Chapter XIII: What Happened After That (1)

When she again lifted up her face, her eyes were like a somnambulist's gazing fixedly in the moonlight. They appeared absolutely dark-blue, so much were the irises distended. Her voice was quite low.

"The whole picture is still vividly before my eyes. The greater part of the town was in flames. It must have been evening. The sound of the clock in the Calvinist church tower mingled with the peal of the alarm-bells. The clock struck eight, the alarm-bells five. The people counted the strokes: exactly thirteen. The sun shone no longer, but the whole vault of heaven was alight; the fiery reflection of the thick clouds of smoke made a hellish daylight, and in the midst of this terrible illumination, like some dread idol, rose the tower of the Calvinist church, with its large copper roof, and its spire with the great gold ball and star. Star and ball glowed like phantoms from the world beyond the grave. The crackling of the fire roared down the howling of the beasts and the cries of ten thousand terrified men. In that part of the town where the carters dwelt, carts, horses and oxen, and their owners were all huddled together in one dense mass. To move was an impossibility. Then upon this howling, cursing, blaspheming multitude came pouring that mass of men which had fought its way from the banks of the Danube through the burning town, with the terrifying cry, 'The enemy has attacked the town!' By this time the alarming rumour had gained such proportions that there were those who said they had actually seen the enemy's soldiers entering the town. 'They are burning, they are plundering--fly! fly!' Some even exclaimed, 'They are about to bombard the captured town from the fortress!' All at once the whole street, as far as the Waag bridge, was filled with flying vehicles. In my terror I had clutched hold of the mud-splasher of one of these vehicles as it came tearing along, and ran along after it till there was scarcely a breath left in my body. My light buskins were completely worn off my feet and full of gravel. I had no time to stop and empty them. This particular carriage had excellent horses in it, and the coachman did not spare his whip. Two women, dressed in peasants' hoods, were sitting in this carriage. I was astonished that they should wrap themselves up so closely in their hoods, and cover their heads with big kerchiefs, when such an infernal heat was blazing all around us, from the earth, from the sky, and from every side of us.

"The coachman reached the Waag bridge safely before the other fugitive carriages had blocked up the way. At the entrance they had to stop, for there the custom-house officers demanded the bridge-tolls. That the whole town was in flames mattered not a button to them, all they wanted was their tolls. One of the women handed them an Austrian bank-note for 100 florins. The toll-collector could not give change. A queer sort of peasant woman, truly, who had no smaller change than a bank-note for 100 florins! While they were haggling about it, it occurred to me that I was now wearing my genteel clothes, and that in the pockets there was sure to be a silver _tizes_[76] for any beggar I might chance to meet on my way. So I went up and said to the peasant women: 'I've got a _tizes_ which I'll give to the toll-collector; all that I ask is that you will take me in your carriage--there's room for me beside the coachman. I don't mind where you take me.' At this, one of the women called to the coachman: 'Don't let that girl get up, we won't have her.' Then they told the toll-collector that he might keep the 100-florin note if he couldn't give them change, if only he would let their coachman go on. I was horrified at such inhumanity. What a heartless woman it must be who, in such a time of peril, could refuse a fugitive girl a place in her carriage, and who, rather than do so, preferred to sacrifice a bank-note for 100 florins, peasant though she was! In my indignation I tore the big muffling clout from the head of the peasant woman and discovered her face. And now my blood froze to ice. I recognised my own mother! 'Mother, dear mother!' I cried, 'don't you know me? I am your own little girl, Bessy!' Then my mother, pulling up the collar of her mantle over her face, said, in a simulated peasant voice: 'Be off! Don't bother us! I don't know the girl. I'm not your mother. Let go my kerchief!'

[Footnote 76: The tenth part of a florin.]

"I thought I was going mad. My own mother wouldn't know me! She wouldn't let me get into her carriage. Like lightning the thought flashed through my mind that she it was whom the people were cursing so. No doubt they were cursing her unjustly, but in such times as these that mattered little. Whomsoever the popular fury points out is condemned already. I could not betray my own mother. I hastily threw my silver coin to the toll-collector that they might let the carriage go on. I thought that if once we got beyond the bridge, and my mother had no further fear of pursuit, she would take me into the carriage. So catching hold of the back part of the vehicle, I ran on beside the carriage till we had got beyond the trenches of the fortress and out upon the highway. Then I again began to supplicate, so far as my gasping voice would allow me: 'Mother, dear, good mother! take me into the carriage; I am dropping. I can go no farther.' They would not hear me. They only cursed and scolded: 'Be off! Decamp!' And when I still persisted in clinging on, they at last seized my fingers, which were still clutching the splasher, violently wrenched them off, and gave me a rough push so that I fell at full length into the highway. Then the carriage rolled on farther.

"I had held out till then, but now my strength failed me. I trembled so that I could no longer stand upon my legs. Utterly crushed in mind and body by the sufferings of that terrible day, I dragged myself on my knees to the edge of the wayside ditch. My instinctive fear of death told me that I must avoid the middle of the road if I didn't want to be trampled to death. There then I lay clinging to a roadside poplar, gazing apathetically at the dreadful scene. The fugitive vehicles dashed madly along the highway in threes and fours, colliding every moment. The cursing and swearing were something awful. Every now and then one conveyance overturned another into the ditch, and the women who were sitting in them screamed and cried most piteously. One coachman hit upon the foolhardy idea of forcing his way through the ditch into the open field, and others followed his example. They came so close to me as to all but run over me, and I had not sufficient strength left to draw up my legs out of reach of their revolving wheels.

