On his arrival he found Feriz Beg with the Pasha, and at once told his story, exaggerating the details to the uttermost.

"What did I tell thee?" said Feriz to the Pasha; "didn't I say they would send back the message that they had never quitted the town. I am sorry for your honour's hundred ducats."

At these words Ajas Pasha kicked over his chibouk and his saucer of sherbet, and in a hoarse, scarce intelligible voice, said to the aga:

"Be off this instant to Stambul as fast as thou canst. Tell the Grand Vizier what has happened, and say to him that if he does not give me the amplest satisfaction, I myself will go against these unbelieving devourers of unruminating beasts who have dared to send me such a message, and will destroy them, together with their strongholds; or else I will cast my sword to the ground, and tie a girdle round my loins, and go away and join the brotherhood of Iskender! Say that, and forget it not!"

Very soon one firman after another reached the Prince from Stambul, each one of which, with steadily rising wrath, demanded the extradition of the assassins of the Spahis. The Prince made inquiries and searched for them everywhere, but nobody could be found to take upon his shoulders this uncommitted deed of heroism.

The messages from the Porte assumed a more and more furious tone every day. In itself the death of four-and-twenty Spahis was no very serious stumbling-block, but what more than anything lashed the Turkish generals into a fury was the persistent refusal of the Prince to acknowledge the offence. Yet with the best will in the world he was unable to do anything else, for not a single person on whom suspicion might fall could he find throughout the Principality.

In those days the dungeons of Klausenburg were well filled with condemned robbers; in the past year alone no fewer than thirty incendiaries had been discovered who had resolved to fire all Transylvania.

One day the noble Martin Pók, the provost-marshal of the place, appeared before the robbers, and attracted the attention of the most evil-disposed of these cut-throats and incendiaries by shouting at them:

"You worthless gallows-dogs, which of you would like to be set free at any price?"

"I would! I would!" cried a whole lot of them.

"Bread is going to be dear, so we cannot waste it on the like of you, so Master Ladislaus Székely has determined that whoever of you would like to become Turks are to be handed over to our gracious master, Ajas Pasha, who will make some of you Janissaries, and send the rest to the isle of Samos; so whoever will be a Turk, let him speak."

Everyone of them wanted to be a Turk.

"Very well, you rascals, just attend to me! I must tell you what to say when you stand before the Pasha, for if you answer foolishly you will be bastinadoed. First of all he will ask you: 'Are you Master Ladislaus Székely's men?' You will answer: 'Yes, we are!' Then he will ask you: 'Were you at Élesd on a certain day?' And you must admit that you were. Finally, he will ask you if you met Feriz Beg there? You will admit everything, and then he will instantly release you from servitude. Do you understand?"

"Yes, yes!" roared the incendiaries; and dancing in their fetters they followed the provost-marshal upstairs, who turned his extraordinary small head back from time to time to smile at them, at the same time twisting the ends of his poor thin moustache with an air of crafty self-satisfaction.

One day two letters reached Grosswardein from Stambul. One of these letters was from Kucsuk Pasha to his son, the other was from the Sultan to Ajas Pasha.

The letter to Feriz Beg was as follows:

Feriz Beg understood the allusion, and went at once to the Pasha in the best of humours.

"Listen to what the omnipotent Sultan writes," said the Pasha, producing a parchment sealed with green wax, adorned below with the official signature of the Sultan, the so-called Tugra, which was not unlike a bird's-nest made of spiders'-webs.

Feriz Beg pressed the parchment to his forehead and his lips, and the further he read into it the more his face filled with surprise and joy.

"Dost thou believe now that we shall get the murderers?" asked Ajas Pasha triumphantly.

"Never!" said Feriz Beg, laughing aloud and beside himself with joy.

"What dost thou say?" growled the astonished Ajas; "but suppose we go for them ourselves?"

"Well!" said Feriz, perceiving that he had nearly betrayed himself, "in that case—yes." But he said to himself "Not then or ever; and Paul Béldi will be released, and Paul Béldi will become Prince, and his wife will be Princess Consort, and Aranka will be a Princess too, and we shall see each other again."

At that moment an aga entered the room and announced with a look of satisfaction:

"Master Ladislaus Székely has now sent the murderers."

Feriz Beg reeled backwards. The word "impossible" hung upon his lips, and he nearly let it escape. It was impossible.

"Let them come in!" said Ajas Pasha viciously. He would have preferred to carry out the Sultan's conditional command, seize the Principality, and conduct the campaign personally.

Feriz Beg fancied he was dreaming when he saw the forty or fifty selected rascals who, led by Martin Pók, drew up before Ajas Pasha; the rogues were dressed up as soldiers but thief, criminal, was written on the face of each one of them.

Master Martin Pók exhibited them to the Pasha and Feriz Beg, and very wisely stood aside from them. Feriz Beg clapped his hands together in astonishment. He knew better than anyone that these fellows had never seen the Spahis, and he waited to hear what they would say.

Ajas Pasha sat on his sofa with a countenance as cold as marble, and at a sign from him a file of Janissaries formed behind the backs of the rascals, who tried to look as pleasant and smiling as possible before the Pasha to gain his favour.

"Ye are Master Ladislaus Székely's men, eh?" inquired the Pasha of the false heroes.

"We are—at thy service, unconquerable Pasha," they replied with one voice, folding their hands across their breasts and bowing down to the very ground.

The Pasha beckoned to the Janissaries to come softly up behind each one of them.

"Ye were at Élesd at midnight on the day of St. Michael the Archangel, eh?" he asked again.

"We were indeed—at thy service invincible Pasha!" they repeated striking their knees with their foreheads.

Feriz Beg rent his clothes in his rage. He would have liked to have roared at them: "Ye lie, you rascals! You were not there at all!" but he was obliged to keep silence.

Ajas beckoned again to the Janissaries, and very nicely and quietly they drew their swords from their sheaths, and, grasping them firmly, concealed them behind their backs.

The Pasha put the third question to the robbers.

"Ye met Feriz Beg, eh?"

