a tree, a shrub, or any asylum for man or beast to be seen.

"Whatever can that be?" thought Michal.

Simplex and the wagoner dragged the horses forward. Henry walked beside the sledge, and held it fast with one hand to prevent it from toppling over.

"Whither are we to go now?" growled the wagoner. "We must pass the night outside here, I suppose. There is no shelter anywhere, and during the night the witches will do us a mischief."

"There are no such things as witches," remarked Henry dryly.

"But I say there are. I'm sure of it. Barbara Pirka is certainly a witch. They assemble here at midnight."

"Silence!" cried Henry sternly, and with that he seized the reins of the horses and began to lead them away from the road.

"Sir," said the carter, hesitating, "why are you going in that direction? Here is no other house but that one yonder," and he pointed to the lonely house which stood below the town, all lurid in the evening twilight.

"And thither we must go."

"Jesus Christ preserve us!" stammered the wagoner, "that is the house of the vihodar."

"And thither I say we must go."

Then he went to his wife, and wrapped her in his mantle to protect her from the cold night air.

"Is your father's house much further?" she asked tenderly.

"There it is, straight before us," answered Henry; "my father is the vihodar of Zeb!"

CHAPTER VI.

Contains the proper explanation of things which have hitherto remained obscure.