"Then the blast of trumpets mingled with the hurly-burly. A regiment of Hussars was trying to cut its way through the fugitive carriages with a convoy of hay-waggons, which, as was explained to me later on, the Commandant of the fortress was transferring from the burning town to the village of Izsa across the Waag. The commanding officer was cursing and swearing, and striking all the coachmen he met with the flat of his sword for stopping his soldiers' way. 'Damned rascals! instead of putting out the fire, you all take to your heels. What the devil is the matter with you? There's no enemy behind you! Would that the souls of your ancestors could revivify you!'

"The voice seemed familiar to me, but the face I had never seen before. A spiral moustache, a French beard, a Hussar uniform, and a plumed hat--I had never seen _that_ figure before.

"Thus he appeared before me like the dragon-slaying hero of a fairy tale.

"Hitherto, of all those who scurried past me, not one had noticed the wretched creature lying in the ditch. Some girl or other quite past help, they thought, perhaps. Nobody took any notice of me.

"This officer _did_ notice me. In the midst of the greatest turmoil he perceived a woman lying beneath his horse's feet. He hastily reined in his charger, and called me by my name. 'My lady Elizabeth! how ever did you come here? In Heaven's name, what has befallen you?'

"I recognised him by his mode of addressing me. There was only one man who used to address me in this way, the man who taught me my _rôle_ at those famous amateur theatricals that you remember.

"'Mr. Bálványossi! Mr. Director!' I stammered, in my joy.

"'No, no! Captain Rengetegi is my name. Why, where is your mother? Run away? She did well. Get up, my lady, into my carriage, and I'll take you now to a place of safety.'

"'I cannot get up.'

"Then he hastily dismounted from his horse, gave his bridle to his orderly, went up to me, raised me in his arms, carried me to his carriage, and laid me down there among sweet-smelling hay.

"I felt just as if I had been placed in Paradise.

"Then he threw his mantle over me. It was cold outside now, and a strong wind was blowing.

"But his care for me went even further than that.

"'There is food in my knapsack, lady Elizabeth. I suppose you have had no supper to-day? Take whatever you find there. There's some drink, too, in my flask. It will do you good. You have nothing more to fear. The finger-pointing virgin still stands there on the bastions of our fortress.'

"Then he mounted his horse again, and continued commanding his men loudly and authoritatively to force their way through the crush of carts and carriages with their convoy of hay. I fancied that I saw before me an archangel.

"I didn't wait to be asked twice. As soon as I was able to get hold of the knapsack of victuals, I stuffed myself indiscriminately with all it contained--ham, cake, rolls. I gorged like a wild beast broken loose from a menagerie. I verily believe that if my bliss in Heaven had depended upon it, I would have renounced it for that couch of soft straw and those greedily devoured delicacies.

"When I had satisfied my appetite as I had never done before, I unscrewed the top of the flask and put it to my mouth. I didn't taste what was in it, but I gulped and gulped so long as I had any breath in my body, as much as my thirst craved. I fancy it must have been brandy. When I couldn't drink any more I looked all about me. The burning town was a grand illumination; in the midst of it was the Calvinist church tower--only it was now not one tower, but three. The silly thing was dancing a _pas seul_, and wagging its head now to the right, and now to the left, and all the people, and the horses, and the coachmen, and the hay-carts were leaping and dancing, like wedding-guests considerably the worse for liquor.

"When next day I awoke out of a twenty-hours' sleep, I found myself in the room of a peasant's house. Two men were holding a consultation over me--the camp-surgeon and 'he.' 'How do you find yourself, lady Elizabeth? You are in my little room.'

"So ever since then I have been the lady Elizabeth."

With these words Bessy rushed to the edge of the steep rock, crossed her two hands over her breast, and looked over her shoulder at me.

"I have now told you everything, and you must judge me. You have no need to push me. Give but a signal with your finger and I'll put an end to myself!"

Horrified, I grasped her hand, and snatched her away from the dizzying rocky ledge.

"Do not tempt God! Be reasonable!" And, not without some little force, I made her sit down by the hot embers.

"But do you call this _life_?"

"Come, come, calm yourself! Look, these armed men are close upon us!"

They were not gendarmes. They were two worthy foresters belonging to the domain of the Forests of Diosgyör--a grey-bearded old man with a youthful assistant.

No hostile intentions had brought them thither. They could see, too, that our picnic beside the fire was a very innocent diversion. In the album left upon the rock was my unfinished landscape.

They greeted us cordially, and I returned their greeting in like manner. I asked the elder man whether I was injuring any one's proprietorial rights by making a fire with other people's wood. If so, I said, I would make good the trespass. To which the old man replied that he had no quarrel with me on that score. The stuff was there for the poor man to gather, and he cited the classical German ballad in which the evil-minded forester robbed the peasant of his bundle of faggots. He must needs be a lover of letters, then!