"Lie not!" cried Feriz furiously. "Look well at me! Have you ever seen me anywhere before? Did you ever meet me at Élesd?"

The interrogated, bowing to the earth, replied with the utmost devotion: "Yes—at your service, invincible Pasha and most valiant Beg!"

At that same instant the swords flashed in the hands of the Janissaries, and the heads of the robbers suddenly rolled at their feet.

"Oh, ye false knaves!" cried Feriz Beg, striking his forehead with his clenched fist.

Ajas Pasha turned coolly towards Martin Pók: "Greet thy master, and tell him from me that another time he must be quicker, and not make me angry.—As for thee, Feriz, my son, pay me back those hundred ducats!"

CHAPTER XXIV.
THE HOSTAGE.

"Dost thou not detain here the family of Paul Béldi?"

"Yes, sir; they brought the unfortunate creatures hither."

"I must have Paul Béldi's consort out of this prison for a fortnight, at the accomplishment of which time I will bring her back again."

The captain was thunderstruck.

"Sir," said he, "you are playing with my head."

"None will know, and in two weeks' time she will be here again."

"But if they discover it?"

"Have no fear of that. During that time I will leave in thy hands as a hostage my own son."

The young cavalier approached, threw back his mantle, and the captain recognised Feriz Beg. He fancied he was dreaming.

"Dost thou not suppose that I will bring back the woman for the sake of my son?"

"Do what you think well," said the commandant. "I owe you a life, I will now pay it back to you; follow me!"

The commandant led his visitors up a narrow corkscrew fortress into the corner tower, which was used as a dungeon for state prisoners. The circular windows were guarded by heavy iron bars, the heavy iron-plated oaken doors groaned upon their hinges, indicating thereby that they were very seldom opened.

"Why did you put them in this lonely place?" asked Kucsuk Pasha; "is there not some other prison in the town?"

"Don't blame me, sir; my orders were to lock the lady up securely, apart from her child, and in this tower are two adjacent chambers with a common window, and in one of them I have put the mother and in the other the child. I knew that they would not mind if they could speak to each other through the window, and press each other's hands, and even kiss each other through the bars."

"Thou art a true man, my good old fellow," said Kucsuk Pasha, patting the commandant's shoulder; while Feriz Beg warmly pressed his hand.

"Thou wouldst put me into just such another dungeon, eh?" he asked.

"There would be no need of that, good Feriz Beg; you should dwell in my apartments."

"But I would not have it so," said the youth, thinking with glowing cheeks of the fair Aranka who would thus be his next-door neighbour and fellow-prisoner.

At last the iron door of the prison was opened, the jailor remained outside, and the two Osmanlis entered. By the side of a rude oak table was sitting a lady in deep mourning in front of the narrow window, reading aloud from a large Bible with silver clasps; her children at the window of the other dungeon were listening devoutly to the Word of God.

When the men entered the woman started and looked up; the dim ray of light coming through the narrow window made her face appear still paler than it used to be; she looked up seriously, sadly—sorrow had lent a gentle gravity to the face that used to be so bright and gay.

Kucsuk Pasha approached, and taking the lady's soft transparent hand in his own, briefly introduced himself.

"I am Kucsuk Pasha, thy husband's most faithful friend in this world after thyself."

"I thank you for your visit; my husband has often mentioned your name. Do you perchance bring me any message from him?"

"He would have thee with him."

"Then I am free?" cried the lady, tremulous between joy and doubt.

"Rejoice not, lady; it is not in my power to give thee freedom, I only promise thee a brief interview with Paul Béldi, just time enough for thee to tell him how much thou hast suffered. He cannot come to thee, so thou must come to him. With me thou canst come most quickly, for the greatest part of the time we shall be travelling together."

"Will my children come with me?"

"They will remain here. But thou wilt see them again soon. Either thou wilt conquer Paul Béldi with thy tears, and melt his iron will, and then he will come back to Transylvania as Prince and every gate will be open before him; or else he will stand fast to his determination, and then thou wilt return to thy dungeon and he to his, and so you will both die in the dungeons of different realms. Now take leave of thy children and hasten. It depends upon thee whether they become princes and princesses or slaves for ever."

"And who will defend them, who will watch over them, who will pray with them while I am away?"

"Be not distressed. I will leave my own son here as a hostage while thou art away. Feriz will occupy thy dungeon, he will watch over thy children, and not let them be afraid. Hasten now and take leave of them."

Dame Béldi rushed to the round window. Loudly sobbing, she called her children one by one, and then embraced them all as best she could. The cold iron bars stood between her breast and theirs. The tears of their weeping faces could not dissolve them.

"Give this kiss to father!—And this kiss from me!—And this from me!" lisped the children, putting their little arms round their mother's neck through the bars.

"My child, my good Aranka!" said Dame Béldi to the girl, who being about fifteen or sixteen was the eldest of them all; "look after thy little brothers and sisters! And you, my good little lads, comfort Aranka. God bless you! God defend you! One more kiss, Aranka! And one more for you, little David?"

"Madame, time is passing, and Paul Béldi is waiting for thee to open his prison!" intervened Kucsuk Pasha, withdrawing Dame Béldi from the window of her children's prison, who thereupon turned her tear-stained face towards Feriz Beg, and in a passion of grief flung herself on the youth's neck, and said to him in a voice almost indistinguishable for her sobbing:

"Thou noble heart! promise me that thou wilt love my children when I am far away!"

"By Allah, I swear it!" exclaimed the youth, pressing to his bosom the poor woman who was half-fainting for sorrow, "I swear that I will love them for ever!"

Ah! there was one among them whom he had already loved for a long, long time.

"Hasten, lady!" urged the Pasha; "cast this mantle over thee, and place this turban on thy head that the guards may not recognise thee in the distance. The way is long, the time is short."

"God be with you, God be with you!" sobbed Dame Béldi, casting with tremulous hands hundreds of kisses towards her children, who waved their goodbyes to her from their window and then, violently repressing her emotion, she rushed from the dungeon.

Kucsuk Pasha pressed the hand of his son in silence, and left him in Dame Béldi's room.