Then he told us why they had come.

"We perceived the smoke from below, and knew, therefore, that there were visitors on the Precipice Stone. We thought it our duty to come up. Wolves are about in the forest. We wished to tell you so."

"I thank you for your great kindness; but, from what I am told, wolves will not attack a man."

"But they've become very aggressive since they discovered that the Government has confiscated all muskets, leaving only a pair or two with us. They avoid men in the day time, I know; but at dark or in a snowstorm they are very impudent."

"We do not intend to remain here till evening. I only wanted to finish the drawing, for the sake of which I scrambled up hither."

"But I would call your attention, sir, to the fact that we shall have a fall of snow here before night. I know the signs of the weather. When such a vast mist lies over the country in the morning, and then rises suddenly, and is quickly followed by darkness, then we may expect a snowstorm the same day. That is an old experience of mine."

"We will hasten home."

"Do you live at Tordona, or at Malyinka?"

"I live at Tordona."

"God bless you, sir. I know every one there."

He didn't ask who I was. We shook hands, and with that the pair of them went on their way.

"Was it worth while creeping into the cave for this?" said Bessy, when the foresters had withdrawn.

"There are men who can face a great danger and hide away from a little one."

"And you think, then, that our friend there is a fire-eater?--I thought so too for a long time. It was no unexampled thing in those extraordinary times for men to become suddenly transformed. Those who were looked upon as mere carpet knights became veritable heroes; lawyers became colonels: war has an ennobling influence on so many types of character. I really believed that Rengetegi had changed his whole nature with his name. When others had to be aroused, there was no such orator as he. I was absolutely proud that we belonged to each other. When the Austrian troops invested the fortress, and hurled the first bomb into the market-place, the whole of our social life was suddenly turned upside down. There was now no such thing as etiquette. The families of great magnates left their houses (those, that is, whose houses were not burnt down already), pitched their tents in the Gipsy-field and dwelt there. The guns of the Monostor batteries did not carry so far as that. In the barracks, moral law disappeared. An officer was a great personage then, and to walk about the streets leaning on his arm was a much-coveted glory. Whether the lady on his arm was his wife was not the question--he was a fine fellow, a gallant fellow. That was the main thing. And if I met an acquaintance I introduced Rengetegi as my future husband. Every one knew that I had begun a suit against Muki Bagotay. But where were the courts, the advocates, the judges?--every one was either wearing a sword or serving a gun. When people asked me where I lived, I said 'in the fortress!' To dwell in the fortress was an enviable position. The rooms there were fire-proof. I really think that there were more who envied than pitied my fate. I also got familiar with the ways of a soldier's life. They gave concerts, and I fiddled while Rengetegi declaimed. When the enemy was hurling away his bombs at the fortress, we took our band out on the ramparts, and there, with a great flourish of trumpets, we danced _csárdáses_. How that did aggravate the Germans! I had a great reputation as a _rakétás_[77] dancer."

[Footnote 77: Rocket-dance.]

I must frankly admit that I was not much edified by this turn in the conversation.

Bessy perceived that I was not well pleased with her doings in camp.

"Ah, my dear friend!" she said, "don't fancy by any means that this episode of my life consisted entirely of rioting and revelry, there was a little intermezzo in it also. You know, of course, that, during the winter, things at Comorn were very bad indeed. The Commandant had not the capacity for the problem before him, which included the defence of such an important fortress. The garrison was lazy and mutinous. Whispers of treachery arose, and the chief of the artillery was deprived of his post. It was necessary to inform the Hungarian Government at Debreczin of the dangerous state of things at Comorn, and to beg for a new Commandant who should be a distinguished officer. But how was it possible to carry a message from Comorn to Debreczin? Who would undertake the risky enterprise of carrying the despatch from Comorn, through so many hostile armies, and bringing back the reply to it again? They had sent one messenger already, but he had been unable to get back. It was a joke which might cost a man his head.

"One evening, Rengetegi came to my little room in the barracks, and said: 'Elizabeth, the hour has come for us to part!'

"I immediately thought that he was tipsy.

"'You haven't played me away at cards, I hope?'

"'It is not you, but my own head that I have lost. I have accepted the mission to Debreczin. I've run my head against a wall, I know. It's neck or nothing now. And they've pressed a thousand florins into my hand to make the way before me quite secure.'

"'And you have lost it all at cards this evening?'

"'How did you find that out?'

"'I have made it my study. I know well those Hippocratic countenances. Well, and what are you going to do now?'

"'Save my honour! I'll go on my way without money.'

"'Listen to me! I believe that you would be very glad to get out of this bombarded fortress--but I've no very ardent belief that you'll ever come back again. I tell you what: give me the official despatch which has to be taken, and I'll take care that it reaches the hands of the Government.'

"'But how?' inquired Rengetegi, immensely delighted.

"'That I shall not tell you. I've been turning the matter over for some time. You have only a passive part to play here. You hide yourself in the village of Izsa, which the enemy has not occupied, because it lies within the range of the guns of the fortress, and wait for me there till I return from Debreczin with the answer of the Government.'"