The children kept on weeping behind their window.

The youth drew nearer to them.

"Weep not," he said cheerfully, "your mother will soon come again and bring your father with her, and then you will all rejoice together."

"Ah, but then they'll kill father!" sobbed one of the children timidly.

"So long as Feriz Beg can use his sword none shall touch Paul Béldi," cried the youth, with flashing eyes. "My sword and my father's will flash around him, his enemies will be my enemies. Fear not! when I get back my sword, I will win back his liberty with it."

"I thank you, I thank you," whispered a gentle voice overcome by emotion.

Feriz Beg recognised the silvery voice of Aranka, and the weeping blue eyes of the seraph face which regarded him, like Heaven after rain, flashed upon him a burning ray of gratitude which was to haunt him in his dreams and in his memory for ever.

Feriz felt his heart leap with a great joy. Pressing close up to the prison bars that he might get as close to the girl as possible he said to her with a tender voice:

"How happy I am now that we dwell together as neighbours in the same dungeon, but oh, how much happier shall we be when no doors are closed upon us? Let me then have a place beside thy hearth and within thy heart!"

The fair, sad girl, with a face full of foreboding, stretched through the bars of the dungeon a hand whiter than a lily, whiter than snow. Feriz Beg solemnly raised it to his lips and falling on his knees, in an outburst of sublime devotion touched his lips and his forehead with that beloved hand.

CHAPTER XXV.
THE HUSBAND.

"The whole town if you like."

"No, only Master Paul Béldi. It is all one to him whether he dies or remains a prisoner for life."

"I'll do it for two hundred ducats, if you pay me half in advance."

"I'll pay you, Zülfikar, but how will you get at him?"

"That's my affair, all you have to do is to get the money ready."

Accordingly Ladislaus Székely gave the earnest-money to the renegade, and the renegade went home and wrote a letter in the name of the Beglerleg of the following tenour: "Be assured that our affairs are in the best order, and we shall shortly gain our object."

He strewed over these lines a fine blue dust which was the strongest of poisons, calculating that whoever wanted to read the letter would first brush the dust off it, whereupon the fine dust would rise in the air, and the person reading the letter would inhale the dust and die.

After attaching the letter to his turban, he began prowling round the dungeon of Paul Béldi, awaiting an opportunity of worming his way into it.

Paul Béldi was sitting alone in the darkest corner of the dungeon of Jedikula. At his feet lay his faithful bloodhound, Körtövely, with his eyes fixed sadly on his master. Whenever his master slept the dog would sit up, never take his eyes off him, and begin growling at the lightest noise.

Béldi, with folded arms, was sitting on the stone bench to which he was chained. His face had grown terribly pale and as if turned to stone. The pale gleam of light which filtered through the narrow window and lit up his face, found there no trace of that weary longing which the dweller in prisons generally has for the sun's rays. The whole man, body and soul, was hardened into steel.

Suddenly the dog lying at his feet impatiently raised its sagacious head, and then with a whimper of joy ran towards the door; there it stood for a time merrily barking, and then ran back to its master and stood before him wagging its tail with one foot on his shoulder, whining and whimpering with such lively joy that one might almost have understood what it wanted to say.

"What's the matter? Good dog!" said Béldi, stroking the dog's head. "What is it? Nobody's coming to see me that can make you happy."

At that moment the key turned in the door of the dungeon and a group of men by the light of torches descended the steps and entered Béldi's prison; whereupon Körtövely quickly left his master and burrowing his way through the throng, began to yelp merrily over someone, and then rushing back to his master, planted his fore-paws on his breast and barked as if he would burst because he could not express more plainly the joy which his wonderful canine instinct had anticipated.

Béldi, perceiving among those who visited him the Grand Vizier, Kiuprile, and Maurocordato, ordered his dog to be quiet, and standing up before them, saluted them with a deep bow.

"Well, thou obstinate man!" said the Grand Vizier, "how long wilt thou torment thyself and offend the Sultan and thine own good friends? Wilt thou ever perceive that to sit on a stone bench in a damp dungeon is a very different thing to sitting on a princely throne?"

"The more I suffer," said Béldi, in a strangely calm voice, "the more reason I have to rejoice that my country does not suffer instead of me."

The Grand Vizier thereupon said something in Turkish which Maurocordato sadly interpreted: "The Grand Seignior informs thee that because of money thou hast been cast into prison, and only money can release thee; promise, therefore, two hundred and seventy purses, and thou shalt get the Principality to enable thee to pay it."

"I have told you my determination," said Béldi, "and I will not depart from it. I will not promise money to the detriment of my country. I will not lead an army against it, and I will not break my oath. These were and will be my words from which I can never depart."

"Never!" cried Kucsuk Pasha, pressing through the crowd. "Wilt thou not even now?"—and with that he led a pale female figure towards Béldi.

"My wife!" exclaimed the captive, and he gripped fast his chains lest he should collapse for joy, terror, and surprise.

The pale woman in mourning fell upon his bosom, her tears became his fetters.

Paul Béldi burst into tears, he fell back upon his stone bench, his very soul was shattered. He remained clinging upon his wife's neck, speechless, unable to utter a word, and the whining dog licked now the hand of his master and now the lady's hand.

"Let us turn aside," said Kucsuk Pasha; "let us leave them together"—and the Turks withdrew from the dungeon, leaving Paul Béldi alone with his wife.

"I fancied," said Dame Béldi when she was able to utter a word amidst her choking sobs. "I fancied I was suffering instead of you, and oh! you were suffering more than I."

"How did you come here?" asked Béldi, in a low stifled voice.

"Kucsuk Pasha left his son as a hostage in my stead."

"Worthy man! What useless sacrifices he is making for my sake. And my children?"

"They remain in the dungeon whither also I must return, if you will not accept the Sultan's offer."

"Have they taken away my girl Aranka also?" asked Béldi, with a heavy heart.