"And Rengetegi actually accepted the proposal?" I inquired. I now began to admire this woman.

"He jumped at it. He gave me soul-stirring examples of the heroic women of history, who had gone to the wars along with their husbands.... He vowed that if I ever returned in safety from my mission he would henceforth call me 'Queen Zenobia.'

"By the evening of the same day I was ready for the enterprise. I made Rengetegi dye his hair, moustache, and beard black, so that it was almost impossible to recognise him."

"So that was your idea!" I cried.

"Then I stowed him away in a peasant's hut at Hetény, with strict instructions not to emerge from his prison till I tapped at the door. Next I set to work to thoroughly disguise my own person. I was to be the leader of a gipsy band. Ah! if you could only have painted my portrait! Then, indeed, I really was lovely! I smeared my face with the juice of green walnut-shells till it was so black that I could pass for a gipsy among the gipsies themselves; I clipped my hair till it only reached down to my shoulders; I put on a jacket which some gentleman or other had worn threadbare before giving it away; hose that certainly were never intended for me, and a shirt that had never been washed: and so I transformed myself into as filthy a shape as ever led a wandering gipsy band."

Here I could not forbear from pressing her hand. What sacrifices will not a woman make for her country and for her lover!

"But all this was a mere joke to what followed. I now had to get together a band. If they catch a gipsy alone they arrest him as a spy; but if he be one of a quartet he may go on his way rejoicing. I provided myself with a violoncellist, a clarinet-player, and a contra-bass. It was easy to persuade them to quit the bombarded town, into which the gentry who had robbed them of their poor hovels had forced them to go. Bread and meat were getting dearer and dearer, and there was nothing to be earned. Who had the heart to pay for music amidst such a frightful carnival?

"Thus, with my little band of three, I set out upon my long and uncertain journey on foot. Gipsies only ride in sledges when a magnate sends for them, and there was no such magnate in the whole district. If on our way we fell in with a cart laden with dried reeds taken out of the swamps for firewood, we would ask for a lift in it. But our legs nearly froze there, and we were glad to get down again and walk.

"In the very first village we came to, O-Gyalla, we fell in with a division of the Austrian investing army, German cuirassiers. The patrol brought us to the major in command. He was indeed a merciless personage. He roared at us, and asked us how we dared to leave the town. We naturally did not understand a word of German, and all four of us, in true gipsy fashion, began to raise objections at the same time: we could not remain in the town, the Honveds posted us right in front of the bombs, and made us play music at the very top of the bastions; all the cannons had fired at us, and that was a thing that gipsies couldn't stand. '_Was sagen die Spitzbuben?_' inquired the major of his auditor. The auditor understood Hungarian, and expounded unto him: 'Nix da, you rascals! You are spies, and must be searched. Come! you must undress.' I was not a little alarmed, I can tell you. Not on account of the despatches I had with me, I had put them in a place where they couldn't be found; but they would discover that I was a woman, and that while my face and hands were gipsy, the rest of me was European--and then I should be lost. I hastily said something to the gipsies, and in an instant they out with their instruments and rattled off _con fuoco_ the fine hymn '_Gott erhalte!_' At this the frosty face of the old martinet thawed somewhat. 'Well, well, you rascals,' said he, 'as you know what's proper and decent, I won't have you flogged this time, but be off at once and don't remain in the village here. You mustn't play here for anybody. Whoever has an itch for dancing just let him tell me, and I'll give him dancing enough. There's the whipping-post!' Now the clarinet-player was a merry wag, and could not hide his light. 'Devil bless your honour,' said he, 'you pay with big bank-notes.' '_Was sagt der Karl?_' asked the major. He says, 'Gott soll segnen den grossen Herren, der zahlt mit grossen _Bank_[78]-noten!' At this his honour also laughed. 'But for all that you must pack yourselves off at once. You mustn't stop till you reach Ersekuvar, but there you may play as long as you like.' We kissed his hands and feet, and asked him to let us stay the night there. We were half frozen, we said. We had not a morsel in our stomachs: for a whole week we had only eaten ice and drunk water. But he knew no pity. They blindfolded us, packed us into a sledge, and a patrol of horse escorted us out of the village. Now, of course, it was my very dearest desire to get as soon as possible beyond the iron girdle by which the besieged fortress was girt about. If only he can get out into the wide world, the gipsy has no fear of going astray. He can fiddle his way through the whole of Europe if only he gives his mind to it. And so we made our way along the Danube, from one town to the other, and enjoyed to the full all the romantic adventures of a wandering gipsy's life which abound in winter especially."

[Footnote 78: "God bless the great gentleman, he pays with big _bang_-notes!"--a poor jest.]

"But," interrupted I, "didn't you come across Görgey's Hungarian army, under whose protection you might have continued your journey?"

"Of course I did, but my instructions were to deliver my despatches to the head of the Hungarian Government, and nobody else, not even to a general. It is true that I might have gone on farther with the gallant Magyar army, where gipsy-music is always heartily welcomed. The Honveds, too, never lose their good humour; but, on the other hand, the main Magyar army was going towards Slavonia, whereas it was my object to get to Debreczin as soon as possible. So there was nothing for it but to go straight through the enemy's lines till we reached the banks of the Theiss, when we could be once more in a friendly world."

"But where did you conceal the despatches?" I asked.

"I stuck them inside the belly of my fiddle. Who would break the fiddle of a poor gipsy with which he earns his daily bread? The money we earned in one town was sufficient to hire a sledge to convey us to the next. Gipsies dwell on the skirts of every town. We made ourselves at home there, and they never asked us whence we came; but if we were cross-examined at any place, then we lied to such a degree that the difficulty was to find anybody to believe us. You recollect what a terrible winter it was last year?"

"I remember it very well. I was out all through it with my wife," I said.

"How fine it would have been had we run across each other unexpectedly. I would have played a nocturne beneath your window. Ha, ha, ha!--The bitterest stage of the journey was from Kecskemet to the Theiss. There lay Jellachich,[79] with all his army, occupying the towns of the great Hungarian plain one after the other. Here we had to creep through as best we could. As for me, I had the good fortune to play every evening before his Excellency the valiant Ban. He was very pleased with me. With my little band I managed to play the famous Croatian march, '_Szláva, szláva, mu, mu, mu, Jelacsicsu nas omu_,' in quite a superior manner. I also knew the tune of the fine 'Kolo' dance, and absolutely won his Excellency's heart with the melodious 'Fanny Schneider' polka. I might say that I was really quite spoiled. There was plenty of money and wine, and, despite my black face and my predominating odour of garlic, the enthusiasm rose so high that all the officers kissed me one after the other."

[Footnote 79: The Ban of Croatia, who sided with the Austrians against Hungary.--TR.]

Bessy had no sooner uttered these words than she buried her face in her hands. Again I came to her rescue.

"Those kisses don't count; you were a man then."

"It was quite a gipsy paradise, but the mischief was we did not know how to escape from it. The chivalrous Ban told us not to try to run away, for in that case he would court-martial and shoot the lot of us. At night, when our duties were done, he locked us up in a little out-house, and placed an armed sentry before the door.

"One night we escaped up the chimney and over the roof of the neighbouring house; that is to say, three of us managed to get away, I and the clarinet-player and the contra-bass. The violoncello, however, could not be got out of the chimney, and the violoncellist declared that he would rather be stretched on the rack than leave his instrument in the lurch. So there we left him--to pay the piper. Besides, I had now not much need of my band; the Theiss was only a four hours' journey off.

"I had heard from the officers that in the willow woods of the Theiss, in the neighbourhood of the 'Szikra' inn, some Hungarian guerillas were encamping. If only we could get among them!

"It was a good thing for us that sentinel duty was very laxly ordered in the camp of the Ban of Croatia. At the end of the town was a _putri_, or semi-subterranean clay hut of the kind in which field-labourers pass the night during the summer. The soldiers who had been sent out on forepost duty were sitting in this hut, and their muskets were all leaning against the door. One of the gipsies said: 'Let us steal the muskets!' The other said: 'Steal your grandfather; I play with clarinets, not with muskets.' I urged them to press forward. We were near to the sand-hills. Before us lay a savage, rugged plain, where one sand-hill followed hard upon another. Some of these hills were half hollowed out by the wind, and the hollows between them sparsely dotted with dwarf fir-trees. A ghostly region. The sides of these sand-hills were white, and the snow-fall on the top of them was still whiter; and every tree-trunk there is also white with its pendant branches[80] bending down beneath the hoar-frost. We dodged up and down among these sand-hills, turning aside from the regular high road so that we might crouch down in case we were pursued. Along the whole length of the plain the broom of the wind swept our footprints over with snow.

[Footnote 80: To-day this former waste of shifting sand-hills has been converted into a splendid vineyard, which the Hungarian Government has planted with vines from America proof against the _Phylloxera_.--JÓKAI.]

"'If only we don't come across wolves!' said the contra-bass, with chattering teeth.

"'How can they be here when so many soldiers are about?' said I, by way of encouragement.

"'Nay, but they like to prowl about camps, because carrion is always to be found there.'

"Where the sand-hills ended, a far-extending flat began, and in the distance was a direful-looking object, resembling a ruin. A light mist covered the whole district, in which mist every object seemed as large again; the full moon shone wanly, like a huge broad halo in the misty heavens."

Here I explained to Bessy that this district was the famous plain of Alpar, where the ancient Magyars fought the decisive battle against Zalán, which gave them possession of the land; the ruin was the wall of the desert church of St. Laurence.

"Indeed! and I may add that this desert is memorable to me also. While we were waddling along as fast as we could, with our short mantles turned against the wind, the contra-bass, who was going on leisurely in front, exclaimed:

"'Devil take all these crows! Why don't they all go to sleep in the tower of the Calvinist church?'

"I inquired why the crows ought to go to sleep on the top of the Calvinist church of all places in the world.

"'Let the Calvinist crow stick to the top of the Calvinist church, and the Papist crow to the top of the Papist church, as is meet and right,' he explained.

"I did not understand this sectarian distinction among crows, but the gipsy made it quite plain to me.

"'One sort of crow is ashen grey, another sort black. The grey sort eats no flesh, but only grain; that is the Papist crow. The black sort lives on flesh, whether it be earthworms or fallen horse; that is the Calvinist crow, for it keeps no fast-days.'