"Yes, they have taken her too, and if we are released we shall have no whither to go. They have taken everything of ours. The Bethlen property has become the prey of Farkas Bethlen; the Haromszeki estate is now in the hands of Clement Mikes, although it is not lawful to deprive a Székler of his lands, even for high-treason. Our castle at Bodola has been totally destroyed, our escutcheon has been torn to pieces, and your name has been recorded in the journals of the Diet as a traitor."

"Oh, ye men!" roared Béldi, shaking his chains in the bitterness of his anger; "if I were not Paul Béldi the wrath of God would descend upon your heads. But ah!—I love my country even if worms are gnawing it. Dry your eyes, my good wife! you see I am not weeping. What we suffer is the visitation of God upon us. I remain a Christian and a patriot. I leave my cause to God!"

"You will not accept the offer of the Sultan?" inquired Dame Béldi, approaching her husband with fear and despair in her eyes.

"Never!" replied Béldi, in a low voice.

The wife, with a loud scream, flung herself at the feet of her husband, and, seizing his knees in a convulsive embrace, begged and besought him: "You would send me back to my dungeon? You would separate me from you for ever? Never, never, not even in the hour of death, shall I see you again."

"Comfort yourself with the thought that you loved me, and were worthy of me, if you can suffer as I do and for the same reason."

"You would plunge your children into eternal captivity?"

"Tell them that their father lived honourably and died honourably, and teach them to live and die like him."

"Think of your girl, Aranka; your favourite, your dearest child."

"Rather may she fade away than Transylvania be plunged in the flames of war."

"Béldi! drive me not to despair!" cried the wife trembling violently. "I am afraid, horribly afraid, of my dungeon. Twice have I had fever from the close, damp air. There was none to care for me in my sickness; I was calling your name continually, and you were far from me; I saw your image, and was unable to embrace you. Oh, Béldi! I shall die without you! The most terrible form of death—despair—will kill me!"

Béldi knelt down by the side of his wife and embraced and kissed her. The woman fainted in his arms as the Turks entered his prison. Béldi beckoned Kucsuk Pasha to him. A sort of leaden, death-like hue had begun to spread over his face; he could scarce see with whom he was conversing. He laid his swooning wife in the arms of the Pasha, and stammered with barely intelligible words: "I thank you for your good will. Here is my wife—take her—back to her dungeon!"

The Turks, in speechless astonishment, lifted up the fainting woman, and left the dungeon without plaguing Béldi with any more questions.

Béldi stood stonily there as they went out, with open lips and a dull light in his eyes. When the last Turk had gone, and he saw his wife no longer, his head began to nod and droop down, and suddenly he fell prone upon the floor.

Körtövely, the old hound, began sorrowfully, bitterly, to whine.

At that moment Zülfikar entered the dungeon with the poisoned letter.

He was too late. Paul Béldi had already departed from this world.

When Ladislaus Székely heard of Béldi's death he gave a magnificent banquet, and when the company was at its merriest Zülfikar came rushing in.

"Come! out with those hundred ducats!" he whispered in the ear of Master Ladislaus Székely.

"What do you mean?" cried Székely in a voice flushed with wine. "Paul Béldi had a stroke; be content with what you have had already."

"Thou faithless dog of a giaour!" cried the renegade at the top of his voice so that everyone could hear him, "is this the way thou dost deceive me? Thou didst bargain with me for the death of Paul Béldi for two hundred ducats, and now thou wouldst beat me down by one half. Thou art a rogue meet for the hangman's hands. Is it thus thou dost treat an honest man? I'll not kill a man for thee another time until thou pay me in advance, thou faithless robber!"

The company laughed aloud at this scene, but Master Ladislaus Székely seemed very much put out by the joke. "What are you talking about, you crazy fellow?" said he. "Who asked you to do anything? I never saw you in my life before!"

"What!" cried Zülfikar. "I suppose thou wilt deny next that thou didst write this letter to Paul Béldi!" and with that he gave Ladislaus Székely the poisoned letter. He seized it, broke the seal, brushed away the dust, and ran his eye over it, whereupon he flung it at the feet of Zülfikar, exclaiming: "I never wrote that."

Then he beckoned to the servants to seize Zülfikar by the collar and pitch him into the street. But the renegade stood outside in front of the windows and began to curse Székely before the assembled crowd for not paying him the price of the poison.

Inside the house the guests laughed more heartily than ever, and at last Székely himself began to look upon the matter in the light of a joke, and laughed like the rest; but when he returned home to Transylvania he felt a pain in his stomach, and did not know what was the matter. He became deaf, could neither eat nor drink, and his bowels began to rot.

Nobody could cure him of his terrible malady, till at last he fell in with a German leech, who persuaded him that he could cure him with the dust of genuine diamonds and sapphires. Ladislaus Székely handed to the charlatan his collection of precious stones. He abstracted the stones from their settings, but ground up common stones instead of them in his medical mortar, and stampeded himself with the real stones, leaving Ladislaus Székely to die the terrible death by poison which he had intended for Paul Béldi.

Paul Béldi they buried in foreign soil; none visited his grave. Only his faithful dog sat beside it. For eight days it neither ate nor drank. On the ninth day it died on the deserted grave of its master.

CHAPTER XXVI.
THE FADING OF FLOWERS.

Days and days passed since the departure of Dame Béldi, and there were no news of her. Every day the spirits of the girl declined, every evening she parted more and more sadly with Feriz, and every morning he found it more and more difficult to comfort her. And now with great consternation the youth began to perceive that the girl was very pale, the colour of life began to fade from her round, rosy cheeks, and there was something new in the brightness of her eyes—it was no earthly light there which made him tremble as he gazed upon her. The youth durst not ask her: "What is the matter?" But the girl said to him:

"Oh, Feriz! I am dying here; I shall never see your smiling skies."

"I would rather see the sky black than thee dead."

"The sky will smile again, but I never shall. I feel something within me which makes my heart's blood flow languidly, and at night I see my dead kinsfolk, and walk with them in unknown regions which I never saw before, and which appear before me so vividly that I could describe every house and every bush by itself."

"That signifies that thou wilt visit unknown regions with me."