"Then he called my attention to the fact that on the hill there straight before us, a whole army of crows was making a great commotion. At one moment they rose high into the air with loud croakings, at another they descended upon the self-same spot from which they had risen. 'There must be carrion,' he said.

"When we got to the top of the hill, we saw, to our great consternation, that the evil foreboding of the gipsy was correct.

"On the highway below, by the side of the ditch, lay a big black mass, the carcase of a fallen horse, and fighting over what remained of it was a whole army of crows and ravens and five large _wolves_.

"We were about five hundred paces from the terrible beasts.

"They immediately perceived us, and, leaving the carcase, forthwith began scudding towards us, spurring each other on with their nasty short sharp yelps.

"'Alas, alas! It is all up with us now!' wailed the contra-bass. 'The wolves will eat us up.'

"Even in that hour of mortal peril the clarinetist was true to his gipsy humour. 'Then we shall have a very queer shape at the resurrection,' said he.

"I bade them leave off wailing, and hasten to clamber up into a willow-tree, whither the monsters could not follow us.

"It was an old pollard willow, the branches of which were cut off every year, so that only the crown of it remained, surrounded by young shoots. I, who had never learnt the art of tree-climbing, was hoisted up by the gipsies first of all, and then they hastily scrambled up after me.

"When we had got to the top of the tree we discovered that in the middle of it was a large hole--the whole inside of the tree was hollow, and could contain a man.

"'Leader,' said the contra-bass, 'your loss would be most serious, creep down into that hole.' I took him at his word, and glided down from the crown of the tree into the deep hollow trunk. First of all, however, I tied my long cotton neckerchief to a little branch, that I might be able to hoist myself up again in case of need, for the hole in the willow went right down to its very roots. At the side of the tree, too, close to an old branch, there was an orifice as large as one's fist, through which one could look as through an attic window.

"The five wolves were not long in arriving.

"They did not come quite near at first, but reconnoitred. Whenever one of them sneaked up a little nearer, the clarinet-player aimed at it with his instrument, which the wolf took for a musket. Then the beast would back a little and scratch up the snow with his hind legs. They say the creature is wont to do this when he sees a man stand on the defensive; he tries to blind him with snow.

"When, however, the wolves at last discovered that we had no fire-arms, they sent up the ugliest howls, and began the siege of the willow. They took tremendous leaps in the air to reach the crown of the tree, but it was too high for them.

"Then it occurred to the gipsies that they had often heard that wolves had a strong penchant for music, and they began giving them a clarinet and fiddle concert.

"It is true that the nasty brutes left off the siege, sat round the willow, and began to howl in concert with the music, at the same time raising their horrid jaws towards the moon, and lashing their sides with their ragged brush-like tails; and for a short time I was quite amused at the scene. But suddenly our double danger occurred to my mind.

"'Hey! gipsies. Stop, I say! Is the devil in you? Your music will bring the pickets of the Croats upon us, and they will flay us alive.'

"At this they stopped their music.

"This appeared to make the wolves still more savage, and now they tried a fresh stratagem.

"They had found out that the willow leaned a little to one side, and rushing at it from a little distance, they attempted to scale the sloping side of the tree. This manoeuvre was likely to have succeeded. It was then that I saw what a powerful beast the wolf really is, and how much more cunning than any species of dog. Scrambling up at full tilt, they managed to reach the crown of the willow, but there the brave contra-bass was awaiting them, and gave them such a kick on the snout with his iron-heeled boots that the attacking beasts fell head over heels backwards.

"This they repeated ten or twelve times.

"And there was this remarkable circumstance about it, that every time an attacking wolf was prostrated by a kick from the gipsy, the others rushed upon him as he fell, and worried him as if to punish him for his failure.

"Suddenly they left off, and went and sat down in a heap just in front of my window. Their tongues lolled out of their panting mouths; their hot, bestial breath rose into the cold air before me. They appeared to be taking counsel together. The biggest of them seemed to be their leader. If one of the younger ones yelped too much, he would snap at his neck as if to say 'shut up!'

"At last they appeared to have hatched their stratagem. The whole lot of them got up and shuffled farther off, squinting over their shoulders all the time towards the willow-tree.

"My gipsies fancied they were saved.

"'You shall have no roast gipsy this time!' bawled the clarinet-player after them derisively from his sure stronghold, as he fancied it.

"All at once the wolves returned and stormed onwards like race-horses, each one being about a wolf's tail ahead of the other.

"The first of them rushed straight up the tree, and while the contra-bass was kicking him in the head, the second wolf leaped across the first wolf's back and seized the man's leg.

"I heard a despairing shriek:

"'Don't let me go, comrade!'

"The second musician tried to free his down-falling friend from the jaws of the wild beast, and in doing so lost his balance, and the pair of them fell down from the tree.

"What happened after that is more than I can tell you. It is enough that I should have had to live through that mortal struggle of the two luckless victims with those filthy brutes. How many times have I not dreamt it all over again! I believe that even if I had committed all the seven deadly sins, I should have more than expiated them all in that awful hour. I hid my face in the crumbling rottenness of the hollow tree, that I might hear and see nothing. It seemed an eternity to me while the bestial howling lasted which the wolves made as they shared together their accursed banquet in my very presence.

"I dared not stir, lest they might find out that I also was there. Great Heaven! What horrors I had to endure!

"Suddenly a sort of growling and snarling began close beside me. The old wolf was running sniffing round the hollow tree. He had discovered that there was still booty inside it.

"He began to scrape the earth at the root of the tree. He evidently meant to dig a hole beneath the tree through which he might get at me. Fortunately for me, it was not sandy soil, but stony, hard-frozen turf. He could not succeed that way.

"Then he caught sight of the hole in the side of the tree. At one time, perhaps, a branch had been sawed off at this spot, and the bark had rotted away. The wolf began to enlarge this opening, tore it with his claws, and gnawed and worried the rotten wood with his grinders. He had soon so far enlarged the hole as to be able to stick his head into it. I saw the green glare of his fiery eyes; I felt his stinking breath; I heard the gnashing of his teeth. Then despair made me foolhardy. I drew my crooked knife out of the leg of my boot, with the other hand I seized the wolf by the ear, and cut it off at a single twirl.

"At this the beast, with a furious howl, drew back his head from the hole, and began to howl and run away like a whipped cur. The others followed after him. With the wolf's ear remaining in my hand as a trophy, I sank back against the hollow trunk; I could not sink right down, because the hollow space was too narrow."

I felt a cold shudder run all over me at this ghastly narrative. Bessy herself was quite exhausted.

"Alas! I am quite worn out. I tremble at the very thought of it. You are the second person to whom I have told it. But how pale you are all at once!"

I suppose I _had_ turned very pallid. It had suddenly flashed through my brain that just at that very time my wife was on her journey through an uninhabited valley, and the foresters told me that wolves strayed about there.

Bessy sighed deeply, raised her drooping head, and then continued her story:--

"Thus I had freed myself from the wolves; but I was not left very long in the belief that shame at my depriving their leader of one of his ears was the cause of it. No! Wolves are not so shamefaced as all that. A troop of horsemen was approaching from behind the sand-hills. There were six men on horseback and one man on assback.

"One terror had been supplanted by another.

"Peering through the hole in the tree, I recognised the uniforms of the horsemen by the light of the moon--they were Jellachich's hussars. And that there might be no doubt about their coming after us, I recognised as they came near the face of the ass-rider. It was my bass-viol player, whom I had left behind me.

"It was very easy to see what had happened. The gipsy, to save his own skin, or, perhaps, at the flogging-post itself, had confessed that the band had come from Comorn, and was hired by me to go as far as Debreczin. Hence it was not very difficult to conclude that I was only a false gipsy, who was carrying despatches from the beleaguered fortress to the Hungarian Government.

"The horsemen had brought the gipsy with them that he might put them on my track. Once discovered, and I was lost.

"On the snow field, lit up by the moonlight, the scene of the hideous struggle was plain to the newcomers. The long lines of blood, fragments of torn garments, a foot sticking out of a boot in the snow--Ugh! May I never see such a sight again!

"The horsemen galloped quickly up over the crackling snow.

"The violoncellist had to dismount from his ass.

"The good creature howled and groaned from the bottom of his throat, bewailing his comrades in the gipsy tongue, and cursing the monsters who had devoured them.

"The leader of the patrol was a sergeant. He ordered the gipsy about in Croatian, and the gipsy has the peculiar virtue of understanding what is said to him in a language of which he is perfectly ignorant. He replied in Hungarian.

"'Oh, woe, woe! Those accursed wolves have devoured our leader! There's his boot! They've only left his boot. I recognise it well. He bought it only last week at Czegled. He gave six florins for it. A brand-new boot! And this is his foot.'

"It was plain to me that the gipsy had guessed that I was hidden somewhere, and there was enough of the gipsy in him, even amidst the greatest horrors, to induce him to make fools of my pursuers. He betrayed me first of all because he couldn't help it; he saved me finally because he _could_. He knew very well that I had given my new boots to the contra-bass. My boots were of Russian leather.

"'Look there!' cried the sergeant, and he pointed with his finger. '_Jeden, dwa! Jak sza tri?_'[81]

[Footnote 81: Croatian--"One, two! Where's the third?"]

"The gipsy swore by all that was holy that that was the third.

"'Then where's the first?'

"'That's the first, of course!'

"There was no dinning into his head the arithmetical truism that if you take two from three one remains.

"The sergeant thereupon ordered one of the hussars to dismount from his horse, at the same time pointing at the willow-tree with his sword, whence I concluded that he was about to examine the tree to see if anybody was hidden in its hollow trunk.

"I now veritably believed that the time had come for me to turn my crooked knife against my own throat.

"All at once a crackle of musketry resounded from the brushwood, and a company of guerilla horse dashed out, crying, 'Forward, Magyars!' The Jellachich hussars didn't see the joke of this at all, hastily turned their horses' heads and galloped off in the direction of the town. The violoncellist also mounted his long-eared beast, and ambled gently off in a third direction midway between the two belligerents. He had no desire to take any part in the struggle.