"Oh, Feriz, I no longer feel any pleasure in those lands of yours, nor am I glad when I think of your palms, and as often as I see you darkness descends upon my soul, for I feel that I am going to leave you."

"Speak not so, joy of my existence. Grieve not God with thy words, for God is afflicted when the innocent complain."

"I am not complaining. I go from a bad into a good world, and there I shall see you in my dreams."

"But if this bad world should become better, and you lived happily in it?"

Aranka sadly shook her pretty, angelic head.

"That it is not necessary for this world to grow better you can see from the fact that the good must die while the wicked live a long time. God seeks out those that love Him, and takes them unto Himself, for He will not let them suffer long."

Feriz shuddered. What could have put these solemn, melancholy thoughts into the heart of this girl, this child? It was the approach of Death, the worm-bitten fruit ripens more quickly than the rest. Slow, creeping Death had seized upon the childish mind and made it speak like the aged—and sad it was to listen to its words.

"Cheer up," said Feriz, with an effort, skimming with his lips the girl's white hand which she thrust out to him through the bars. "Thy mother will soon be here; thy father will sit on the throne of the Prince as he deserves; thou wilt be a Princess, and I will strive and struggle till I am high enough to sue for thee, and then I will lay my glory and renown at thy feet, and thou shalt be my bride, my queen, my guardian angel."

The girl shook her head sorrowfully.

"And we will walk along by the banks of the quiet streams in those ancient lands where not craft but valour rules, where the wise are only learned in the courses of the stars and the healing virtues of the plants, not in the science of the rise and fall of kingdoms. There from the window of my breeze-blown kiosk, which is built on the slopes of Lebanon, thou wilt view the whole region round about. Above, the shepherds kindle their fires in the blackness of the cedar forests; below, the mountain stream runs murmuring along, and all round about us the nightingale is singing, and what he singeth is the happiness of love. In the far distance thou seest the mirror of the great sea, and the white-sailed pleasure boat rocks to and fro on the transparent becalmed billows, and the moon looks down upon the limitless mirror, and a fair maiden sits in the pleasure-boat, and at her feet lies a youth, and both of them are silent, only a throbbing heart is speaking, and it speaks of the happiness of love."

A couple of tears dropped from the eyes of the girl—the future was so seductive—and that picture, that fair country, she did not seem to be regarding them from the earth, it seemed to her as if she was looking down upon them from the sky and regretting that she was forced to leave—the beautiful world.

Aranka adored her father. The man who was respected for his virtues by a whole kingdom was the highest ideal of his child. When Feriz began to speak of him, the girl's face brightened, and at the recital of his heroic deeds the tears dried up in her flashing eyes; and when the youth told her how the great patriot would return, glorious and powerful, supported by the mightiest of monarchs, and how he would throw open the prison doors of his children and be parted from them no more, then a smile would gradually transfigure the girl's face, and she would feel happy. And then she would steal apart into her own dungeon, and kneel down before her bed, and pray ardently that she might see her father soon, very soon.

And she was to see him before very long.

Paul Béldi's body was now six feet deep in the ground, and his soul a star farther off in the sky—to see him one must go to him.

Paler and paler she became every day, her waking moments were scarcely different from her dreams, and her dreams from her waking moments. The provost-marshal now had compassion on the withered flower, and allowed it on the sunny afternoons to walk about on the bastions and breathe the fresh air. But neither moonlight nor fresh air could cure her now.

Frequently she would take the hand of Feriz Beg and press it to her forehead. "See how it burns, just like fire! Oh, if only I might live till my father comes. How he would grieve for me!"

Feriz Beg saw her wither from day to day, and still there was no sign of liberty. The youth used frequently to walk about the courtyard half a day at a time, like a lion in a cage, beating the walls with his forehead at the thought that that for which he had been striving his whole life long, and the possession whereof was the final goal of his existence, was drawing nearer and nearer to Death every hour, and no human power could hold it back!

The wife of the provost-marshal, a good, true woman, nursed the rapidly declining girl. Medical science was then of very small account in Transylvania; the sick had resort to well-known herbs and domestic remedies based on the experience of the aged; they trusted for the most part to our blessed mother Nature and the mercy of God.

The worthy woman did all she could, but her honest heart told her that the arrival of Aranka's father, and the sooner the better, would do more good than all her remedies. That would transform the invalid, and joy would give her back her failing vital energy.

Feriz Beg had not been able to speak to Aranka for two days; the girl had suffered greatly during the night, and Feriz was condemned to listen to the moaning of his beloved, and to hear her in the delirium of fever through the prison windows without being able to go to her, without being able to wipe the sweat from her forehead, or put a glass of cold water to her lips, or whisper to her words of comfort, and had to be content with knowing that she was with those who carefully nursed her.

Oh, it is not to the dying that death is most bitter.

By the morning the fever left her. The rising sun was just beginning to shine through the narrow round window and the sick girl begged to be carried out into the open air and the warm morning sunshine. She was no longer able to walk by herself, and they carried her out on to the bastions in an arm-chair.

It was a beautiful autumn morning, a sort of transparent light rested upon the whole region, giving a pale lilac blue to the sunlit scene. Where the road wound down from the Szekler hills a light cloud of dust was visible in the morning vapour; it seemed to be coming from the direction of Szamosújvár.

"Ah! there is my mother coming!" whispered Aranka, with a smiling face.

The young Turk held his hand before his face and fixed his eagle eyes in that direction; and when for a moment the breeze swept the dust off the road, and a carriage on springs drawn by five horses appeared, he exclaimed with a beating heart:

"Yes, that is indeed the carriage in which they took away thy mother."

Aranka was dumb with joy and surprise; she could not speak a word, she only squeezed Feriz Beg's hands and fixed her tearful eyes upon him with a grateful look.

The carriage seemed to be rapidly approaching. "That is how people hasten who have something joyful to say," thought Feriz, and then he began to fear less boundless joy might injure the life of his darling.

Soon the carriage arrived in front of the fortress and rumbled noisily over the drawbridge. Aranka, supported by the arm of Feriz, descended into the courtyard. They pressed onward to meet the carriage, and the smile upon her pallid face was so melancholy.