"The guerillas, who were numerous, sent a few volleys after the enemy, but from such a distance that the bullets couldn't possibly hit the fugitives, and then returned in triumph. Then I, hearing them speak Hungarian, quickly hoisted myself up out of the hole into the top of the tree, and began so far as my hoarse voice would allow me, to give them indications of my existence.

"The gallant warriors immediately hastened to the willow-tree and helped me down from my dangerous perch. Their leader, a handsome, chivalrous-looking young man, with a true Hungarian face, began to cross-question me, and asked me whence I came and whither I was going. Perceiving that I was among Hungarian soldiers, I frankly told them that I had come from Comorn, and had been sent to Debreczin with despatches for the Hungarian Government.

"The guerilla captain was a suspicious man.

"'Oho! I daresay! That's easily said, but difficult to believe. What! confide such a mission to a gipsy! A likely tale!'

"I told him that I was no gipsy, though my face was painted so, but that I lived at Comorn and belonged to the place.

"'Then, if you are an inhabitant, tell me if you know one Maurus Jókai there--and what you know of him?'

"I was very pleased to answer such a question. 'I know him very well,' I said, 'and I can tell you this much about him, that he went to the High School at Kecskemet, where he completed his legal studies--or rather learnt how to paint in oils from a worthy comrade of his there.'

"Without more ado he clapped his hand in mine: 'That worthy comrade of his was no other than myself.'

"So you see," she said, turning towards me, "you were of assistance to me, even here."

"Wasn't that old schoolfellow of mine called Jansci?" I asked.

"Yes, that's what they called him. With him was another young man, with quite a girlish face, and him they called Józsi; he inquired about you most particularly. When you gave your artistic representations at Kecskemet, he used to play the girl's parts."

"Quite true," I said, "so it was."

"So you see I must have been there or I should have known nothing about these things. The guerillas told me all about it as they took me with them. They were very attentive. One of them gave me his mantle, another let me mount his nag, and so they took me to the 'Szikra' inn, where they made me drink punch with them, regaled me with veal, and then made me a bed on the straw with their mantles that I might sleep off my exhaustion. The Jellachich hussars gave us no trouble. They could not come back till morning, when the whole regiment would doubtless turn out to capture the guerillas, who would, by that time, be on the other side of the Theiss. The sledges were all ready to start, and would scour back across the frozen river at the first signal to Czibakhaza, where were the foreposts of the Hungarian army under Damjanich.

"But for a long time I could not sleep. Constantly before my eyes flitted the horrible death-struggle between the two unhappy men and the wild beasts, and amidst the howling and shrieking resounded the gay song of the guerillas:

'The hut's ablaze, the rush-roof crackles,
Press thy brown maid to thy breast!'

In my dream this tune was mingled with the howling of the wolves, and at one moment the wolves were singing, 'The hut's ablaze,' and at another the Croats were howling at the gipsies sitting on the branch. Towards morning I was awakened by two cannon-shots. I rejoiced to be delivered from my spectres. The lieutenant of the guerillas hurried me into the sledge, as a regiment of hostile horse was approaching from Kecskemet.

"It took us ten minutes to dash across the frozen Theiss. On the opposite bank the foreposts of the Honveds were encamping. The business of the guerillas was to harass the enemy, capture their forage waggons, and then bring word of their movements to the main army.

"They took me straight to General Damjanich.[82]

[Footnote 82: Made Commander-in-chief of the 3rd Hungarian Army Corps in consequence of his brilliant exploits at Alibunar and Lagerdorf; he annihilated Karger's brigade at the great battle of Szolnok, and was elected to represent that town in the Hungarian Diet. After fresh exploits he was made War Minister, and, after the war, was court-marshalled at Arad by the Austrians and shot. He had not the military genius of Görgey perhaps, but as a general of division was admirable.--TR.]

"I was now no longer obliged to keep my despatch hidden, so I split up my fiddle, took out of it the documents that were gummed to it, and their production was my best credentials.

"The approving, smiling glance of the powerful, heroic-looking General I shall never forget. At the sight of him I quite forgot that I was personating a man, and would have liked to have fallen down before him and kissed his hand. Indeed, I was so agitated that I could not utter a word.

"The General filled a little glass full of _szilvorium_.[83] 'Drink, my son!' said he, 'it will loosen your throat.'

[Footnote 83: A spirit made from plums.]

"My throat was hoarse; I had a voice as deep as a man's. I told him I had come from Comorn, and I was sent to Lazar Mészáros, the War Minister.

"'You will seek old Kóficz[84] in vain at Debreczin, my son, he commands there no more. So you Comorn folks don't know what's going on outside, eh? Another is at the head of the War Department now. I will give you a letter of introduction to him.'

[Footnote 84: This Hungarian War Minister had said in one of his reports that the motions of the Opposition in the Diet would turn to nothing but _Kóficz_ (_i.e._, water-gruel). The name stuck to him ever after.--JÓKAI.]

"Then he sat down and wrote me a couple of lines to a General with a German name, which is expressed in Hungarian by the word _Bacsi_.[85]

[Footnote 85: Cousin.--Vetter was the General in question.]

"He said, while he was writing this letter, that this General with a German name was the life and soul of our military organization.