The glass door of the carriage was opened, and who should come out but Kucsuk Pasha.

There was nothing encouraging in his look; he said not a word either to his son or to the girl who clung to him, but the castellan was standing hard by, and he beckoned to him.

"In the carriage," said Kucsuk, "is the prisoner for whom I left my son as an hostage; take her back, and look well after her, for she is very ill."

Dame Béldi lay in the carriage unconscious, motionless.

Aranka, paler than ever and trembling all over, asked:

"Where is my father?"

Kucsuk Pasha would have spoken, but tears came instead of words and ran down his manly face; silently he raised his hand, pointed upwards, and said, in a scarce audible voice: "In Heaven!"

The gentle girl, like a plucked flower, collapsed at these words. Feriz Beg caught her moaning in his arms, she raised her eyes, a long sigh escaped her lips, then her beautiful lips drooped, her beautiful eyes closed, and all was over.

The beloved maiden had gone to her father in Heaven.

CHAPTER XXVII.
THE SWORD OF GOD.

For three whole days the sky did not clear. On the evening of the fourth day the stifling stillness was followed by a frightful hurricane, which tore off the roofs of the houses, wrenched the stars and crosses from the steeples of the churches, swept up the dust from the high-roads, caused such a darkness that it was impossible to see, and bursting open the willow trees, which had just begun to bloom, drove the red pollen before it in clouds, so that when the first big rain-drops began to fall they left behind them blood-red traces on the white walls of the houses. "It is raining blood from Heaven!" was the terrified cry. Not long afterwards came the cracking thunderbolts flashing and flaming as if they would flog the earth with a thousand fiery whips, while one perpendicular flash of lightning plumped right down into the middle of the town, shaking the earth with its cracking concussion, so that everyone believed the hour of judgment was at hand.

Nevertheless the storm had scattered the clouds, and by eventide the sky had cleared, and lo! before the eyes of the gaping multitude a gigantic comet stood in the firmament, all the more startling as nobody had been aware of its proximity because for three days the sky had been blotted out by clouds.

The nucleus of the comet stood just over the place where the sun had gone down, and the blood-red light of evening was not sufficient to dim the brightness of the lurid star; it appeared as if it had just slain the sun and was now bathing in its blood.

The comet was so long that it seemed to stretch across two-thirds of the firmament, and the end of it bulged out broadly like a Turkish scimitar.

"The sword of God!" whispered the people with instinctive fear.

For two weeks this phenomenon stood in the sky, rising late one day and early the next. Sometimes it appeared with the bright sun, and in the solar brightness it looked like a huge streak of blue enamel in the sky and spread around it a sort of febrile pallor as if the atmosphere itself were sick: on bright afternoons the sun could be regarded with the naked eye.

The people were in fear and terror at this extraordinary phenomenon, and when the blind masses are in an unconscious panic then a storm is close at hand, then they are capable of anything to escape from their fear.

In those days the priests of every faith could give strange testimony of the general consternation which prevailed in Transylvania. The churches were kept open all day long, and the indefatigable curers of souls spoke words of consolation to the assembled hosts of the faithful. Magyari, the Prince's chaplain, preached four sermons every day in the cathedral, which was so crowded at such times that half the people could not get in at all but remained standing outside the doors.

One evening the church was so filled with faithful worshippers that the very steps were covered with them, and all sorts of Klausenberg burgesses intermingled with travelling Szeklers in a group before the principal door, and after the hymn was finished they clapped to their clasped psalm-books and began to talk to each other while the sermon was going on inside.

"We live in evil times," said an old master-tanner, shaking his big cap.

"We can say a word about that too," interrupted a Szekler, who was up in town about a law-suit, and who seized the opportunity of saying what he knew because he had come from far.

"Then you also have seen the sword of God?" inquired a young man.

"Not only have we seen it, my little brother, but we have felt it also. Not a single evening do we lay down to rest without reciting the prayers for the dead and dying, and scarce a night passes but what we see the sky a fiery red colour, either on the right hand or to the left."

"What would that be?"

"Some village or town burning to ashes. They say the whole kingdom is full of destroying angels; one never knows whose roof will be fired over his head next."

"God and all good spirits guard us from it."

"We hear all sorts of evil reports," said a gingerbread baker. "Yesterday I was talking to a Wallachian woman whose husband was faring on the Járas-water on a raft taking cheese to Yorda. He was not a day's journey from his home when the Járas turned, began to flow upwards, and took the Wallachian back to his house from which he had started."

A listening clergyman here explained the matter by saying that the Aranyos, into which the Járas flows, was greatly flooded just then, and it was its overflow which filled up the Járas; in fact it was Divine Providence which brought the Wallachian back, for if he had been able to go on farther, the Tartars would certainly have fallen upon him and cut him to pieces.

"I have experienced everything in my time," said the oldest of the burgesses, "war, plague, flood and pestilence, but there's only one thing I am afraid of, and that is earthquake, for a man cannot even go to church to pray against that."

At that moment the preacher in the church began to speak so loudly that those standing outside could hear his words, and, growing suddenly silent, they pressed nearer to the door of the church to hear what he was saying.

The right rev. Magyari was trouncing the gentlemen present unmercifully: "God prepares to war against you, for ye also are preparing to war against Him. You have broken the peace ye swore to observe right and left, and ye shall have what you want, war without and war within, so that ye may be constrained to say: 'Enough, enough, O Lord!' and ye shall not see the end of what you have so foolishly begun."

Magyari already knew that Teleki, at the Diet of Szamosújvár, had announced the impending war.

Just at this very time two men of the patrician order in sable kalpags were seen approaching, in whom the Klausenbergers at once recognised Michael Teleki and Ladislaus Vajda, and so far as they were able they made room for them to get into the church through the crowd; but the Szekler did not recognise either of them, and when Ladislaus Vajda very haughtily shoved him aside with his elbows, he turned upon him and said:

"Softly, softly, sir! This is the house of God, not the house of a great lord. Here I am just as good a man as you are."

Those standing beside him tried to pull him aside, but it is the peculiarity of the Szeklers that they grow more furious than ever when people try to pacify them; and on perceiving that Ladislaus Vajda, unable to make his way through the throng, began to look about him to see how he best could get to his seat, the Szekler cried in front of him:

"Cannot you let these two gentlemen get into the church? don't you see that the lesson is meant for them?"

Teleki meanwhile had forced his way just over the threshold, and taking off his kalpag, exposed his bald, defenceless head in the sight of all the people, with his face turned in the direction indicated by the boisterous Szekler.

Magyari continued his fulminating discourse from the pulpit.

"Nobody dare speak against you now, for your words are very thunderbolts and strike down those with whom you are angry—nay, rather, men bow the knee before you and say, 'Your Excellency! Your Excellency!' but the judgment of the Lord shall descend upon you, the Lord will slay you, and then men will point the finger of scorn at you and say: 'That is the consort of the accursed one who betrayed his country!—these are the children of that godless man!' And your descendants will blush to bear the shameful name you have left them, for then the tongue of every man will wag in his mouth against you, and they will cry after your posterity: 'It was the father of those fellows who betrayed Transylvania and plunged us into slime from which we cannot now withdraw our feet' ..."

"Come away, your Excellency!" said Ladislaus Vajda to Teleki, whom the parson seemed to have seen, for he turned straight towards him as he spoke.

"What are you thinking of?" Teleki whispered back; "the parson is speaking the truth, but it doesn't matter."

"Whither would ye go, ye senseless vacillators!" continued Magyari, "who empowered you to make the men of Transylvania fugitives, their wives widows, and their children orphans? Verily I say to you, ye shall fare like the camel who went to Jupiter for horns and got shorn of his ears instead."

"It may be so," said Teleki to Vajda, "but we shall pursue our course all the same."

The parson saw that the Minister of State was paying attention to his discourse, so he wrinkled his forehead, and thus proceeded:

"When King Louis perished on the field of Mohács, the Turkish Emperor had the dead body brought before him, and recognising at the same time the corpse of an evil Hungarian politician lying there, he struck off its head with his sword, and said: 'If thou hadst not been there, thou dog! this honest child-king would not be lying dead here.' God grant that a foreign nation may not so deal with you."

Teleki scratched his head, and whispered:

"It may happen to me likewise, but that makes no difference."

Shortly afterwards another hymn was sung, the two magnates put on their kalpags and withdrew, and the emerging crowd of people flowed along all around them, among whom the Szekler, as recently mentioned, followed hard upon the heels of the two gentlemen with singular persistency, lauding to the skies before everyone, in a loud voice, the sermon he had just heard, so as to insult the two gentlemen walking in front of him as much as possible.

"That was something like a sermon," he cried, "that is just how our masters ought to have their heads washed—without too much soap. And quite right too! Why saddle the realm with war at all? Why should Transylvania put on a mustard plaster because Hungary has a pain in its stomach? What has all this coming and going of foreigners to do with us? Why should we poor Transylvanians suffer for the sake of the lean foreigners among us?"

Ladislaus Vajda could put up with this no longer, and turning round, shouted at the Szekler:

"Keep your distance, you rascal, speak like a man at any rate; don't bark here like some mad beast when it sees a better man than itself."

At these words the Szekler thrust his neck forward, stuck his face beneath the very nose of the gentleman who had spoken to him, looked him straight in the face with bright eyes that pricked like pins, and said, twisting his moustaches fiercely:

"Don't you try to fix any of your bastard names on me, sir, for if I go home for my sword I will pretty soon make you a present of a head, and that head shall be your own."

Ladislaus Vajda would have made some reply, but Teleki pulled him by the arm and dragged him away.

"Nothing aggravates your Excellency," said the offended gentleman.

"Let him growl, he'll be all the better soldier if we do have war; never quarrel with a Szekler, my friend, for he always has a greater respect for his own head than for anyone else's."

And so the two gentlemen disappeared through the gates of the Prince's palace.

The Prince himself was present at this sermon, and it produced this much impression that he enjoined a fast upon his whole household and then went to bed. In the night, however, he awoke repeatedly, and had so many tormenting visions that he woke up all his pages, and it was even necessary at last to send for the Princess herself, and only then did he become a little calmer when she appeared at his bedside; in fact, he kept her with him till dawn of day, continually telling her all sorts of sad and painful things so that the Princess's cries of horror could be heard through the door.

In the morning, after the Princess had retired to her own apartments, she immediately summoned to her presence Michael Teleki, who, living at that time at the Prince's court as if it were his own home, was not very long in making his appearance, and obeyed the command to be seated with as much cheerful alacrity as if he had been asked to sit down at a banquet, though well aware that a bitter cup had been prepared for him which he must drain to the dregs.

"Sir," said the Princess, "Apafi was very ill last night."

"That was owing to the fast, he isn't used to such practices. Generally, he has a good supper, and if he departs from his usual course of life he is bound to sleep badly. Bad dreams plague an empty stomach just as much as an overburdened one."

"And how about an overburdened conscience, sir? I have spent the whole night at his bedside, only this instant have I quitted him; he would not let me leave him, he pressed my hand continually, and he talked, soberly and wide-awake, of things which I should have thought could only have been talked about in the delirium of typhus. He said that that night he had stood before the judgment-seat of God, before a great table—which was so long that he could not see the end of it—and at this table sat the accusing witnesses, first of all Denis Banfy, and then Béldi, Dame Béldi and their daughter, and eldest son, who died in prison; Kepi, too, was there, and young Kornis, and old John Bethlen, and the rest of them; all these familiar faces were before him, and as tremblingly he approached the throne of God they all fixed their eyes upon him and pointed their fingers at him. Sir, it was a terrible picture."

"Does your Highness fancy that I am an interpreter of dreams?" asked Teleki maliciously.

"Sir, this is more than a dream—it is a vision, a revelation."

"It may be so; the souls of the gentlemen enumerated are, no doubt, in Heaven, and it is possible that countless other souls will follow them thither."

"And will the soul that shed their blood ascend thither too?"

"Will your Highness deign to speak quite plainly—I suppose you mean me? Of course, I am the cause of all the evils of Transylvania. Till I came upon the scene, none but lamb-like men inhabited this state, in whose veins flowed milk and honey instead of blood! King Sigismund, Bethlen, Bocskai, George Rákóczy, for instance! Under them only some fifty or sixty thousand men lost their lives in their party feuds and ambitious struggles! Fine fellows, every one of them of course, everyone calls them great patriots. But I, whose sword has never aimed at a self-sought crown, I, who am animated by a great and mighty thought, a sublime idea, I am a murderer, and responsible not only for those who have fallen in battle, but also for those who have died quietly in their beds, if they were not my good friends."

"There was a time, sir, when you used every effort to prevent Transylvania from going to war."

"That was the very time when your Highness pleaded before the Prince for war in the name of your exiled Hungarian kinsfolk. Other times, other men."

"I knew not then that such a desire would lead to the ruin of so many great and honourable men."

"You feared war, and yet you fanned it. He who resists a snow-storm is swept away. Not the fate of men alone, but the fate of kingdoms also is here in question. Apafi may console himself with the reflection that God regards us both as far too petty instruments to lay upon our souls what He Himself has decreed in the fullness of time, and what will and must happen in spite of us, for the weeping and mourning which we listen to here is also heard in Heaven. The mottoes of our escutcheons go very well together. Apafi's is 'Fata viam inveniunt,' mine is 'Gutta cavat lapidem.' Let us trust ourselves to our mottoes."

The Princess, with folded arms, gazed out of the window and remained in a brown study for some time. And now, as though her thoughts were wandering far away, she suddenly sighed: "Ah! this Béldi family so unhappily ruined, and how many more must be ruined likewise!"

"Your Highness!" rejoined the Minister, without moving a muscle of his face, "when, in time of drought, we pray for rain the whole day, does anybody inquire what will become of the poor travellers who may be caught in the downpour? Yet it may well happen that some of them may take a chill and die in consequence."

"I don't grasp the metaphor."

"Well, the whole Principality is now praying for rain—a rain of blood, I admit—and there is every sign that God will grant it. I do not mean those signs and wonders in which the common folks believe, but those signs of the times which rivet the attention of thinking men. Formerly there was a large party in Transylvania which had engaged to uphold an indolent peace, and which had so many ties, amongst the leading men both of the Kaiser and the Sultan, that Denis Banfy could at one time boldly tell me to my face that that Party was a hand with a hundred fingers, which could squeeze everything it laid hold of like a sponge. And lo! the fingers have all dropped off one by one. Denis Banfy has perished—they say I killed him. Paul Béldi has died in prison—they say I have poisoned him. God hath called John Bethlen also to Himself. Kapi has died. The boldest of my enemies, Gabriel Kornis, has also died in the flower of his youth—naturally they attribute his death to me likewise. All those, too, who opposed war in the Diván have disappeared one by one. Kucsuk Pasha has been shot down by a bullet at Lippa. Kiuprile Pasha has been stifled by his own fat; and the youngest of the Viziers, Feriz Beg, has gone mad.

"Gone mad!" cried the Princess, covering her face with her hands; "that noble, worthy youth who loved Transylvania so well?"

"Do you not see the hand of God in all this?" asked the Minister.

"No, sir," said the Princess, rising with a face full of sadness and approaching the Minister so as to look him straight in the face while she spoke to him, "it is your hand that I see everywhere. Denis Banfy perished, but it was you who had him beheaded. Béldi is dead, but it was you who drove him to despair. It was you, too, who threw his family into prison, and only let them out when the foul air had poured a deadly sickness into their blood. And Feriz Beg has gone mad because he loved Béldi's daughter, and she is dead."

"Very well, your Highness, let it be so," replied the imperturbable Minister. "To attribute to me the direction of destiny is praise indeed. Believe, then, that everything which happens in the council chamber of this realm and in the heart of its members derives from me. I'll be responsible. And if your Highness believes that that flaming comet, which they call the Sword of God, is also in my hand—why—be it so! I will hurl it forth, and strike the earth with it so that all its hinges shall be out of joint."

At that very moment the palace trembled to its very foundations.

The Princess leaped to her feet, shrieking.

"Ah! what was that?" she asked, as pale as death.

"It was an earthquake, madame," replied Teleki with amazing calmness. "There is nothing to be afraid of, the palace has very strong vaults; but if you are afraid, stand just beneath the doorway, that cannot fall."

On recovering from her first alarm the Princess quickly regained her presence of mind.

"God preserve us! I must hasten to the Prince. Will not you come too?"

"I'll remain here," replied Teleki coolly. "We are in the hands of God wherever we may be, and when He calls me to Him I will account to Him for all that I have done."

The Princess ran along the winding corridor, and, finding her husband, took him down with her into the garden.

It was terrible to see from the outside how the vast building moved and twisted beneath the sinuous motion of the earth; every moment one might fear it would fall to pieces.

The Prince asked where Teleki was; the Princess said she had left him in her apartments.

"We must go for him this instant!" cried the Prince, but amongst all the trembling faces around him he could find none to listen to his words, for a man who fears nothing else is a coward in the presence of an earthquake.

Meanwhile the Minister was sitting quietly at a writing-table and writing a letter to Kara Mustafa, who had taken the place of the dead Kiuprile. He was a great warrior and the Sultan's right hand, who not long before had been invited by the Cossacks to help them against the Poles, which he did very thoroughly, first of all ravaging numerous Polish towns, and then, turning against his confederate Cossacks, he cut down a few hundred thousands of them and led thirty thousand more into captivity.

To him Teleki wrote for assistance for the Hungarians.

Every bit of furniture was shaking and tottering around him, the windows rattled noisily as if shaken by an ague, the very chair on which he sat rocked to and fro beneath him, and the writing-table bobbed up and down beneath his hand so that the pen ran away from the paper; but for all that he finished his letter, and when he came to the end of it he wrote at the bottom in firm characters: