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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Peter the Priest, by Mór Jókai, Translated by
+S. L. Waite and A. V. Waite
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Peter the Priest
+
+
+Author: Mór Jókai
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 23, 2007  [eBook #23985]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PETER THE PRIEST***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Steven desJardins and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+PETER THE PRIEST
+
+by
+
+MAURUS JOKAI
+
+Author of "Black Diamonds," "Timar's Two Worlds,"
+
+Translated by S. L. and A. V. Waite
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+R. F. Fenno & Company
+9 and 11 East 16th Street
+
+Copyright, 1897 by R. F. Fenno & Company
+_Peter the Priest_
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+   I        IN THE MONASTERY.                    5
+   II       THE FOOLS OF THE CASTLE.            22
+   III      THE LORDS OF MADOCSANY.             33
+   IV       YAW DEREVOCSID EHT.                 40
+   V        THE LORDS OF MITOSIN.               53
+   VI       THE PICTURE OF SAINT ANTHONY.       67
+   VII      VENUS AND HER SON.                  80
+   VIII     THE BISHOP'S WEDDING.               96
+   IX       THE TEMPTATION.                    117
+   X        THE FEAST.                         125
+   XI       UNDERGROUND.                       134
+   XII      THE ICE-BLOCKED FLOOD.             159
+   XIII     IN THE GHOST'S HOUR.               165
+   XIV      THE BEAUTIFUL WOMAN'S REVENGE.     176
+   XV       THE GRAVE OF GOLD.                 187
+   XVI      THE FEAST OF DEATH.                196
+   XVII     ALL IS OVER.                       201
+
+
+
+
+PETER THE PRIEST.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+IN THE MONASTERY.
+
+
+There were six of them besides the Prior and Abbot. The seventh was away
+in the village, collecting the gifts of charity.
+
+"Benedicite," began the Prior. "Here is a message from our most gracious
+patroness." With that he laid upon the table a sealed letter in Latin,
+which the others passed from hand to hand. All understood it, but it was
+evident that not one of them liked the letter, for they turned up their
+noses, pursed their lips and knit their eyebrows.
+
+"One of us is bidden to the court of our most munificent patroness to
+educate her only son."
+
+"He is a little devil!" exclaimed the Abbot.
+
+"He talks and whistles in church," cried another.
+
+"He reviles the saints and the souls of the departed."
+
+"He torments animals." Each one had something to say; especially the
+last.
+
+"He is the accursed child of a mad mother."
+
+"She is the destruction of all men," continued the Abbot. "She sins
+against all the commandments."
+
+"She tramples under foot all the sacraments."
+
+"She is a raging fury and a sacrilegious witch."
+
+"She sent her husband to his grave with a deadly drink."
+
+The Prior met all these horrible comments with a stoical calm. "Still
+she is our gracious patroness, and her son also will one day be our
+patron. We must drink the bitter cup to its dregs. Let us choose."
+
+Still all shook their heads.
+
+"I have the fever in my bones," said one, rubbing his leg.
+
+"I have trouble with my liver," said another, and as proof he put out
+his tongue to the opposite brother, who hastened to say:
+
+"It is my vocation to heal the sick."
+
+Now all three looked at the fourth, who felt very confident of having
+the best excuse:
+
+"And I am not acquainted with the Scythian speech, neither the Hungarian
+nor the Slavic."
+
+The fifth was embarrassed what excuse to give:
+
+"I have taken a vow never to speak to a woman."
+
+Evidently no one cared for the office.
+
+"Then let us send Peter," said the Prior calmly.
+
+At this all five cried out: "He is too young," said one.
+
+"But he is stern of character," replied the Prior.
+
+"He will meet with very great temptations," threw in a second.
+
+"The greater will be his triumph," returned the Prior.
+
+"But he is still only a brother," a third protested.
+
+"We can make him a father," the Prior answered. An answer which brought
+them all to their feet, opposing it loudly:
+
+"That cannot be! that cannot be! our rules are against it."
+
+"Then let some one else go," said the Prior coldly.
+
+Silence fell upon the group: they shrugged their shoulders, fell back
+into their large richly carved arm-chairs, and murmured:
+
+"Then let Peter be made father, and let father Peter go."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the student John's week in the bake-house, and from there he had
+heard every word; and now that the worthy fathers had gone away, he
+came out of the bake-house and hobbled off to the kitchen. The master of
+the kitchen was not there, but Samuel, a fellow-student, hung over the
+edge of a large two-handled tub. John was lank, and Samuel was thickset;
+both were in rags, out of respect to the golden saying, "In rags is a
+student at his best." It was the daily duty of these two students to
+carry to the pigs this large tub full of kitchen refuse. As soon as John
+saw that the kitchen master was not there, he began rummaging in the tub
+among the crusts of bread, apple parings, and scraps of mouldy cheese,
+selecting with an experienced eye.
+
+"Leave some for Peter," growled Samuel, without raising his head from
+his knees.
+
+John could not answer, for both cheeks were full. Samuel sprang up full
+of envy that John should be enjoying his feast with such gusto.
+
+"Stop, you rascal! Leave some for the pigs." Then John looked for the
+pole to put through the handles of the tub.
+
+"Take hold of the other end."
+
+"I won't. Peter will be here soon and he carries it out alone."
+
+"Peter will not be here."
+
+"I hear his cart creaking now."
+
+"All the same, he won't carry that tub out again. I heard what they
+said when I was in the bake-house."
+
+"What did they say?" And the two sat down together on the edge of the
+tub for a gossip.
+
+"The mistress of the castle sends for an instructor for her son, and
+they say that he a small devil."
+
+"That's true, he's equal to twelve."
+
+"He whistles in church."
+
+"He puts sulphur in the incense when he assists at mass!"
+
+"He curses and reviles the saints and the souls of the departed."
+
+"He torments animals."
+
+"You're right he does! He put a lighted sponge in my donkey's ear, and
+the poor beast smashed my cart."
+
+"They said that he is as wild as his mother; and the Abbot said of her
+that she was the ruin of every man. Is that so?"
+
+"Yes, she is a witch, who bridles men and rides them off to the devils'
+dance."
+
+"They did say that she was a witch, and and that she broke all the ten
+commandments, and put the sacraments under her feet; and listen,--they
+said that she mixed poison in her husband's drink, and he died of it!"
+
+"That's like her! Once they sent me to her with a letter, and she
+ordered a cup of mead that had something in it that made me feel all
+night long as if I must crawl up the wall."
+
+"But the Prior said that she was our gracious patroness, and that her
+son would one day be our patron, and that we must drink the bitter cup."
+
+"I can see how they all trembled!"
+
+"One said that he had fever in his bones, another had trouble with his
+liver, a third said he was busy healing the sick, a fourth that he did
+not know either Hungarian or Slavic, and the fifth was bound by a holy
+vow not to speak to a woman."
+
+"And so in the end they send Peter."
+
+"The Devil's in you! You've guessed it!"
+
+"It may turn out well for him."
+
+"One thought he was still too young, and the Prior said, but he is of
+strong character; another that he would be exposed to great temptations;
+several objected that Peter was still a brother. Then the Prior said,
+we'll make him a father. Then all objected, and the Prior said, Then one
+of you must go. Then they all gave in and said, well, make Peter a
+father, and let Father Peter be the one to go."
+
+And then both the students began to laugh. "Peter will be in the right
+place there!" In the mean time, the creaking of the cartwheels stopped
+at the rear door; then came a knock; through this rear gate was an
+entrance into the court, but the duty of door-tender was limited to the
+main entrance.
+
+"Do you hear? Peter's knocking."
+
+"You hear him, yourself."
+
+"Go open the gate."
+
+"You can do it as well as I."
+
+"I can't find my feet, I don't know which of the four they are." At that
+John struck the four bare legs with his birch broom, and his fellow
+scholar at once discovered his own; then they seized each other by the
+hair; the question was which should throw the other out of the kitchen;
+the vanquished one was to open the gate. During this struggle, they
+upset the tub and the contents streamed over the floor. Then, indeed,
+they separated, thoroughly pommeled and frightened.
+
+"Get out, you overturned it."
+
+"You pushed me into it."
+
+"When the kitchen-master sees us, he'll beat you well." Neither one
+would set things to rights; meanwhile their brother, tired of knocking
+at the rear gate, had gone around to the main gate, been let in there,
+and now opened the rear gate for himself to bring in what he had
+collected in the villages.
+
+It was a lumbering cart; its wobbling wheels described the letter S in
+their course, and as they had been long ungreased, creaked dismally. A
+one-eared donkey drew the cart filled with all kinds of provisions,
+which the begging monk had collected in the villages; this was called
+"temporizing." The steward was already waiting in the court, slate in
+hand to note down the receipts. He did not fail at each item to make
+severe criticisms and to look sharply at the collector. Everything he
+found poor; picking out the bad eggs, he said, "You can have those
+yourself, Peter." The meal was very coarse. "Go sift it, and make
+yourself a cake out of the bran." On the head of the brother rained down
+the thanks, "Do-nothing," "Bread-consumer," "Donkey;" he endured all
+with bowed head. The hood of his black cowl covered his face to his
+eyebrows, and from his beard hung large raindrops; under his cowl, which
+was fastened by a cord, could be seen his bare feet, covered with mud to
+the ankle; his sandals he carried on his staff, so that they should not
+be worn out on the rough road. There was no rest for the wet and weary
+monk. The kitchen-master at once called through the vaulted porch,
+"Petre, Petre, hue acceleras: ad culinam!" (Peter, Peter, come to the
+kitchen, quick!)
+
+It was a fine kitchen; now when we look at its ruins, we might believe
+it a chapel and a tower; but it really was only a kitchen and a chimney.
+For Peter this roomy kitchen had the disadvantage that he had to put it
+in order.
+
+The contents of the overturned tub had spread over the marble floor, and
+those who had been the cause of this condition could not repair the
+mischief, because the Abbot was at that moment investigating their case
+in a corner by means of the lash. The two students knelt before him; and
+so somebody else must clean up the floor, and that somebody was Peter.
+He went obediently to work; threw off his coarse black cowl; and as he
+rolled up his sleeves, one could see from the fine white skin that he
+had not from childhood been accustomed to such slave's work. His face
+was still young, his features regular, and, through the dulling
+discipline of self-denial, immovable. He was only a brother, so the
+monk's tonsure had not taken the place of his blond hair; and though his
+eyes filled with tears, it was clearly caused only by coming suddenly
+from the cold into the heated kitchen. Without a word, he knelt down to
+clean the floor with shovel, broom, and whisk of straw.
+
+Meanwhile, the Abbot questioned the two rascals to find out who had done
+the mischief. It stood to reason neither one had. According to an old
+proverb, Mischief has no master. That they had scuffled, their faces
+bore evidence; John had a black and blue spot under the eye, and Samuel
+a bloody scratch on his brow, but both denied any scuffle.
+
+"Then how came this black and blue spot under your eye?" The same story
+suggested itself to John which Baron de Manx was to use later in a
+critical situation.
+
+"When I tried to light the fire I could not find the flint, so I struck
+myself in the eyes with one fist and with the other I held the match to
+it, so when my eyes saw sparks I lighted the match by them."
+
+The Abbot said nothing, but turned to the other: "How did you get that
+wound on your forehead?" Samuel, encouraged by John's example, was also
+ready with an excuse:
+
+"I bit myself."
+
+"How could you bite yourself in the forehead?"
+
+"In the looking-glass."
+
+"But you could not reach it!"
+
+"Yes I could, I climbed up on the bench."
+
+The Abbot compressed his lips till his fat cheeks stood out from each
+other, and then pronounced the sentence:--"Joannes quia bene mentitus
+est, accipiat viginti verbera; Samuel, quia male mentitus est, accipiet
+triginta." (John, because he has lied well, shall have twenty lashes;
+Samuel, because he has lied badly, shall have thirty.)
+
+The two lads gave themselves up to weeping and howling and wiping away
+the tears with their fists; but in secret, while the Abbot turned away,
+they winked at each other slily, and this meant, I'll not strike hard,
+if you won't. But the Abbot had eyes that could see without looking.
+
+"Peter," he said to the working monk who had just finished his cleaning,
+"come here."
+
+Peter obeyed. "Take these two delinquents in charge; they would handle
+each other with sly consideration, and avoid their punishment, your hand
+will let the rods fall more heavily;" and he handed him a bundle of
+birch rods, dipped in salt water.
+
+Now the two lads began to howl lustily and to crawl about on their
+knees, in their fear. But Peter did not reach out his hand for the
+bundle of rods. The demon of pride had stirred his blood to
+insurrection; his countenance glowed; his eyes blazed; he tossed back
+the lock of hair from his brow, clenched his fists, and advanced one
+foot. He emboldened himself to speak, although he had not been
+questioned. "I am no hangman's slave, I never learned to beat men with a
+besom; lock up the culprits, and I will do their work as long as they
+are confined, but I do not like to whip boys."
+
+"Petre!" said the Abbot in even tones, "Putasve quod adhuc sis dux
+equitum nobilium? Es servus servorum." (Do you think you are still at
+the head of noble knights? You are the slave of slaves.) And in order to
+let him feel how completely he was under the rod, he laid the bundle of
+sticks on the head of the defiant youth. Under this frightful burden,
+the uplifted head gradually sank and the lids closed over the blazing
+eyes. He unclenched his fists and crossed them on his breast. The
+handsome knight was changed again to the humble monk. He reached
+tremblingly for the bundle of rods, which he raised to his speechless
+lips:
+
+"Parce, pater." (Spare me, father.)
+
+But as he laid hold of the instrument of shame, whose work it is to
+disgrace that masterpiece of creation, man; to reduce to an animal him
+whom God had created in his own likeness, then once again his pride
+reasserted itself; he raised that noble hand, accustomed to grasp the
+sword hilt, whose greatest pleasure was to cut through with sharp steel
+helmet and armor; and which was now compelled with a jailer's scourge to
+belabor the bare skin of unmannerly clowns.
+
+He was only a novice, and had not yet learned that there are
+seventy-seven devils in the body, and that the body receives as many
+blows as there are devils. He had learned that we must regard the
+nail-studded belt and the hooked lash as our benefactors, and that to
+scourge the body at night until the blood flowed was an equivalent for a
+day of prayer. But to beat howling students was still a horror to him.
+Soon he will become accustomed to that too. At this moment was heard in
+the hall the voice of the Prior. "Petre ad me tendas." ("Peter, come to
+me.") Peter sighed with lightened heart and handed back the bunch of rods
+to the Abbot. "The Prior calls me."
+
+"He commands you; hasten to him."
+
+Peter wanted to lay aside his wet cowl and put on his coarse sandals.
+"Go just as you are," said the Abbot, "either you will come back here
+barefooted, or you will go hence in another garb."
+
+The Jesuit Brother dared not inquire concerning what he did not
+understand, he knew only to obey, so Peter went barefooted to the Prior.
+
+"Dearly beloved son," said the Prior to him, "it is now two years that
+you have practised obedience. You have learned to be poor, to beg, to
+take care of the sick, and to do the work of a day laborer. You have
+six years yet, before you can be numbered among the fathers. Three years
+you must pass in the library, must learn Saint Augustine by heart, and
+also the Turkish, Arabic, Greek, and Russian languages; for it is
+possible that when you are through your studies you may be sent into the
+desert of Arabia to convert the heathen, or to Russia to encourage to
+steadfastness the faithful of the Church who are persecuted by Ivan the
+Terrible. So then you must spend three years among your books, keeping
+awake night and day, and forcing your way into learning as yet unknown
+to you. The next three years, you must wander about among hostile
+peoples, where crucified martyrs and impaled saints will mark your way.
+The seventh year, you must make a pilgrimage into Spain to endure the
+test of your fidelity. If you endure all these tests, and all these
+temptations, then may you be numbered among the fathers. All this long
+way you can put behind you with one step, and out of all this learning
+you need only the one word, I will. This day you may lay down your
+novitiate, and tomorrow arise Father Peter, if you will voluntarily and
+obediently undertake this mission. Read!" And he handed him the letter
+of the Patroness.
+
+When the young monk glanced at the hand-writing, (he must have known it
+before) his whole countenance expressed sudden horror; he held the
+letter in his hand as if afraid to read it; then he took it, and as he
+read, his brow wrinkled, his face expressed contempt, and through his
+open lips, one could see his tightly closed teeth. He read the letter
+through and let his hand fall listlessly.
+
+"We have chosen you," said the Prior. "To-morrow you will become Father
+Peter, and need only to say, 'I will'."
+
+The youth looked steadfastly at the ground.
+
+"Have you become speechless?"
+
+The youth raised his head; his face had regained its manly calm. "Give
+me time for consideration, my father," he said, with a sweetly ringing
+voice, in which was heard the sincere vibration of a naive nature. "Let
+me compare the beginning and the end of this course. Surely it is not so
+far for me to the desert of Bab-el-Mandeb, or to the ice-sea of Siberia,
+as from the threshold of this monastery to the gate of the Madocsany
+castle. Neither the raging of Ivan the Terrible at his gory banquets,
+nor the nightly howl of the hyena, prowling after the dead through the
+desert of sand, is to me so terrible as one whisper of this woman. More
+rapidly can I learn Turkish and Arabic, Greek and Russian, and, if
+necessary, Sanskrit and Mongolian, than the one word, 'I will,' Grant
+me until to-morrow early to think of this."
+
+"Very well. Take this letter to your cell, and pray God that He give you
+light. For it is true that the mission we lay upon you is more difficult
+than any into the land of the Scythian or Hyperborean. Omnia ad majorem
+Dei gloriam."
+
+Peter went to his cell. It was a small narrow room, five feet long and
+two feet wide, with only a bed, and on the wall a crucifix. Yet the
+whole night long, he did not lie down on his bed, but, like a lion in a
+cage, he went back and forth over the five feet of space. There on the
+bed lay the letter, and on the bed where that letter lay, he could not
+lay his head. Toward morning, his decision became strong. He pushed the
+letter off the bed and threw himself down, and then weariness
+overpowered him; he slept so soundly that even the matin bell did not
+rouse him; and he first wakened when the Abbot shook him by the arm. He
+sprang up.
+
+"Well, Peter, what is your decision?"
+
+"This," replied Peter, treading under foot the letter as it lay on the
+floor.
+
+"Very well, then get up and follow me; the two delinquents are awaiting
+their punishment."
+
+"Wait; the Prior told me that the two years of the novitiate in which I
+was to do menial service were over. Now follow three years of study;
+then three years more of pilgrimage among hostile people. The Prior did
+not say anything about such hangman's service as this."
+
+"Oh, yes, he did, Peter; recollect, he said, finally you are to go to
+Spain: that meant that you are to spend a year in the service of the
+Holy Inquisition. Come and begin your practice now."
+
+Peter's nerves quivered with horror. Tightly did he press his arms to
+his sides and his face grew deadly pale. He raised his eyes to Heaven
+and his mouth opened.
+
+A vision passed before him of human wisdom in dog's shape, and of canine
+rage in man's shape--of Ivan the Terrible--of the Saracens--of the
+torture-chamber of Arbucs. It was more than his mind could bear. His
+knees gave way under him; he sank down; took up the letter trodden under
+foot and folded it together; concealed it in his bosom, and said, "I
+will go."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE FOOLS OF THE CASTLE.
+
+
+That very day went forth from the Convent the answer to the letter of
+the Baroness. It read: "For the high office of instructing our future
+baron, Father Peter has been chosen. He will install himself to-morrow
+at the castle."
+
+For this new role, Father Peter received a new costume. No one would
+have recognized the beggar-monk of yesterday in this figure of to-day,
+clad in silken robe with buckled shoes; as, with a large book under his
+arm, he turned from the highway into the entrance of the Madocsany
+castle, barely a thousand paces distant from the monastery.
+
+This castle was formerly shunned by everybody. In the first place, the
+court swarmed with hunting dogs of every kind, which dashed out at every
+arrival, and fairly tore the travellers from their carriages; then the
+young lord had a custom of lying in wait with a few intimates, and
+shooting at passers-by with an air gun, on a wager; then inside the
+court was a peacock, which flew at everybody's head and tried to peck
+out his eyes. Man and beast were trained here to harass the stranger.
+The day when the arrival of Father Peter was expected, the mistress took
+care to have her beloved child's air gun put away, for the round Jesuit
+hat would be altogether too convenient a target; she had had part of the
+pack of hounds driven into the poultry yard, leaving out only the
+blood-hounds and pointers; but she could not herself take care that a
+respectful reception should await the pious father, for just at the time
+of his arrival, the forester brought word that the night before the lord
+of Mitosin, with a troop of hunters, had crossed the Waag and shot down
+deer and other game; and when the gamekeepers tried to withstand this
+mad chase, they had been bound to trees, and the game had been dragged
+away.
+
+The mistress of the castle fell into an ungovernable rage; sent at once
+for her stewards and agent, and prepared for a frightful retaliation by
+the most violent means.
+
+Between the castles of Madocsany and Mitosin was an ancient feud that
+each lord took care to settle with his own hand. But when one of these
+domains passed into the hands of a woman, the situation became worse;
+for woman is less yielding than man. The preparations for revenge
+caused the mistress of the castle to forget entirely the arrival of
+Father Peter; so he was received by nobody but the dogs and the fools,
+in which latter class must be counted the young lord.
+
+Nine blood-hounds and pointers plunged for the monk when his sable
+figure appeared in the gateway. But the monk did not act like those
+people who in their fright run this way and that, throwing out their
+arms, and provoking the spectator to laughter, but he remained standing
+quietly before the dogs--he had owned a fine pack once himself--and when
+they came baying around him, opened his large book and closed it
+noisily.
+
+The dogs thought he had shot, and dashed off in every direction to hunt
+for the game, while the monk walked calmly into the castle court. The
+young Lord, the haiduk, the master of the hounds, and the fool were
+entertaining themselves playing ball.
+
+"See, here comes the instructor," cried Matyi, the haiduk. "What a
+marvel that the dogs have not eaten him," said Petyko, the master of the
+hounds, greatly astonished. "Hit the monk in the back with the ball,"
+the young Lord called out to the fool, who had the ball in his hand, and
+if he hit him it was bound to leave a big spot on the silken robe.
+
+Hirsko, the fool, did as bidden. The monk caught the ball, and threw it
+back at the Fool with such force that his bearskin cap flew off his
+head. This pleased the young Lord greatly.
+
+"That's a fine monk! Come here, Monk. So you know how to play ball! How
+the devil is that? I thought monks knew only how to pray. Can you throw
+a ball as far as Matyi? He is a strong fellow. See how far the ball has
+gone; he almost hit the window. See what you can do."
+
+Father Peter took the bat and struck the ball with such force into the
+air that it flew over the roof of the castle. All were carried away with
+admiration.
+
+"That's a rare monk!" said the young Lord. "I can learn to play 'Longa'
+and 'Meta' with him."
+
+"Does your Honor know Latin already?" asked Father Peter of the boy.
+
+"Latin! What's that got to do with this?"
+
+"Why, 'Longa' means long, and 'Meta' means a goal. So in playing we add
+to learning."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"We make a kite out of what is to be learned, and while we let the kite
+go, the learning remains."
+
+"So you understand kite-flying, do you? Have you ever seen a kite as
+large as mine? See how stout the cord is to hold by. Matyi can break
+this the first time trying. Show us, Matyi."
+
+"That's nothing," said Father Peter, and with that he put the cord
+together three times and broke it.
+
+"My, that's a strong monk! What's the Latin for kite?"
+
+"Draco."
+
+"And paper?"
+
+"Charta."
+
+"And the frame?"
+
+"Arcus."
+
+"I know all that. That's quite easy, Hirsko."
+
+"It's got to be easy," said the Fool, an ugly dwarf, with a monstrously
+large head and hideous countenance. "The gracious Lady has given orders
+that the instructor shall teach the young Lord everything within one
+year, in such a manner that the young Lord shall not have to study
+anything."
+
+"That is always the way, you know," said Father Peter. "Every young Lord
+keeps a small boy to be whipped, and when the young Lord does not know
+his lesson, the boy receives the punishment in his stead."
+
+"You shall be this boy," said the young Lord, laughingly, to the Fool.
+
+This system of pedagogics pleased the young Lord very much, and the monk
+by this means had won his favor in the highest measure. The Fool was the
+shrewdest of the company, for he saw that this new man would throw the
+old favorites out of the saddle, for he knew better how to manage the
+hounds than the master of hounds, was stronger than the haiduk, and a
+better joker than the Fool. He wanted to bring the monk to confusion.
+"What did you bring that great, stupid book with you for?" he asked,
+opening the folio, which bristled with a strange handwriting, terrible
+to him. "Is the young Lord to learn the book by heart."
+
+"No, my son; with this book I drive out devils."
+
+"Then you have come just at the right time. Go up to our gracious Lady;
+she has three thousand devils; you can test your art with her."
+
+All four burst out laughing.
+
+"Yes, do go, monk," teased the young Lord, "let us see whether you dare
+appear before my lady mother. She understands Latin when she tries. Do
+go, monk."
+
+And all four crowded around the spiritual director. One shoved him,
+another pulled him, and so they dragged him through the entrance hall,
+hall-ways, and saloons, in the direction from which came the loudest
+noise; but when suddenly a door opened and through this unexpectedly
+appeared the Lady herself, all four ran away, to crawl behind the stove,
+the table, or the highest chest, leaving Father Peter standing alone in
+the middle of the saloon before this fire-breathing dragon. The gracious
+lady had pushed open the door with the heel of her yellow riding boot,
+and when she saw the monk's figure standing in the dark background, she
+stamped violently with her foot.
+
+"The Devil could not have brought a monk here, more opportunely." With
+that she turned toward the threshold with her back to the monk, and
+began to scold her retinue in the adjoining room. "What are you staring
+at there! Off with you, and do as I order! The peasants are to arm
+themselves with scythes and pitchforks, and the halberdiers are to mount
+their horses. Haiduks, hunters, peasants, off with you to Mitosin! Set
+the red cock on their roof. If they have other game, they shall have
+fire for it. Fall upon them while they are drunk; throw them into the
+water to sober them; set fire to their towers on all four sides, even if
+the dead Florian himself should rise from his grave to beg for them. But
+if you catch the master alive, swing him up on the cross bar over the
+well. Now off with you! I'll go too; saddle my horse. Where's that
+miserable priest? What the devil does he want? Let him show his face."
+
+The Lady's face was flaming red with anger; even on her brow blazed the
+red spots; her nostrils quivered; her eyes flashed so that she could not
+see; her lips drawn into very ugly shape. Then too, her hair was
+disordered, her brown locks changing into red, gleamed on her temples in
+small bright red curls, and above them a high cap was fastened with four
+pins that gave the appearance of four horns. Her stately figure showed
+strength and passion, still further heightened by her costume. Her
+bodice, extending below the hips, was of brown and yellow stripes two
+fingers wide, a true tiger's skin, and instead of the stiff ruffle
+around the neck was a border of feathers. Below the hips hung a dagger
+from a Turkish girdle; and the skirt of heavy flowered brocade was
+festooned with strings of gold and silver coins that rattled as she
+walked; the skirt, made short in front, as she stamped her foot, showed
+the leg above the yellow riding boots, in bright red trousers. This was
+her appearance when she cried: "Now let that cringing priest come here!"
+
+Father Peter came near, and said gently: "May peace and blessing rest
+upon this house." At this voice, the lady let fall her dagger and
+raised her hands to her brow, either to shade her eyes for better sight,
+or to conceal her face. The monk came nearer to her, and said in
+friendly tones: "Anger ruins beauty. Cleopatra was never angry, and so
+remained always beautiful. Rage disfigures the countenance, draws
+lasting wrinkles, and leaves its imprint on the skin." In one instant
+the rage had vanished from the lady's face, the blazing red became
+white, her brow relaxed, and her lips resumed their lines of beauty. Her
+flashing eyes remained fixed, like those of a sleep-walker, on the
+countenance of the speaker. An instant had sufficed to effect this
+change; at the last words of the Father, the Lady even tried to smile.
+Now the monk came still nearer, so that he could say in a whisper: "What
+unseemly revenge have you planned, gracious Lady? Who will consent to
+quarrels and firebrands? You are only preparing a new enjoyment for the
+one who has wronged you. A sword wound does not hurt a man. If you
+really want to take vengeance on this man, have a quantity of game shot
+and send it to him as a present. In this way you will shame him."
+
+Like the sun beneath a heavy cloud, gleamed a smile on the face of the
+Lady. "True, true," she said, with a look of joy. "I will revenge myself
+that way. Steward, treasurer, forester; go at once into the forest;
+kill as much game as you can put in a wagon, and take it to Mitosin. Say
+to the lord of the castle, I send him my greetings, and since he is so
+desperately hungry for my game, I send him still more of it, that he may
+have enough."
+
+Every one was astonished at this sudden change, including those in
+hiding behind the furniture, who were now quite convinced that the monk
+knew how to drive out the Devil with the aid of the large book he
+carried under his arm.
+
+"Mother, don't give in to him," cried the young Lord, dashing out and
+seeking shelter beside his mother. Then happened to the young man what
+he had never experienced before; his dear mother gave him a box on the
+ear. Yes, the spoiled darling, the only son, the child of her heart, who
+never in his life before had heard the word, "Don't," received his first
+box on the ear.
+
+Stunned and amazed, he quite forgot he ought to cry. "Off with you.
+Treat him as your Father. Kiss his hand." And his mother's half-raised
+boot made the boy understand that she was quite ready to use her heel as
+a stimulus. But the monk intervened.
+
+"Gracious Lady, treat him as your child." With these words he leaned
+forward, and enveloped him in his robe and the child sought refuge in
+the arm of his protector, and began to cry bitterly. "Do not cry, my
+little one, have confidence in your mother; she loves you. A mother's
+chastisement brings blessing to the child. Now take the book, and carry
+it to the room designed for me."
+
+This commission so surprised the child that he forgot to cry. Curiosity
+overcame sorrow. He was delighted to take into his hand the wonderful
+book whose contents the devils themselves feared, as if they had
+themselves to spell it out, or take a whipping. Off he ran with his
+book, and the three fools after him. As soon as they could, they stopped
+to study the strange characters painted in gay colors on the parchment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE LORDS OF MADOCSANY.
+
+
+When they were left alone, the Lady began to laugh. Her pleasure was as
+passionately violent as her anger; she clapped her hands and pressed
+them to her head.
+
+"Aha! So you're here, are you? At last! You are not dead! You did not go
+out into the wild world! You have come to me! A hundred times I have
+called you; a thousand times I have waited for you; but always in vain.
+When I did not expect you, you are before me! Ha ha! And in what a
+masquerade have you slunk in, Tihamer Csorbai!"
+
+And with that she laid both hands on the monk's shoulders, rested her
+dimpled chin on her arm, and laughed in his face with her sparkling
+eyes.
+
+"My name is Father Peter," said the monk calmly. And without change of
+countenance, he suffered the Lady to press him to her breast with all
+her might.
+
+"That's not true!" she cried, seizing violently the monk's rough
+garment over his breast. "It's only a disguise," and she tore open the
+coarse cowl on his breast, expecting to see a gold-trimmed, buckled
+cloak of velvet. In its stead was a coarse shirt of unbleached linen,
+such as all Jesuits wore, down to the humblest begging monk; and where
+this coarse shirt parted on his breast, could be seen around his neck a
+chain of steel with iron cross. The points on the links of the chain and
+the sharp edges of the cross had left bloody prints on his neck, from
+her violent embrace. But he endured both the embrace and the torture
+without a smile, without a word.
+
+"I am what I seem to be," he said coldly. The tone of his voice was so
+cold, his glance so steely hard, that from the face of the Lady suddenly
+vanished the smile, and with it every charm. With dignity she drew
+herself to her full height, rubbed her hands, gazed with her black eyes
+in terror at the cross, her whole body quivered; then she clasped both
+hands to her brow, throwing back her head. "'Tis a dream! Waken me! Give
+me water."
+
+"We are awake, my Lady," said the monk, "What you see is the reality."
+
+"Tihamer----"
+
+"--is dead."
+
+"But not in the struggle against the Turks?"
+
+"No, only in the struggle against self."
+
+"'Tis two years since we have heard anything of you."
+
+"Yes, since that unfortunate duel, in which I killed somebody with whom
+I would gladly exchange my rest every night. You know the cause."
+
+"Do not call it to mind. Rage fills my whole body."
+
+"Every night his ghost comes to me."
+
+"Why didn't you make more thorough work of it? His ghost leaves me in
+peace." And with that she smiled seductively. The man understood the
+words and understood the smile. This woman was a queen of sinners; all
+heart, and yet heartless. If she were to go to Hell, she would seduce
+the Devil, and instead of being among the damned, would take her place
+at Beelzebub's side as his wife.
+
+"The Lord of Mitosin has cursed me," said the monk.
+
+"How often has he cursed me! Every word he speaks is a curse. If all
+took effect, there would be no thunder left in Heaven or devil in Hell.
+I laugh at his curse."
+
+"But he really has cursed me. At the funeral feast of his son, he hurled
+after me the words, that if he ever caught sight of my face again, he
+would put his daughter in a boat, push her out on the sea in the black
+night, and leave her to perish."
+
+"And your love for her was so great that for this reason you went out
+into the wide world,--nay, more, you went out of the world--you became a
+monk! And yet you could not free yourself from her. Her charm brought
+you back again, that you might be near her, might even see her again. Am
+I not right?"
+
+Envy and jealousy blazed in her glance.
+
+"No. I made a pilgrimage to Rome, and was received into the Jesuit
+order. The Provincial, finding that I was of this vicinity ordered me to
+the monastery of Madocsany."
+
+"Whither you never wanted to come."
+
+"I had to obey. And since then, I have been spending my years of penance
+here. I have done the most menial work. Begged from village to village,
+and tortured my body and my soul."
+
+"Just to see her once more!"
+
+"To avoid her."
+
+"What! Have you not yet seen her? Not heard of her? She is more
+beautiful than ever and still unmarried. She waits for you."
+
+"She waits in vain! Even in prayer, I do not venture to approach her. I
+am what I have become--a rigid, unfeeling monk. Only in my hands do I
+carry the rose-wreath, not on my brow. Its fragrance is no more sweet;
+its thorns give no more pain."
+
+"And you are the one the Jesuit convent selected to send to me!"
+
+"The rest were all afraid of you."
+
+"On account of my bad reputation; and yet they do not know me at all.
+You had most cause to fear, for you know me, and yet you came--to the
+woman whom you hate, whom you despise, at whose warm whisper you
+shudder, whom you have so often thrust aside, and of whom you know that
+she clings to you so madly that she will never give you up to God, or
+Devil, or angel! Whose windows are written all over with your name, who
+when she is silent, and when she speaks, and when she dreams, thinks
+only of you! And yet you came!"
+
+"The command was given and I obeyed."
+
+"And why are you here?"
+
+"To fulfil a sacred mission."
+
+"Ha, ha! What mission?"
+
+"To instruct your son in the true faith, and in worldly knowledge."
+
+"I understand. They are afraid that if I get angry, I will take my son
+with me to Saros-Patak, and make a Calvinist of him; and will my wealth
+to that college; they have a holy dread of that."
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"But you have still another sacred mission. As I understand from their
+letter, the Jesuits never send an instructor into a family except with
+the title of Father Confessor. You are to be my Father Confessor."
+
+"I know it."
+
+"You know it. And do not suspect that what I shall whisper in your ear
+day after day, will be not only my curse, but also yours. That you who
+must absolve my soul of the sin, if sin it is, renew that sin day by
+day; that when you lay your hand upon my head in blessing, every one of
+your five fingers will burn in my red hair as in glowing coals. Do you
+know that?"
+
+"I know it."
+
+"And yet you venture to incline your ear when I kneel before you and
+venture to hear me when I whisper, 'Father I have sinned;' I love a man
+with a maddening love that sets my brain on fire; I cannot pray, for his
+name ever rushes to my lips; I cannot look to the saints above, for
+everywhere I see his face; I cannot do penance, for I love my sin, and
+am ever returning to it; I had a good, true husband who was as gentle as
+a lamb; this good and gentle husband I tortured to death--perhaps I even
+caused his death--I exulted and rejoiced in my widow's veil for I
+thought, Now he whom I seek can be mine; ah, my sin, my sin! But his
+heart would not incline to me for he loved another,--a more beautiful, a
+better, an innocent maiden; and I disturbed their union, I roused her
+father and brother against him, I sowed enmity between them, and he
+killed the brother of his betrothed, and so I tore them from each other.
+My sin! My sin! Hear me, God in Heaven! I did not come to you to pray,
+but I will contend with you. This man I love more than my soul's
+salvation, the man to whom I pray rather than to Heaven, whose heart
+Thou first didst take from me, and now dost take him too. Thou hast
+chained him to Thine altar, but I will not leave him to Thee, I will
+tear him from Thine altar, and if Thou wilt not permit me to be happy on
+earth, to be blessed in Heaven with him, then will I be damned in Hell
+with him. Father, I will sin!"
+
+The woman rocked on her knees in the dust before the man, kissing his
+feet, and with her hand beating her unrepentant breast.
+
+A deep sigh was wrung from the heart of Father Peter. He turned his face
+away, and laying a trembling hand on the woman's head, sobbed with
+stifled voice, "May God pity you your sins, poor wretched woman!" And
+then he let her lie sobbing on the ground, and let her drag herself
+along the marble floor, following his footsteps and kissing them, one
+after the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+YAW DEREVOCSID EHT.
+
+
+That good-sized book that Father Peter had brought to the Castle with
+him was no book of magic to exorcise devils, but rather a book that had
+had some man-tormenting devil for composer: it had moulded already for
+two centuries in the Madocsany Monastery library before the Jesuit order
+was founded by Ignatius Loyola; at that time the Carmelite fathers were
+in the abbey; the contents of this book must have caused them, too, many
+a headache, for they wrote many pages of Latin commentaries to explain
+this text of a few leaves which nobody understood yet. This much had the
+investigators already worked out; that the characters were the same that
+the Arabs employed in their secret correspondence, and the alphabet was
+that known among Orientalists as "Lijakah." On the other hand, the words
+which the letters formed were not to be found in any speech of any known
+people on the whole globe. One linguist insisted that he recognized the
+Arabic, another the Coptic, and a third the Mongolian in some one of
+its forms. The words that most frequently appeared were explained by all
+kinds of philological cunning. The title of the book was YAW DEREVOCSID
+EHT. One word sounded like Arabic, and another was evidently of Turkish
+origin; but what the whole meant no human understanding could decide.
+Whole sheets were written over, with desperate and useless effort. It
+seemed as if everybody must go mad who attempted its investigation. The
+Jesuits later adopted the custom, whenever a monk ventured to demur
+against a task assigned, of putting into his hand this book, YAW
+DEREVOCSID EHT, and telling him that he might spend his time in quiet
+linguistic studies, that he might acquire the language in which these
+few pages were written, and when he had accomplished this, he might go
+as a missionary to the people who wrote and spoke this language. But
+this secret had never yet been penetrated throughout all the years in
+which it had vexed and tormented students. And so to Father Peter, this
+book had been given for a companion; in case he wished to escape from
+the hard service in the castle, this book would be welcome in gaining
+his exit through the closed door, and for that reason, Father Peter
+spent whole nights over the thick book, and studied in succession the
+writings of those who had gone astray before him.
+
+The little son of the mistress of the castle slept with the monk in one
+room, but beside the monk, the child must have the Fool too; for he
+could not go to sleep unless the Fool told him fairy stories, and the
+Fool well knew how. Often he sat until midnight by the boy's bedside,
+weaving garlands of the Thousand and One Nights; this gave the monk a
+chance to study the secrets of the Arabic writing. The young Lord had
+very bad dreams. He dreamed of the fairies and witches in the fairy
+tales, and would waken screaming. Often he dreamed with wide open eyes,
+tried to escape, howled and wept, so that the monk and the Fool had all
+they could do to quiet him and lull him back to sleep again. And this
+was continued until early morning, when the boy fell into a deep sleep,
+and the monk and the Fool could give themselves to rest.
+
+The monk found his Arabic book of sufficient service in these night
+watches, but for the Fool wine was furnished as a means of keeping
+awake. And so they sat through the still nights beside each other at a
+table; in front of the monk lay the open book and the large inkstand of
+lead, and before the Fool stood a large pitcher and a tin mug.
+
+"What would a man say, Monk," said the Fool once, "if he should see us
+together this way every night? Which would he call the Fool and which
+the wise man?"
+
+"He would call you wise, and me a fool."
+
+"If you would like, I could share my wisdom with you, for my pitcher is
+full; there is wine in it."
+
+"I do not drink wine."
+
+"What have you there in front of you?"
+
+"Ink."
+
+"And I do not drink ink, but I'll taste your drink; give me some."
+
+"Ink is not to drink."
+
+"What is it for?"
+
+"You see. Men dip quills in it, and write letters with it, and what is
+in the letters causes greater delight to the human soul than your wine
+to the human throat."
+
+"Give me a swallow of it that I may learn its taste."
+
+"Nobody can give of this drink."
+
+"Is it frozen?"
+
+"Yes, just that. It is written in a foreign language that I do not
+myself understand."
+
+"You do not understand! and you follow with your finger along the line
+of those bird-tracks! Then this magic book is of no more value to you
+than to me. I might just as well sit in your place, and follow with my
+finger."
+
+"You are quite right, Fool."
+
+"Now I'll tell you a thing, and you can make two of it. If I can swallow
+a little of your drink which you cannot pour out for your own self,
+then will you taste mine which I do not begrudge you?"
+
+"I can easily agree to that."
+
+"Now then, wait a little. Before you came I had a student for companion
+in these night-watches, who used to work there busily, just where you
+sit. He was to have taught the young Lord to read and write, but every
+day he got hit in the head with the inkstand. I watched this foolish
+student carefully from the other end of the table, and saw that when he
+took his goosequill in his hand, and began to make all kinds of
+flourishes that he always worked from left to right, but as I observe
+your finger you go from right to left, and in that way get everything
+wrong end to. Now listen, and I will recite you a sweet song:
+
+    'Wolb sdniw hguor eht nehw neve,
+    Skaerc kao tuots eht nehw neve,
+    Woleb ssarg eht ni terewolf eht,
+    Skaerw yruf rieht tahw ton sraef.'
+
+Did you understand? Arabic, isn't it? Now just read it backward and you
+will understand at once.
+
+    'Even when the rough winds blow,
+    Even when the stout oak creaks,
+    The floweret in the grass below
+    Fears not what their fury wreaks.'"
+
+"Quite right, Fool, but this is written in Arabic, and Arabic, like all
+Eastern languages, is written from right to left."
+
+"What is the title of your book?"
+
+"YAW DEREVOCSID EHT."
+
+The Fool burst into a loud laugh. "Didn't I tell you that I would drink
+of your cup first? Now read from left to right just as you have done:
+
+"YAW DEREVOCSID EHT means simply, The Discovered Way."
+
+Father Peter's eyes and mouth stood wide open with astonishment. What
+fifty wise men had not been able to guess in two hundred years, a fool
+had found out in two minutes! Now Father Peter began to read as the Fool
+had instructed him. He read two, three lines, a whole page; and the more
+he read, the more his countenance lifted up, his eyes beamed, the
+ascetic hardness of his features melted under the glow of an
+indescribable fire; he began to pound on the table with his right hand.
+
+"See, see!" cried the Fool, "The monk is drunk with his own wine."
+
+At this the monk sprang up and closed the book.
+
+"This book does not drive away the Devil, it summons him."
+
+"Didn't I tell you I knew how to drink your wine? Now drink mine." And
+he poured the beaker full and reached it to the monk. Oh, how well
+Father Peter had once known this fiery drink, when he was not a slave of
+slaves, but leader of the knights; then no wine was too strong for him;
+he could drink on a wager with German or Polish cavaliers; but for two
+years his lips had not touched wine. Wine is the foam of that fiery
+stream that flows toward Hell. As thick as fish in the river, large and
+small, so thick are sins, large and small in the wine. There must have
+been in the book some kind of hidden fire, for as soon as the monk had
+let one page of it steal into his soul, the torments of a burning thirst
+were manifest in his countenance.
+
+"Pass me your mug." His hand still trembled as he took the mug. At first
+his dry lips just sipped the wine; it could not have been especially
+good; but after two years of abstinence, the monk experienced a magic
+effect, and the wine exhilarated him as if he tasted it for the first
+time in his life. He sank back into his armchair, and in his upturned
+face were mirrored visions of ecstacy. His far-gazing eyes beamed, and
+on his half-opened lips trembled a smile. Where might his soul be
+wandering now? Involuntarily his hand reached for the book and opened
+its covers.
+
+"Oh, woe, woe! Dromo the Devil is here! oh, woe, he will throw me into
+the fire!" So screamed the restless, dreaming boy, tossing on his couch,
+with his head hanging off.
+
+The monk was roused, and shuddered, then ran to the boy, raised him,
+laid him back on his pillow and quieted him with caressing words:
+
+"Don't be afraid, little one, I am here beside you." The child stared at
+him with wide-open eyes.
+
+"Are you my father?"
+
+"Yes, your spiritual father."
+
+"My father, whom the Devil carried off to Hell? That's what my mother
+said. Leave me, leave me! I will not go with you. Your hand is fire, and
+your fingers burn me."
+
+And yet the monk's hand was as cold as ice, as he stroked the child's
+silken hair. By the bed stood a silver pitcher with a small gold cup:
+the boy raised it to his lips and at once became quiet, as the
+terrifying visions vanished. He wound both arms around the neck of the
+monk and whispered to him, while still under the spell of the dream:
+
+"Beautiful Knight, brave Knight! When you lift my mother into the saddle
+with you, you'll take me with you, won't you, my handsome Knight, my
+golden, diamond hero!" With that he fell into a gentle sleep.
+
+"Just see what a good nurse you would make," said the Fool to his
+friend, "Sometimes I have to spend a good half-hour rubbing his feet and
+singing to him, and he is asleep at once. Have another mugful?"
+
+"I don't like your wine."
+
+"It's true you ought to drink yours, not mine." Father Peter saw with
+horror that the large book was open again. He thought it was magic.
+
+"Did you touch this book?" he asked the Fool.
+
+"No, not if you were to give me this castle, and its handsome mistress
+with it, would I open that book; it opened itself."
+
+The red and blue letters were oh, so enticing! It was no sealed secret
+now that they contained; for they were all familiar. The monk leaned
+back in his chair and read the leaves of the secret writing until he had
+read them to the end. And the farther he read, the more intense grew
+that expression of unquenchable thirst, like that of a sick man who
+dreams that he is in a desert and longs for a cataract to drink. Every
+leaf of the book was a new catastrophe, the whole one unbroken delirium;
+he did not look up until he had finished the last line of the last page.
+Then he called to the Fool: "Bring me a whole bucket of wine."
+
+The morning sun, which streamed in through the painted window, found
+them both in the same place; the Fool was under the table: the monk sat
+before his book, his head on his hands, his eyes wide open:--he did not
+read, he did not sleep, but yet he dreamed.
+
+In YAW DEREVOCSID EHT was no cabalistic writing. The writer at the very
+first gave his reasons for employing this device. He had chosen the
+Arabic letters so that all would try to read it from right to left, and
+so fail to discover its meaning. In case it occurred to anybody to read
+it from left to right, still, as the people of that vicinity rarely knew
+more than Hungarian, no meaning would appear. In case anybody understood
+English, it was hardly probable the Arabic text would be familiar too.
+Only by rare chance could this mysterious book be deciphered. What it
+contained was the description of a secret passage or tunnel that led
+from the Madocsany Castle to the turreted walls of Mitosin. Midway was
+the river Waag, which was here quite wide, but the tunnel passed under
+the river bed, thus anticipating the Thames tunnel by about four hundred
+years. If any one shakes his head at this, and begins to doubt that our
+story is true, we will point out to such a doubter the secret way that
+leads from a certain castle to a distant village, a veritable catacomb
+which in a straight line would be fully a mile long, a work of the
+Hussites. The vaulted passage-way is covered with mould, from which in
+one place shines out two memorial tablets; one of stone bears the symbol
+of the cooper's trade, as peculiar to the Hussite monks as the trowel
+and the triangle to the Freemasons. In the stone vaulting, above is seen
+a goose, the Hussite symbol; what purpose this tunnel served the
+Hussites is yet to be discovered; but the object for which the
+Madocsany-Mitosin tunnel was made, was clearly set forth in this YAW
+DEREVOCSID EHT. Both castles belonged to Czech robbers and bandits in
+the days when the Hungarian regent, John Hunyadi, with all the military
+forces of the land, wore himself out trying to drive back the monstrous
+host of the Turkish Sultan. He who fights with a bear has no time to
+brush wasps from his face. The Czech could ravage the country at
+pleasure, and when sometimes bands of noblemen, led by Hungarian Counts,
+rose up against them to take vengeance for their plundering and reckless
+deeds, suddenly every trace of the pursued would be lost. The larger
+robber-hordes would withdraw to their strongholds and defy every attack;
+the lesser ones, led by impecunious noblemen, left their drawbridges
+down before the pursuing bands, and let them seek at will what they so
+eagerly pursued. The enemy searched everywhere, in every corner, cellar,
+loft, chapel, and crypt; and when they could find nothing more, still
+lingered on, days and weeks, and then cleared out the storehouses, and
+withdrew in unsatisfied rage. The entire robber-band meantime, with all
+their stolen wealth and beautiful Slavic maidens, passed down into this
+secret tunnel, and made their way to the other castle. And the
+freebooters who guarded the Waag was ready to swear that not one of them
+had passed over the river. It was true; they had gone under. But once
+Mathias Corvinus ordered the two castles attacked at one and the same
+time; the robbers fled first from Mitosin through the tunnel, only to
+find themselves surrounded in Madocsany. It was at this time that the
+monk wrote YAW DEREVOCSID EHT. He described in detail to whom the two
+castles belonged, and where the entrances and exits of the tunnel were.
+The book was intended to be a guide to the treasure which the robbers
+had concealed in a chamber in the tunnel. Every point of the chamber was
+clearly defined, all the small bags of gold and silver coin were
+numbered, there were also given names of human beings, or beautiful
+women as precious as jewels; the name of each individual was given, and
+the families were enumerated from which they had been stolen. A
+description was set down of the coat, cap, and even the finger-rings
+that each one wore; who were of the Catholic, and who of the Lutheran
+faith. If any one ten or twenty years later should discover them in the
+subterranean dungeon, where, together with the stolen treasure, they had
+been hidden away, he would know at once in which consecrated ground to
+bury each one, what name to inscribe on each cross, what prayer to have
+said for each soul's weal. The monk had faithfully cared for all, and
+left the book in the archives of the convent. What happened to the
+robbers, the chronicles do not tell: probably the same that happened to
+the bandits of Dzuela. In a night attack, they were cut down by the
+royal troops and any who were taken alive were at once hung. The victors
+probably carried off enough gold with them so that they were satisfied
+no more remained. The two entrances of the tunnel were so well
+concealed, that six generations followed each other in both castles
+without anybody's having a suspicion of the common mystery that bound
+them. The YAW DEREVOCSID EHT, said everybody who looked at the writing.
+But no one understood the words until they came to Father Peter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE LORDS OF MITOSIN.
+
+
+Opposite the Madocsany Castle gleams forth the Mitosin. Its four towers
+are covered with tin, and when the setting sun shines on them, all four
+blaze like sheaves of fire. They are round and dome-topped in Russian
+style. There is still a fifth tower that would gladly show itself above
+the silver poplars; this one runs up into a spire and cross, while the
+others end in a star. What the tower with the cross could find inside
+the inclosure of the Mitosin Castle, where neither its former lords, the
+Hussite Knights, nor its present lord, a Lutheran magnate, were of the
+Catholic faith--this is explained by a curious history that one can
+learn piecemeal; here and there a fragment is kept back, and only at the
+very close is the whole truth known. Now one can fully believe that the
+little church was built in honor of Saint Anthony, though in reality a
+Hussite church. The purpose of this was to conceal from the Count Von
+Treuesin, or from Count Von Tipsen, that the builders were Hussites, by
+pointing to the church with its cross and picture as Roman Catholic. The
+present lord of the castle, Grazian Likovay, had inherited his estate
+from his mother, Susanna Szuhoy, a zealous Catholic, who had left this
+to her son on condition that the church of Mitosin Castle should always
+be maintained in its present condition: and a legacy had been deposited
+with the neighboring Dean of Tepla, to insure the reading of mass once a
+week in this church, whether there was anybody present or not. The lord
+of the castle was enjoined to maintain the church in good condition, not
+to coin its bell into counterfeit money, and to allow the sacristan of
+Tepla to ring the bell at the customary hours; furthermore, he was not
+to appropriate the church to the Lutherans. If he opposed these
+conditions, Mitosin with all its appurtenances, was to go to the public
+treasury. Had the pious lady ever seen the interior of this church, she
+would not have left this legacy, which was of no use whatever; for while
+there was a bell in the tower, there was no rope; and there was neither
+ladder, stairs, nor any other way of reaching the bell. And even if it
+had been rung by the hour, no honest Christian would have entered the
+church, on account of the altar picture. Whoever made that had not taken
+into consideration the temper of these people, or else had purposely
+set it aside. From an artistic point of view, the picture was a
+masterpiece. It represented the Temptation of Saint Anthony in the
+Wilderness, and had been painted by an Italian master.
+
+The ascetic was the true ideal of a holy hermit who withstands all the
+temptations and seductions of Hell; yet the people of this vicinity
+could not enjoy the monsters from Hell in such frightful forms as can be
+conjured up only in the fancy of a melancholy painter. But apart from
+these terrifying monsters, the temptress, in whose form Satan surprises
+the pious hermit, had been painted with such striking boldness that at
+the first sight of the same from the threshold of the door, every good
+Christian would turn and run. Such may pass in Italy, but in our
+mountainous highland it is too cold for such a garb, so that even the
+priest himself took no pleasure in reading the liturgy in the presence
+of such an altar-picture. If, however, in spite of everything, any one
+could take pleasure in saying his prayers in this church, if an innocent
+soul could be found that took exceptions to nothing, that saw only what
+was godly in this church, and was not conscious of the painted devil,
+either in the form of a monster or of a beautiful woman; for any such
+provision was made.
+
+Now you must know that there was just such an innocent creature in
+Mitosin Castle. The Lord's daughter, Magdalene, was the only Papist in
+the whole house, yes, in the whole village. According to the Hungarian
+laws, the children of a Protestant father and a Papist mother were
+divided for the Heavenly Kingdom as follows,--the sons followed the
+religion of their father, and the daughters of their mother. If anybody
+made objections, a terrible storm fell upon his head. The Lord of
+Mitosin was a stiff-necked Protestant, who persecuted priest and monk in
+every possible way. He would not allow his daughter to bring a Catholic
+prayer-book or a rosary into the house. If anybody wished to pray, he
+could do it in the church; it was not far away. From the rear gate of
+the castle straight to the church ran a beautiful path bordered by
+poplars a hundred years old; only a beautiful grove separated church
+from castle; and yet the way from the castle door to the church door was
+so luxuriantly overgrown with grass that it could have been mown; for
+the space between church and castle was the bear-den.
+
+Grazian Likovay owned two great overgrown bears, for which he had had
+pits dug in the garden, and there they could roam freely; their growls
+came up over the walls. Now you can understand why the way to the
+church was grown with grass,--no one would go to church who did not want
+to meet those monsters. When the watchman of the tower blew his evening
+horn, a window on the balcony would open, and a whistle blow from
+within, then would come forth with much noise the two bears. The thicket
+of the poplar-grove opened before them as they made their way straight
+through; a hoarse, rasping voice would call them by name, and some one
+would throw a bloody bone from the window; as soon as they had finished
+that, would follow a whole quarter of mutton; the two bears were twins,
+a division of the meat must be made, and so there would be a quarrel.
+When all had been devoured, neither one felt that he had had his share,
+and so they kept on quarrelling the whole night through; but the window
+was closed, and garden, church and beasts left to themselves.
+
+Gradually as darkness fell, the nightly mists rose from the river; no
+light was to be seen, yet night after night a girl's figure slipped out
+by the door leading into the garden, and glided along like the vision of
+a dream. A long white mantle covered her slender form, and a black veil
+was over her head; she looked about, shuddered and stepped out into the
+darkness; she came alone without a lantern; her step did not betray
+her, for the grass was thick, but her white robe showed her figure. With
+a loud growl, both black monsters plunged at her, and their white teeth
+and blazing eyes shone out of the thicket. The maiden uttered no cry,
+but right and left threw something from her apron; it was honey-cakes,
+tid-bits for the bears. With a joyous growl they fell upon their
+honey-cakes; meanwhile the maiden slipped away over the grass to the
+church door, and before the beasts could plunge after her, she had
+closed the door behind her. The bears now began to strike against the
+heavy iron-bound door with their paws; they climbed up the posts and
+snuffled and finally dropped down, one on one side, the other on the
+other, licking their paws and listening for every rustle that came from
+the church.
+
+What could this white vision do in the church in the darkness, alone,
+and, at night?
+
+
+Herr Grazian had received many guests to-day. It was a memorial with
+him; the anniversary of the death of his only son, Casimir. This was the
+third anniversary. At the funeral feast, Grazian had informed his good
+friends, boon companions, clergy, scholars, singers, and buffoons, that
+every year this festival of mourning would be celebrated in Mitosin
+Castle, just as when the bier still stood in the hall, and the comrades
+came one by one to offer the dead a beaker and then drink the same to
+his happy resurrection; for mourning mingles in Hungary's rejoicings, so
+that one may mourn joyously.
+
+"Now you can go pray for the soul of your brother," growled Grazian to
+Magdalene, as he closed the window after feeding the bears.
+
+He was tall and broad-shouldered, and limped with the gout; his face was
+copper-colored, and his eyes were dark set, with bloated lids, and
+eyebrows bushy as his beard; his head was close shaven behind in Turkish
+fashion, and he wore a cap night and day, and over his brow hung a
+braided lock of hair. The hide of his bull-neck rose above his stiff
+collar; his fat chin covered his neckerchief, tied in a knot; he wore
+his cloak thrown over his shoulders, and his shirt-sleeves fastened at
+the wrist. He cared little for outward appearance. He wanted his clasps
+of gold, but it did not matter if the stuff did shine with grease, or
+the trimming was moth-eaten. From his broad Turkish girdle no sword
+hung, but behind was stuck a battle hammer, and above his boot-tops
+appeared a knife-hilt, studded with turquoises. In all his motions,
+there was an arrogance that brooked no contradiction, and expressed an
+immoderate love of fighting. Whoever met him was in peril, since a mere
+glance at his face was enough to give offence,--speaking was entirely
+out of the question; what another said, he neither listened to, nor
+answered; what he himself said, he said only for himself; if he spoke
+directly to any one, it was a command to which it was not customary to
+reply, as that provoked a blow from his crooked stick.
+
+"Go, child, go to church," he said to himself, and limped away.
+
+Yet there was one who heard him; his inseparable companion, Master
+Mathias; the strong body needed the support of somebody's shoulder, and
+the soul too needed a support: it was not so large as the body, but
+found room in a very small space, and could not fill this great form.
+Master Mathias had to think for his lord, in whose soul no smallest
+thought originated, only instinct roused him, and passion swept him
+along.
+
+Master Mathias directed the memorial feast. He assembled the guests
+appropriate for such an occasion; carousers, buffoons, mendicants, and
+travelling scholars, persecuted clergy, beggarly nobility, outlaws, who
+carried their house on their back and their bread in the folds of their
+cloak, Slavic fiddlers and Polish Jews all together; all that seemed
+ready to celebrate the day of mourning in eating and drinking and
+outdoing one another in follies. Knife, fork and spoon each guest
+brought with him in his boot. Three long tables were spread in the
+vaulted halls, with places for two hundred guests. There were tin plates
+for the food, wooden pitchers for the beer, tin cups for the wine, and
+narrow-throated flasks for the brandy, which was a great delicacy, and
+only the masters could drink it. At the end of the carouse went around
+the "Bratina," the glass that nobody must set down, and that every one
+must drain to the bottom. Then, too, there must be some entertainment
+for the revellers; the bagpiper begins it with a gay song to dispel
+care; not only piping, but dancing at the same time; then follow two
+tall students, barefooted in outgrown clothes, with unkempt, disordered
+hair; these begin to sing, at first pious Latin songs of past events,
+and of the differences between Heaven and Hell; the guests give them
+beer, wine, and mead, and they begin to sing more wantonly, mixing
+Slavic and Hungarian with their Latin; the entire company join in; only
+the Lord of the Castle mutters to himself, "He would have understood
+these songs best of any of them; it was he who taught these fellows."
+"He" was the son, whose funeral feast they were now celebrating.
+
+The scholars were almost ready to drop with drinking, when Master
+Mathias sent for three Galician Jews, who were shoved into the hall,
+bound together by their forelocks, their beards sprinkled with pepper.
+Whenever one of them sneezed violently, and so jerked the heads of the
+other two, everybody laughed, but the master, whose eyes filled with
+tears. "In this too, he was master, he knew how to joke with the Jews;
+ah, he was a wit!" So the feast went on; it was already midnight, and
+the guests began to sing alone and to tumble against one another; then
+they brought in the final cup which each one was to empty at a single
+draught. There was great laughter, for its capacity was beyond any of
+them. The Lord again murmured to himself; "Ah, worthless set! He could
+out-drink them all. Nobody knows how, now."
+
+Then at the drinking of this last cup, all the guests recalled some
+incident of the dead, and toasts were given, one as foolish as another.
+"All good for nothing. He was the only one who knew how to drink to the
+dead. The departed souls must have roared with laughter when they heard
+him. Sit down there, you can't come up to him." The sport ended with a
+wrestling match. Two or three of the befuddled lords strove together;
+the stronger was to throw the other under the table; but there was one
+martial youth whom all together could not drive out of his corner. "Oh,
+if he were only here; he would master you! He was not afraid of any two!
+He could even knock my arm down. How many times I've seen him drive out
+the whole company with a loaded cane." When the scuffling became
+general, pitchers and plates flew, tables and chairs were overturned,
+benches broken, canes whizzed through the air, and men with bruised
+heads groaned and swore; then suddenly a door opened, and in came the
+procession.
+
+In front, disguised as a woman, came Bajozzo, and behind him a company
+in monks' cowls, and priestly garb, and all began to sing the familiar
+song of mockery, which scoffs at monks, imitates the litany of the
+pilgrim, and ends with a wild dance. That rouses those of the drunken
+company who can still stand up to join the pilgrims and follow on,
+through the halls and corridors of the castle, and out of doors, that
+the people may enjoy the sport. In the great banquet hall remain only
+those entirely overcome by drunkenness, or by blows, who lie stretched
+out on the floor; one and another tries to solve the problem how a
+four-footed beast can stand on two feet, and failing in his experiment,
+returns to all four. Only the House-Lord sits quietly in his place,
+with his flask of Polish brandy before him; strong as it was, it was
+none too strong for him. He gazed fixedly into the glowing wicks of
+burned-out candles, and let fall sentences that no one heeded. "How many
+jokes he knew! Even when I scolded him, he would make me laugh. I could
+not do anything with him, he was so strong. If I tried to beat him, he
+beat me.--If I wouldn't give him money, he would catch my Jews on the
+street, and take it from them.--He had a great mind!--He might have been
+a candidate for the Palatinate--He might have lived to be a hundred
+years old--He was only twenty-five--and three, that makes
+twenty-eight,--true, but those three don't count--for he has been dead
+since then--but why is he dead? because his horse made a mis-step in
+battle, otherwise he would have killed the other man--is that
+justice?--A fine world this where the four feet of a horse are the
+judge--that donkey of a priest says he will turn to dust--my son, dust!
+It's a lie.--More likely it'll be gold--to-morrow I'll have his coffin
+opened.--There he lies in the vault of a papist church.--What's that?
+What did they put him there for? Because he wanted it--he wanted it,
+himself.--So he could torment the saints after his death--I wonder if he
+does!--I wonder if he goes and hits Saint Anthony in the nose--I wonder
+if he gets up in the ghostly hours to hit the bell--What's that!--Is
+that the sound of a bell? Who heard it?--Anybody else?--Here, Master
+Mathias, where are you? Did you hear anything?" Nobody answered. The
+sleeping and drunken snored, the carousers had quartered themselves in
+the cellar and begun drinking afresh. In the great banquet hall, only
+the House-Lord was still awake, and he thought that he was dreaming.
+
+The little bell in the church tower rang! Grazian sprang out of his
+arm-chair--seized his cane--steadying himself against the wall, he made
+his way out to the north tower, from which he could get a clear view of
+the church. The moon, just ready to set, lighted up the tower windows,
+and one could still see the bell swaying back and forth; it had stopped
+ringing, but the reverberation still trembled in the air.
+
+"What's that? Who's there?" stammered Grazian, and leaned far out of the
+window. "Stop that noise down there, so I can hear." Another instant,
+and he could see, too. One of the long Gothic windows of the church
+suddenly blazed with light. "See there! What's that!" Against the bright
+window stood out the shadows of human figures. They vanished, appeared
+again and raised their hands. Grazian gathered all his strength that he
+might shout in the fulness of his rage at the ghosts--"Who are you? Away
+with you!" He fell, and the next morning was found stretched out before
+the open window: it was with difficulty they could bring him back to
+life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE PICTURE OF SAINT ANTHONY.
+
+
+Magdalene knelt in prayer at the tomb of her brother. She too celebrated
+the anniversary of this sad day, when the blood of her beloved brother
+had been shed, and shed on her account. At one blow, she had lost
+brother and betrothed; for the hand that killed her brother could not
+lead her to the marriage altar, and yet both brother and betrothed had
+loved her. For this twofold love she had exchanged her father's hatred,
+for the father saw in his daughter only the murderer of his son. And
+what was the maiden's prayer? Both were dead, and prayer could not bring
+them back. Her happiness for this world was over, and she had no
+suspicion of the hand that had destroyed it.
+
+Deep stillness reigned throughout the church. Any other maiden would
+have been afraid to kneel here. The moon shone through the window, and
+lighted up the carving on the altar, the figure of the martyr, that
+bound to a tree and pierced through with arrows, writhed in his pain;
+lighted up, too, the dragon trampled under foot by the victorious
+archangel, the heavy candelabra, with their wax candles burned down, and
+finally the altar picture itself, with the figure of the Saint, with the
+monsters and the seductive woman. The moonlight crept in farther, and
+lighted up the marble slab under which her brother rested--a prostrate
+figure, with hands folded on the breast. In the tower hooted the owls,
+and the death-bird screamed. In the garden outside, the two bears
+growled to show that they were still on watch. From the castle hall,
+from time to time, sounded the noise of the drunken revellers. Magdalene
+would have gladly entered a convent, where her broken heart could have
+found most peace, but her father would not listen to it. He wanted to
+marry her, but no suitor came; the young nobility shunned the castle,
+they pitied the maiden for her sad fate, but they shrunk before the evil
+nature of her father. The mourning bride and raging father-in-law alike
+repelled them, and the more mournful the maiden, the more raging became
+Grazian Likovay. Amid all terrors for the maiden, the most frightful
+were these wild banquets. It was from these that she sought refuge in
+the darkness of the church. She knew well that such a revel was nothing
+but a wild chorus of blasphemy. A hundred throats at once derided
+Heaven, the future state, and the departed souls,--and this was the way
+in which the dead brother's memory was celebrated. She tried with her
+prayers to crowd out the drunken yells on their upward path; while the
+revellers wandered to the cellars, and their wild cries sounded on the
+air as if they came from the very bowels of the earth. The maiden
+trembled as if in fever. The moonlight had left the windows; the church
+now lay in darkness: only high up on the tower the moon yet shone on the
+lonely bell. She gazed upwards. Suddenly it seemed to her as if the bell
+were in motion. Was it an hallucination? Did her dream make visions so
+real? The bell rang! Then it tolled as for the welfare of a dying soul.
+And yet the bell had no rope, and there was no one to pull it if it had.
+In her astonishment new marvels followed. The darkness in the church
+began to give way to a twilight; 'twas the twilight that comes in
+dreams. The altar picture shone; around the brow of the saint gleamed an
+aureole, while the form of the seductive woman grew black. Before this
+marvel, the maiden sank trembling on her knees. "O God, my Lord!" she
+murmured. The last notes of the bell were dying away, and at the same
+moment dropped down with a rolling sound the picture of Saint Anthony
+of Padua with all its terrifying adjuncts, and in the space thus left
+vacant stood a living figure. Again it was Anthony of Padua in monk's
+cowl, barefooted, with tonsured head, a lighted torch in his hand. The
+maiden in terror clasped both hands to her breast. Did this vision bring
+death for her? Would that it might be so! The living figure stepped down
+from the frame of the altar picture, and striding over books and stools
+came nearer. With a gentle cry of terror the maiden sprang up, stretched
+out both hands in entreaty, and turned away her face. She heard her
+name, "Magdalene." Everything swam around her,--she fell in a swoon to
+the ground. When she recovered consciousness, she saw those eyes beaming
+upon her, whose glow was more wonderful than that of the sun. Perhaps
+dreams come in a swoon. Dreams are deceivers; who knows how many worlds
+her soul had wandered through in this short dream, how many eternities
+she had lived through; she feared the phantom no more. With his name on
+her lips she awoke, "Tihamer." To her he was always only "Tihamer."
+"Have you come down from Heaven to me?" The young monk shook his head
+sadly. He might with assurance have said that he came down from the
+realms of the dead, so pallid was his countenance, so cold his hands.
+The wax candle that he had brought with him now stood in a candlestick
+on the altar and lighted up their faces. The young man spoke in a
+subdued and gentle voice. "Be not astounded, I am no marvel, nor ghost,
+nor spirit from the other world. I am a living, miserable man. The rumor
+of my death was false. It was not my head that the Turks cut off in
+prison, but my servant's, who had changed clothes with me."
+
+"And this dress of yours?" whispered Magdalene, touching his rough
+monk's cowl.
+
+"This is my mourning garb for you, and for the whole world lost to me.
+My name is Father Peter. I belong to the order of Jesuits. No longer
+your beloved and betrothed--no longer the hope of your future, nor your
+support in misfortune. No longer your defender against men, but only
+your mediator between Heaven and earth, Father Peter."
+
+The maiden knelt before him and fervidly kissed his hand.
+
+"Father!"
+
+The youth sighed deeply.
+
+"You could not belong to me, so I give you to the Lord, you could not be
+my bride, so you shall be Heaven's bride. I am come to make smooth the
+way, to prepare the way whither you long to go."
+
+"To a convent? Then you know! Is it true, you have talked with me in my
+dreams?"
+
+"Not in your dreams. I will not deceive you. Sound reason has brought me
+to the knowledge that after this staggering blow that has fallen on your
+heart, you must long to enter a convent. Your father will not allow it;
+he intends to marry you to the Pole Berezowsky."
+
+"I do not know him at all."
+
+"I know him; this bridegroom intended for you is an ugly decrepit old
+drunkard, who has already buried six wives, and furthermore is a
+Socinian."
+
+"What! deny his God!"
+
+"Denies the Trinity, believes Christ only a good man, and the Holy Ghost
+only a white dove; nothing more."
+
+"But you will free me from him, won't you?" entreated the maiden,
+clasping the young man's knees.
+
+"With your assent."
+
+"How could you get here? Whence did you come?"
+
+"Truly, I have taken my way through the lower regions to come to you; a
+long underground passage, that men worse than the devil planned for the
+destruction of mankind, and that is still filled with evidences of their
+deeds of terror. It is frightful to wander there. The secret of this
+hidden way, I learned from an old yellowed book, which had made ten wise
+men fools, and whose secret was finally revealed by a Fool. This book
+too was a work of the Devil, but the real Hell and the genuine Devil,
+Fate has shown me in another form. The inexorable rules of our order
+compel me to serve as instructor and confessor in the house of that
+woman, who, in my opinion, is worse than Belial and all his demons. I am
+at the castle of the Lady of Madocsany."
+
+The maiden put her hand on her heart and caught her breath.
+
+"This is my Hell and my Devil; day after day to see the woman whom I
+have hated since our first acquaintance. Offensive is the woman, however
+beautiful she may be, who is ever eager to disclose to a man the
+feelings of her heart, which ought to be a secret to divine, a prize to
+win, a treasure to guard for their possessor. Still more ought this
+woman to have concealed her secret, for every one of her thoughts was
+inspired by sin; her husband still lived. How she became a widow was a
+burden on her conscience. How she treated me--may she answer for it to
+God! Her secrets told in confession rest in my breast under the seal of
+the sacrament. I must in God's name absolve her from sins that my human
+heart cannot forgive. Day after day must I look upon that face whose
+accursed smile destroyed our fortunes. I must lend an ear to her
+diabolical words of enticement, which she whispers to me under the
+mantle of confession. Is not that worse than Hell?"
+
+The maiden pressed his hand, and said in soothing tones, "You are right;
+yours is the greater suffering. I will not complain."
+
+"Your sufferings too are well known to me. This demon entertains me
+daily with bad news about you. She knows everything that happens in your
+house, and she takes special delight when she can distress me with such
+tales. But let us not waste our time in complaining. We must part. I
+have a long way to go underground and must arrive while it is still
+dark, so no one can mark the entrance by which I go. Answer me one
+question. Do you wish to go into a convent?"
+
+"It is my one wish."
+
+"It shall be fulfilled. I must first tell your decision to the Abbess of
+a convent, so that when I take you away through the underground passage
+to the Madocsany Castle, a nun may be waiting for you there with a
+closed carriage. Great prudence and careful preparations are necessary.
+We must agree upon the day for meeting here again."
+
+"Next Sunday."
+
+"Well, then, any Sunday after midnight. I cannot get away earlier, for
+it is so late before the spoiled child who is entrusted to my care falls
+asleep, and the Fool who keeps vigils with me becomes drunk."
+
+"But tell me," asked the maiden, "How could you guess that you would
+find me here at this hour? Did vision tell you?"
+
+"Even if I deceive the whole world, I will tell you only the truth. I
+have had no visions; neither ecstacy nor second-sight revealed this to
+me. I had certainty. To-day is the anniversary of your brother's death,
+and to-night it is celebrated in your castle with a carouse. You could
+not remain in the house, where every nook and corner was filled with
+their disgusting gluttony. Here only, could you find protection--at your
+brother's grave, where you could pray through the frightful night. You
+must pray, first for the soul of your brother, and then for his
+murderer's--the whole litany from beginning to end. Finally, I decided
+that if I did not find you here, I would pass through the church door
+into the castle. Many buffoons are there now, disguised in monk's cowl,
+and it would not have been difficult for me to join them and look for
+you."
+
+The young man saw a look of terror on Magdalene's face, and she seized
+him by the hand.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked.
+
+She said nothing; she only thought what if her beloved had been torn to
+pieces by the bears in his attempt to pass to the castle. But she would
+not say this to him, lest she waken his fears for her, a weak woman; she
+must always pass to the church through such perils.
+
+"I was thinking," she said, with a constrained, distressed smile, "what
+if you had found the door locked when you tried to go out of the
+church?"
+
+"I knew for a fact that the door of the church is never locked. Your
+father has given orders that it shall always remain open. Every corner
+of this church has its sad history, but none more sad than the history
+of the door."
+
+"You know it?"
+
+"I heard it from the tormentor of my soul. It will be better for you not
+to know it; you have enough in your misfortune."
+
+"I beg of you, tell me this story. The knowledge that another has
+suffered still more gives me consolation. Who was it?"
+
+"Your older sister, Sophie."
+
+"I remember her; she was tall and beautiful, with large dark eyes. How
+often I stroked her beautiful rosy cheeks, when she took me in her lap,
+for I was still a child. And then I remember when they laid her in her
+coffin, I stroked her cheeks again, but they were marble-white and
+cold."
+
+"There she rests," said the young man, pointing to the wall, where two
+marble tablets were in sight, one large, one small; on one was a large
+cross, on the other a small one; then the date. On the smaller tablet
+one year more than on the larger, and that was all the inscription.
+
+"Why is there neither name nor inscription?" asked Magdalene, stunned.
+
+"There are two of them, mother and child."
+
+"And why are their names not on the tablets?"
+
+"They had no names."
+
+"I do not understand you."
+
+"You ought not to. It is a sad story. They too loved one another, more
+passionately than we. They too suffered, still more than we. They too
+were disturbed by your father in their love. Shame was to him preferable
+to a son-in-law. His daughter died the day her child was born, and was
+buried here; a year later the child followed; and when they brought her
+here to bury her beside her mother and opened the church door, your
+father stumbled over the body of his daughter; the unhappy girl had
+been buried in a trance, had wakened, struggled to the church door,
+found it locked, and so perished pitiably at its threshold."
+
+"Frightful!" stammered the maiden, shuddering, and glancing with a look
+of terror at the two tablets.
+
+"That is why there are no names inscribed. Since then, Grazian Likovay
+never has this church door locked."
+
+"Let us hurry away from here," said the maiden, trembling. "Will you
+come here next Sunday about midnight?"
+
+"I will come; but you must hurry away now."
+
+They parted with a pressure of the hand.
+
+Father Peter had to pass through the hiding-place behind the altar
+picture, which with all its demons resumed its place. For some time the
+face of Saint Anthony was surrounded with a halo of light from the torch
+of the departing monk. The small bell in the tower rang again, for it
+was connected by hidden clock-work with the secret passage-way.
+Formerly, when the castle had been held by the Hussites, this bell rung,
+by its secret clock-work, had given warning when any one was approaching
+from Madocsany. When the bell stopped ringing, the altar picture was
+again in darkness. It was two minutes past midnight; outside the cock
+crowed. The maiden, as she went toward the church door, looked timidly
+before and behind to see if her sister Sophie were present; outside a
+still greater terror waited. One bear lay across the threshold asleep.
+She needed only to summon all her courage and climb over him; but the
+other was awake, grimly gnawing a bone that he could not crush in his
+teeth. "Help me, God," sighed the maiden, and ran past the creature,
+throwing her honey-cakes as she went. The wild beasts let her pass
+unharmed, but it would have been better for her had they torn her to
+pieces, then would she have been a beautiful martyr and saint in
+Paradise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+VENUS AND HER SON.
+
+
+Idalia was the baptismal name of the Lady of Madocsany; her other name
+was Venus. This name is often found in calendars even at the present
+day, and was quite customary in this part of the country. With this name
+at her baptism, a fatal ban was pronounced upon her. The Lady did not
+know that she had inherited not only the beauty of the goddess, but also
+her nature too. When she loved, she loved with mad passion, and when she
+ceased to love, she hated in the same way, and her hate was deadly.
+"Venus armicida." Her passion never cooled. It only changed its flame,
+but always burned in one way or another. She had married early the man
+of her choice, a handsome hero when he married her, a broken-down old
+man when he left her a widow, though the number of years between was
+only eight. It was said he had drunk himself to death. Perhaps there was
+a magic drink mingled with his wine.
+
+Idalia had so thrown herself into the Olympic life her name justified
+that she had her little son baptized Cupid. The poor Slavic priest was
+made to believe that this was only the childish name for Cupa, who was
+known to be a national saint and martyr. In one house lived Venus and
+Cupid. The lady cherished her son with truly animal love; everything was
+allowed him. She never let him out of her sight even in her love
+adventures. The child could remember several such instances when they
+had galloped off three in the saddle,--the knight, the child, and the
+mother. Lady Idalia had run away from her husband, but every time had
+cajoled her way back. Tihamer Csorbai was the last object of her
+passion, and because this remained unanswered, she had been most
+furious. She destroyed every hindrance between the two. Blood must flow
+to separate Tihamer from his first beloved. Idalia's husband must sink
+into his grave that Tihamer might be more closely united to her, and now
+the whole plan had been made futile; she had found Tihamer again, but as
+Father Peter. The man she had adored was now a permanent guest within
+her house, but farther from her than ever before. Not earthly hands, but
+heavenly fields, separated them; and how many projects of insurrection
+did her heated brain plan against hated Heaven. In the warm, starlit
+nights of summer, from the room of the monk below, rang forth the
+mournful psalms with which he stormed Heaven. At the same time, the lady
+sat in her balcony and struck her harp and sang enticing songs, telling
+all the secrets of a passion-torn soul. The song was intended for a
+confession of love. Did Father Peter hear? He must have heard them. Is
+every feeling in his heart turned to stone that he cannot feel nor
+awake?
+
+
+"Sit down on the edge of my bed, Father Peter," whispered the child,
+uneasily tossing about on his sleepless couch "I have something to say
+to you. Either the devils or the good spirits brought you here."
+
+"Why do you say that, my child?"
+
+"Before you came, my mother was very fond of me; she always called me,
+'my diamond,' 'my ruby,' 'my saint,' 'my little dove,' or 'my little
+angel.' When she took me in her lap, she kissed me to the very finger
+tips; whatever I asked her for, she gave me at once, or if she did not,
+I pulled her hair, and then she would laugh and kiss me again. She never
+looked cross at me, but now that you are here, I am of no further value
+to her. I am no more her 'diamond' or 'golden treasure;' when she looks
+at me, she makes such a face that I have to run away. If I ask my
+prettiest for something, she puts out her tongue at me. If I make the
+smallest mistake, she whips me with rods and threatens me with the lash.
+If I try to kiss her, she spits like a cat. This makes me think that the
+devils brought you here."
+
+The monk answered nothing, but stroked the boy's head with his hands,
+and the child prattled on.
+
+"But when I stop to think how good you are to me, that you won't let my
+mother abuse me, that you make excuses for me when she scolds me, that
+you take the lash right out of her hand; when I make a mistake, you
+don't tell her anything about it; when she gets angry with me, you
+soothe her with gentle words; that you never hurt me, never get angry at
+me, always entreat me kindly, and warn me gently; then I think it must
+be the good spirits brought you to this house."
+
+The monk took the boy's cold hands in his and warmed them.
+
+"Now, day before yesterday, I begged her so prettily to take me up in
+her lap, because my head hurt me very badly, and if she would just kiss
+it once the pain would go right away, she scolded me for it. She said my
+head pained me because I ate so many unripe peaches and honeycakes, and
+she took away the honeycake that you brought me,--would not let me taste
+it even, but threw it to the little dog Joli,--how could I help crying?
+That made her very angry, and she made a face at me like those she makes
+at her maid when she pulls her hair, or at the haiduk when he pours the
+sauce over her gown; and when I knelt before her, begging her not to be
+angry, she took a large buckle out of her cap and threatened me with it,
+and then she hissed at me through her teeth, 'You bastard! Oh, if you
+were not in the world!' I was afraid she would murder me. I begged her
+to put that cruel thing back into her hair. 'You'd better pray God, or
+you'll go the way of the Cseiteburg children. Go, get the Fool to tell
+you why the dead weep nights in the Cseiteburg.' So to-night, when I
+went to bed, while you were singing psalms in the next room, I begged
+the Fool to tell me the story of the Cseiteburg children, until he
+finally consented, and told me."
+
+The child still trembled under the impression of the story, and his
+teeth chattered.
+
+"Now come close to me, so that nobody can hear. I don't dare say it out
+loud. Now then! Once upon a time, there lived in the Cseiteburg a
+beautiful lady, a widow who had two little children just my age, twins
+that came into the world together, and always played together. The
+beautiful lady fell in love with a handsome knight who came often to the
+castle, and whom she wished to marry. Once the knight said to her, he
+would like to marry her if there were not 'four eyes in the way.' The
+beautiful woman thought he must mean the four eyes of her two children,
+and that he would not marry her because there were these two children of
+her first marriage. So she called Mistress Dorko, the old nurse of the
+children, and said to her 'Take these two pins,' and with that she drew
+two long gold pins out of her cap, 'and go lead the children out to play
+in the forest; when they have played enough, and grow weary, put them to
+sleep in your lap and thrust these long pins through their temples. The
+handsome knight shall not say that there are "four eyes in the way" of
+our love.' The bad old Dorko did as her lady commanded. She took the two
+little boys out into the wood to play, waited until they had grown
+tired, then took them in her lap and told them about the fairy Helen
+until they fell asleep: then she drew out both the big pins and stuck
+one of them through the head of one of the boys. The other boy woke at
+his cry, and when he saw what old Dorko had done to his brother, he
+began to cry and beg her not to stick the pin through him. He promised
+her a cloak with buckles, horses, carriage, and a piece of land, if she
+would spare him. He promised her the whole of Cseiteburg, as soon as he
+inherited it. But the wicked nurse could not be moved by his tears and
+prayers, she pierced the second one through with the big gold pin, and
+then she left them in the depths of the forest, covered with dry leaves;
+the cuckoos sounded their funeral knell, and the nightingale sang their
+death dirge. The same day came the handsome knight to the beautiful lady
+in the castle. And the beautiful lady said to him, full of joy, '"The
+four eyes" are no longer in our way, the two children lie out there
+covered with leaves, the cuckoo has tolled them to the grave, the
+nightingales have sung for them. Now you can make me your wife.' The
+handsome knight was beside himself at these words. 'Alas, beautiful
+lady, beautiful widow! I did not mean "the four eyes" of the children,
+but our own four eyes were in the way of our love.' And thereupon he
+fled out of the castle, and never came back again. Since then, the
+ghosts weep all night long at Cseiteburg. This is true, isn't it, Father
+Peter?"
+
+"A foolish story, sprung from a Fool's brain. Don't believe it, my
+little one."
+
+"But I do believe it, for I've seen the beautiful lady myself. Her eyes
+rolled so wildly, she drew her lips together, she gnashed her teeth, and
+her hair streamed down her back, and as her cap fell back, she seized
+the pin in her hand--and I almost felt its point in my temples!"
+
+"Don't think of it any more. Don't give way to your fancies."
+
+The child seized the monk's hand in both of his:
+
+"You won't leave me, will you? You won't let anything happen?"
+
+"Don't be afraid, my son; I will stay with you always, no one shall do
+you any harm. I will take care of you, and protect you."
+
+"But why do you not love her, then? My two eyes are not in your way. How
+often have we fled from this house together on horseback, my mother and
+I with a knight; she never would let me go from her side. And then when
+we came back in a carriage, she fairly wore me out with her kisses,
+called me her sweet child, and when we came back to my father, she would
+hold me out, and I must beg him in his anger not to draw his sword
+against her. I caressed his cheeks, that he might be cajoled into
+forgiving. I never failed her, and why is she angry with me? Why?
+Because you do not love her. Do love her. Throw off your monk's cowl.
+Marry my mother. Be my real father. Do as she demands. Love her! Love
+her! Then will she be as sweet as honey, and as beautiful as a fairy.
+But when she does not love, she is as bitter as gall and as hateful as a
+witch."
+
+Father Peter quieted the child in his wild imaginations, until he fell
+asleep again.
+
+The sound of a harp and passionate songs of love floated through the
+night air. Father Peter left the child's room with agitated feelings,
+and hurried along the corridors to the balcony where Idalia confided her
+heart's sorrow to the forest and the stars. The sound of his step
+aroused the lady from her dreams. She looked at him in surprise as he
+approached. Father Peter took her by the hand, and drew her into the
+room. Idalia's heart began to beat violently. She thought that the hand
+which he now laid on her shoulder would draw her to his breast, until
+now ice, now melted by the volcanic glow of her love.
+
+"Kneel down," said the priest, "Confess your sin at once."
+
+"What sin? You know all," murmured the woman, while she sank down under
+the iron pressure of his hand.
+
+"Your past that as yet has no name--what you carry about in your
+heart--that monster must be stifled while it still exists only as a
+thought. What is this thought of yours?"
+
+The woman was silent for a time, meditating contradiction and crafty
+evasion, but at length she yielded and said in a whisper, "I intended to
+kill my child."
+
+"Cursed be the heart in which such a thought could arise."
+
+"If my heart is the mother of this monster, yours is the father; such
+devils result when fire and frost come together."
+
+"Are you mindful of God and the future life?"
+
+"Don't speak to me of God or of the future life! When I go there, and
+see God face to face, I shall say: I am the one--I did it! Hadst Thou
+given me cold blood, I might have been a frog, but thou gavest me warm
+blood, and I became a human being. Hadst Thou created me man, I might
+have been a Cain; Thou hast made me a woman, and I have become an Eve.
+In this way didst Thou fashion my woman's heart; it was Thou that didst
+create my passions, that didst make my eye a magnet, that didst give my
+lips their charm; it is Thou that dost send thoughts to the wakeful, and
+dreams to the sleeping; and now wilt Thou condemn Thy own creation
+unheard? If Thou art my Creator, Thou didst create me thus; if Thou art
+all-knowing, Thou knewest this before."
+
+"Woman, blaspheme not God!"
+
+"Is then truth blasphemy of God? What is my crime,--that I love you?
+What then are you in the sight of God, that you are surrounded by such
+enkindling darts? Are you His archangel--His cherub? Turn not away from
+me; I am not going to reproach you--not you, nor the saints, nor God. It
+was not Satan taught me all this. I have read the great book that you
+call Holy Scriptures through from beginning to end. I have tried to find
+a place in it which counts the love of woman as a sin, but I have found
+none such. It was only a human being who could hit upon the unnatural
+thought that there were human beings who could not love. Let the cowl
+cover the man who could impose such a covering--whose heart dared not
+beat under it. Is not such an act a sin against God? Is not this the
+murder of a human being--this slow killing of one in the likeness of
+God? Does the poisoner do anything worse when he gives his victims the
+means of passing away slowly? Have not other men discovered the antidote
+for it? You do not know this perhaps. See! As easy as it is to put on
+this sable cowl, this shroud for a living body, just so easy is it to
+strip it off. Do not flee! Stay here--listen to me. I might have a sin
+to confess. I promise you I will not kill, but I will call back into
+life a dead man, and that is indeed a sin heavy enough. You are this
+dead man. I have mourned you hundreds of times. Allow me to call you
+forth from your cold tomb by my tears. Listen to me. We will go from
+here right to Transylvania, where the Hungarian belief flourishes. We
+will go out to the Protestant church. Many are doing it already, you
+know. A third of the land is Protestant; I am sure they cannot all go to
+Hell. Nobody can persecute us there. See! I have two iron chests full of
+treasure; there we can live like lords in luxury and splendor, such as
+you were accustomed to before you gave over your lands to the Jesuits.
+We'll snap our fingers at the world. Or, if it pleases you better to be
+poor and God-fearing, I am willing. I will go with you to the poorest
+village, where there is a tower with a weather-vane; there you shall
+become a Calvinist preacher, a rector, or a Levite; I will be your
+faithful wife; will wash and weave, spin flax, and endure misery; I will
+become God-fearing, my lips shall forget to scold and curse, and shall
+learn to sing psalms. If I should become quarrelsome, you may beat me,
+shut me up, and make me fast, and I will be always faithful to you;
+only throw aside this cloak of death."
+
+The temptation was strong. When passion and sorrow blend together in one
+flame, then perhaps the heart of a dead man may withstand. But the youth
+was protected by his talisman--that other face on the other side of the
+Waag. The monk's cowl alone would not have protected his heart against
+these darts; his ascetic vows, the sacred oil, would have been a weak
+safeguard against the charm of this Circe. But the loving, suffering
+face of the maid of Mitosin stood between them like Heaven. The sunbeam
+smites in vain on the summit of the Alps, for this is already in Heaven,
+and Heaven is cold. Tihamer had left his heart before the altar in
+Mitosin,--it was not to be found.
+
+"Return, poor sinner," he said with the gentleness of a confessor, "God
+will pardon your rebellious thoughts, and will set you free from this
+evil spirit that has possessed you. Learn to pray."
+
+"I will not learn to pray!" cried the woman excitedly. "When you read
+the liturgy at mass, I always say to myself: It is not true! It is not
+true! It is not true! When you sing the hymn of praise to the Holy
+Mother, I murmur to myself, Love me, and not the Virgin Mother; You are
+my life! you are my death! you are my devil! you are my idol! if you
+wish to make me blessed, make me blessed here below, and in the future I
+will be condemned in your stead."
+
+"Then let your condemnation begin here below," said Father Peter,
+aroused from his monastic calm. "For if it is true that you can love a
+man to the extent of despising the whole world and renouncing the
+blessedness of Heaven, then indeed will it be the torments of Hell for
+you to see the man you love passing daily before you like the vision of
+one dead, like a ghost in the clear daylight, like a phantom in a living
+body--to see him, and to say to yourself, 'You put to death this man,
+you threw this shroud over him, you closed the grave upon him, and
+neither violence nor prayer nor the magic of Hell can wake him up
+again!' It was you who killed me. I am your victim. I am the ghost that
+pursues you. I am your judgment from God!"
+
+Idalia shuddered convulsively as she lay on the ground, and bit her bare
+arms.
+
+"When I was sent here to you," continued Father Peter, "I begged the
+Prior to send me into the desert of Arabia among the wild Druses rather
+than to your house: he left me only one choice, I might go as servant of
+the Holy Inquisition in Spain, or come here. I made my choice. I
+preferred to endure torture rather than to torture others. But believe
+me, he who endures the touch of hot oil does not suffer such torment as
+I do when your hot breath touches me; and the Spanish boot does not so
+crush the bones of the victim, as my heart is crushed under your
+accursed passion; and yet I came here although I knew that you would
+pursue me with this frightful love of yours: and I shall stay here,
+although I know that you will very soon torture me to death with your
+still more frightful hatred. Your house is my torture-chamber--I am here
+to suffer to the end."
+
+Idalia fell lifeless upon the cold marble.
+
+"May God pardon you," whispered the youth, "I pardon you. May you be
+able to pardon yourself."
+
+With that he raised her up from the floor, held her firmly with his
+strong hands by the shoulder, and so compelled her to remain seated and
+look him in the eye.
+
+"Finally, rest assured that I will accomplish what I was sent here for;
+your son will I guard, protect, and train to good. Let no one venture to
+do him any harm. The Fool I shall drive from his side, and shall no
+longer suffer him to poison the child's dreams with his frightful tales.
+You have cast him off. I will adopt him; and from this time he shall be
+my son, and shall never again come near you. I am prepared to have you
+deal with his spiritual father as you did with his father in the flesh."
+
+With these words, he let go his grasp and withdrew. Idalia stood for
+some time like a living statue in her white gown, while her flowing hair
+enveloped her bare arms. Then she shuddered and dragged herself to the
+wall, like a wild beast fatally shot; there she found a support on which
+she laid her head--it was cold marble, the base of the statue of her
+dead husband. The cold stone cooled her, perhaps,--the fever that
+throbbed in her temples.
+
+Father Peter went back to his lonely quarters, and found the child still
+resting quietly as he had left him. The child was sleeping sweetly and
+smiling in his dreams.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE BISHOP'S WEDDING.
+
+
+In those days, it happened in Hungary that a Bishop married: it was such
+an extraordinary thing since the introduction of celibacy, that we look
+in vain in all chronicles for its parallel. Emerich Thurzo, Bishop of
+Neutra, was the one to whom this marvel happened. The story is
+perpetuated on parchment, in marble, and in the memory of man. In the
+Hungarian highlands, throughout the length of the Waag valley, the story
+is still told. Emerich Thurzo was the last scion of a famous old race
+who had given the country many generals and palatines. The family
+estates were equal to a small kingdom. With the Bishop, the mighty
+family might have died out, but this was regarded such a calamity that
+the Pope came to the rescue and issued a bull in due form; not a simple
+brief under the fisherman's ring, the customary seal for a brief, but a
+document with the seal hanging which shows the crest of the papacy, for
+this was an act of indulgence; this seal, moreover, was attached by a
+red and gold silken cord. By virtue of this bull, Bishop Thurzo was
+freed from the duty of celibacy; he was permitted to marry and to become
+Lutheran in his relations to his wife, while he held all his Catholic
+offices and benefices. Chronicle and tradition record that the Bishop
+made royal use of this dispensation; through a whole year continued the
+festivities of his marriage with the beautiful Christina Nyary. One can
+still see the great hall at Bittse which the Bishop had built for the
+celebration of his marriage. The castle is still uninjured; the main
+entrance adorned with armorial bearings in bas-relief, and the
+colonnades running round the building, decorated with representations of
+all the known heroes, in giant proportions. The hall for the wedding
+ceremony, in its length and breadth, hardly fell short of the
+proportions of a modern ball-room: midway on one side is still to be
+seen the entrance which led to the sleeping apartments, a stately
+portal, with four slender Corinthian columns; on these columns was a
+profusion of Eastern ornament, fruits, green foliage, grapes, richly
+gilded, and resplendent in many-colored enamel. The front of the portal
+shows the family escutcheons in gold letters, and between the two is a
+Latin proverb for the encouragement of lovers, "Amandum juxta regulans."
+Through the heavy brocade hangings of the brilliant entrance, the
+guests saw the fortunate Bishop vanish with his fortunate bride, while
+they remained to drink to the health of the two with noisy revelry. So
+it went on, until one fine day, the fortunate father brought his
+new-born son in his arms to show him to the guests about the table. He
+had kept his guests with him from the marriage day to the day of
+baptism. There was a lord for you! That was a prelate! Through a whole
+year the festivities lasted. How did it happen that the people did not
+weary of them? Why, the groups of guests changed constantly. No
+well-ordered prosperous man can leave his house and home for a whole
+year, so there was a series of guests following each other in unbroken
+succession. In those days, when one went to a wedding, he took his
+entire household; for how could he leave his children behind? Lackeys
+and haiduks, equerries, coachmen and footmen, Court fool, nurse, and
+governess, priest and scribe, all came with their master, and before all
+went a heavy wagon with the baggage of the women. And there were as many
+kinds of musicians as there were guests. The Polish lords brought their
+famous trumpeters; those from Transylvania brought their gypsies; the
+Moravians their fiddlers; and the Nyians their bagpipers.
+
+One band relieved another at banquet and dance; meantime the young
+people who became weary of the pleasures of the table first, withdrew to
+one end of the long hall for the "torch-dance," or the "cushion-dance,"
+while still the servants at the other end continued to carry in the
+succession of dishes to the feast; if you wish to count the courses
+there is still the portly kitchen record. Here rang out the joyous
+conversation, interspersed with the Latin epithalamium of some impromptu
+poet, or the fescennine verses of a German minnesinger. At one side, the
+married women had their pleasure; young mothers whose children became
+restless withdrew here to quiet them; another table in an alcove at the
+side was opened for the young girls who feasted here in the presence of
+their holy director, and through the noise and tumult of the men, their
+joyous girlish voices rang out in Vivas to the noble lord and lady who
+sat at the head of the main table. In the shadow of a vaulted recess,
+the monks and lay brothers were assembled, who had crowded from all
+foreign parts at the report that a bishop in Hungary was celebrating his
+marriage. Every kind of priest was here; Capuchins, Jesuits, Paulists,
+Carmelites, White Canons, and the tonsured Franciscans, with wooden
+sandals on their bare feet. All sat together and drank "in honorem
+domini et dominae." They were the most steadfast guests in respect to the
+hours and days. The only change in their company was that it constantly
+increased. Besides these, there was one other guest who remained from
+the very beginning of this long marriage feast, together with his whole
+family, and this was Grazian, Lord of Mitosin Castle. He had brought his
+beautiful daughter with him. The ladies whispered at one side that Lord
+Grazian stayed so long in the hope of forming an alliance between the
+beautiful Magdalene and some young lord. "Oh, no indeed!" said others,
+"there is no care for her. She has already a valiant bridegroom, the
+Pole, Lord Berezowski." At this there was a great outburst of laughter.
+"If the dear Lord had not made Adam better looking than he is, Mother
+Eve would never have picked that much-talked-of apple from the tree."
+
+The old fool showed no hesitancy about thrusting himself into the circle
+of young dancers, and shunning the table of drinkers; and yet he longed
+for a drink; but his mouth watered still more for a kiss from the
+beautiful Magdalene, and this he might so easily have, if it would only
+occur to her to invite him to the cushion-dance. But for this he might
+wait until the day of judgment.
+
+This is the way they danced the cushion-dance, as our elders will
+recollect. A small silken cushion was put in the hand of the handsomest
+stateliest dancer, who laid it in the centre of the circle on the floor,
+and danced around it to the music, at first alone; then he took up the
+cushion and laid it at the feet of a lady whom he had chosen according
+to his fancy, knelt down on it and remained a suppliant until she
+released him with a kiss: then the two danced hand in hand around the
+cushion: and then it was the lady's turn to lay it before a dancer in
+the circle and kneel down waiting for a kiss. And through the whole
+evening the fairy chain of sweet kisses was woven on and on. The old
+Berezowski thrust his wine-befuddled face into the circle and waited,
+hoping that he might please some one; but not one of the worthy widows
+wished him for a partner; and so long as no lady invited him to dance,
+he had no right to lay the cushion down before his fair white betrothed,
+and to imprint a red mark on that snowy countenance with his bristly
+face. It was as if the whole company had taken an oath that no one
+should offer him the cushion, and the ladies laughed heartily evening
+after evening to see Lord Grazian with his gouty foot, and Lord
+Berezowski with his squinting eyes, unwearyingly watch the
+cushion-dance. But in reality, both were keeping watch of something
+quite different.
+
+The beautiful Idalia seemed entirely changed since that severe lesson.
+She acted as any one would who was entirely broken-hearted and resigned.
+One hardly recognized her. She was gentle and condescending to every
+one; and the mistakes of her household were hardly noted, while formerly
+her eye was wont to spy out everything and rebuke it at once with voice
+and hand. She went every day to mass, sat quietly under the great carved
+canopy of the family pew and performed her devotions. What it all meant
+nobody knew, except, perhaps, Father Peter. Then, too, the condition of
+the Jesuit monastery had been recently much improved; one gift followed
+another. One Sunday, the castle lady surprised the Father with a
+magnificent altar covering, and it was reported that she had embroidered
+it with her own hands. The young nobleman, Cupid, had also become a new
+creature under Father Peter's hands. One could hear him studying out of
+his books in a clear tone of voice, instead of singing wanton songs. He
+no longer wandered through the village with dozens of dogs, setting them
+on the poor people; but went about hand in hand with his instructor in
+the best behaved way, and replied to the "Praised be Jesus Christ" of
+the people, with a pious "Forever and ever, Amen." He spent his
+pocket-money on the poor, and Sunday mornings served as acolyte without
+his old trick of mixing sulphur in the incense; instead of abusive
+words, he now uttered Latin sentences, and kissed the hands of elderly
+people in a most mannerly way; and all this was Father Peter's work. It
+was set down to his credit by the directors of the convent, and
+information was even sent to the Provincial Father, of the wonderfully
+blessed activity of this newly created father.
+
+The Lady Idalia had for some time ceased to storm her lost idol with her
+passion, and had entrusted her little son entirely to his care. Mother
+and son saw each other now only at table. This unaccountable change had
+occurred at the same time of the Bishop's feast. The entire noble family
+of Mitosin had gone to Bittse and remained. Father Peter had from that
+time no further occasion to seek the subterranean passage; night and day
+nothing took him from his pupil, who since his tutor had withdrawn the
+fools and had accustomed him to an orderly way of living instead of his
+former extravagances, now enjoyed regular sleep such as children are
+wont to have, who, when they waken, find their heads in the very place
+where they laid them down, and who sleep with a laugh on their lips.
+
+Father Peter was somewhat troubled in conscience at the great care that
+he was devoting to his pupil, since he knew that at the bottom there was
+a certain selfishness, as it was very agreeable to him not to have
+Hirsko, the Fool, sleep any more in the boy's room. Hirsko kept long
+vigils; he never closed an eye until he could see the bottom of his
+pitcher. Now, Father Peter did not have to wait for that; Sunday nights
+belonged entirely to him. As soon as he had quieted Cupid, he could
+hurry to the entrance of the vaulted passage, and there stay for a long
+time beside his inconsolable beloved, who was at once his bride and his
+widow. These charming meetings by night, Likovay's journey to Thurzo's
+wedding had brought to an end. The departure had occurred so
+unexpectedly that there was no time for the two lovers to agree what
+should be done. By carrier pigeons, they had communicated with each
+other briefly, but since the departure, there had been no messages by
+the pigeons from Mitosin. It was only through the talkative Fool that
+Father Peter learned whither the family had gone,--to the wedding of the
+Bishop! It was said that this would last a whole year long, and would
+occasion so many other weddings that the carnival might be prolonged
+until the vintage.
+
+So many marriageable young women were among the guests, it was very
+probable they would all leave as brides; for even the melancholy
+Magdalene a suitor waited there--the rich Berezowski. Father Peter
+sighed deeply--if he could only see her, just once more! How dared a
+monk sigh for such a forbidden pleasure! Even then the punishment was
+hurrying toward him. While his heart unceasingly throbbed at the thought
+that he might even yet be permitted to behold the countenance of his
+beloved, gently radiant as the moonlight itself, quite unexpectedly this
+command came from his lady, which conformed to his wishes, yet he could
+find little pleasure in it. One day,--the Thurzo wedding feast had then
+lasted two months,--Idalia said to him, "Father Peter, all the world
+have paid their respects at Bittse, at the wedding of the Bishop; we
+alone have not. The Bishop is related to me on my mother's side, and
+furthermore he is my godfather. He may be annoyed at us with good reason
+for not showing ourselves there; now I have in my jewel casket a string
+of real pearls that will be very becoming to the throat of the young
+lady: let us take them to her as a bridal present and stay at the
+castle until we are driven away. You shall go with the boy; it will be
+well for him to see a little of such splendor and magnificence as he
+never shall behold again." And so that fell to Father Peter's lot for
+which he had sighed so longingly. But he could not take pleasure in the
+news: it filled him, on the contrary, with horror. At Emerich Thurzo's
+wedding, he must meet again that world which he had put behind him, and
+in which only a few years ago he had been so intimate--so much at home.
+It is true, the countless sufferings he had endured since then might
+have changed his looks somewhat; and then, too, there was the long beard
+that he had not worn as knight, and if he drew the hood of his cowl
+down, half his face was covered. Besides, who would pay any attention to
+a holy monk, who draws into a corner, and is in nobody's way? The fine
+ladies who had known him formerly would gather away their trains lest
+they should touch his cowl; but there would be one there who knew him,
+at all events. Alas, if by any traitorous change of countenance
+Magdalene should betray her recognition! Their eyes must not meet.
+
+However, there was no escape. Father Peter must accompany his lady to
+Bittse--to the famous wedding-feast. She, too, took her whole household
+with her. She had to drag about her household as she did her gowns and
+jewels; her only son, of course, must not leave her side, for that is
+the richest jewel of a Hungarian woman. The other ladies took their
+children with them, and she received the greatest glory whose son could
+best recite his good wishes to the bride, which he had learned from the
+court master.
+
+The wedding guests arrived safely at Bittse. At that time, such a
+journey lasted fully six days in the stern cold, and in the short winter
+days of fog. When the guests from Madocsany arrived at the Castle of
+Bittse, it was already late in the evening. The first night was given to
+rest, after the hardships of the journey. The next day, the Lady Idalia,
+with her son and Father Peter, paid their respects to the noble couple.
+Emerich Thurzo had an astounding memory; as soon as he heard Father
+Peter's name, he at once expressed his surprise that he did not
+recollect that he had as bishop confirmed a monk of that name, and, of
+course, Madocsany belonged to his diocese. Father Peter replied that he
+had received his confirmation from the Provincial of his order; in this
+way, he drew down upon himself the high displeasure of the Hungarian
+magnate, the Bishop. The Provincials of the Jesuit order assumed many
+privileges of the Prelates, and even some papal prerogatives. From that
+moment, Father Peter in the Castle of Bittse was a marked man. However,
+this was agreeable to him, for no one molested him with offerings of
+friendly attentions. He could even sit at the table without any exchange
+of good wishes, for the Jesuit brotherhood was looked at askance by the
+other orders. Only one human being stood by him--the young Cupid. He
+never left him. However wild and boisterous he had been in the days when
+his mother spoiled him, he had now become equally shy and timid; ever
+since those visions of terror which the threats of his mother and the
+stories of the Fool had brought upon his mind. And yet what an
+ungovernable child he had been only a year ago! When he and his mother
+stayed at an entertainment, the dissolute lords used to teach him all
+kinds of knavish verses and songs, and then when the ladies joined them,
+some one would say, "Now, little Cupid, say a little verse, or sing a
+pretty song." And the little fellow would hardly wait to be asked, but
+spring up on the table and recite what he had learned; and the ladies
+would blush to the very roots of their hair; some would laugh, but the
+more prudish would go away. And then the Lady Idalia would take the
+little rascal in her lap and reward him with kisses. But now all this
+was over. Since Father Peter had become his tutor, the little Cupid
+knew no more wanton songs. On the contrary, he had become so shy that no
+promises or threats would make him recite the little rhyme of greeting
+that he used to say at home. The Lady Idalia comforted herself with the
+thought that in the course of time there would yet be opportunity. There
+were many children of his age among the guests of the castle, and as
+soon as he became acquainted with them he would regain his former
+liveliness and courage. But he did not play with the other children.
+When he met a boy of his own age, he would ask him, "Does your mother
+threaten to kill you?" He would have absolutely nothing to do with the
+little girls. The year before, he had played wildly with them and called
+each one his little wife. But now when one of them he used to know
+offered him candy, he said, "Is there any poison in it?"
+
+The Lady Idalia was the gayest of the gay. Her widow's veil had been
+long since cast aside, and there was nothing to prevent her joining in
+the dance. Nobody was bored in her company. She knew how to shape her
+conversation, and often made Thurzo himself laugh at her telling hits.
+Evenings, when she entered the drawing room in magnificent attire, at
+once she had her court of knights about her, among whom more than one
+whose hair was already turning gray, would not have been sorry to join
+his widowed state to hers. But one group of guests always conspicuously
+drew aside when the Lady Idalia appeared--these were the Mitosins. If
+Idalia took her place at the table where Lord Grazian was sitting, he
+would whisper to his daughter, and she would rise and go elsewhere;
+after a time, Lord Grazian would follow; soon the Pole; and then the
+entire retinue. But Idalia never ceased trying to annoy them. Her high
+spirits never rose higher than when she looked into the angry eyes of
+Lord Grazian, or when she coquettishly tormented the aged suitor until
+his face became as red as a boiled crab.
+
+One evening, the flower of the company turned to the dance, and the
+gypsies of Transylvania were playing. Thurzo and his wife were still
+present, and took pleasure in the enjoyment of their guests. The sound
+of revelry grew louder and louder. The men sang drinking songs, the
+ladies chattered, and the monks in their corner sang an edifying hymn.
+The old Berezowski as usual was on the outer edge of the circle of
+dancers; in the mazurka and the torch-dance, where it was only necessary
+to stamp and shout, he had his part; but in the cushion dance, where the
+kisses came, he failed as usual. And yet he could have devoured the
+beautiful Magdalene with his eyes. Two pair of eyes were watching him;
+one from the table of the monks, where sat a young priest, with downcast
+head supported on his hands; from beneath his cowl low drawn, his eyes
+looked out eagerly into this world of pleasure. On his lap lay the head
+of a sleeping child, on the table before him stood a large mug, from
+which he sipped now and then, more to moisten his parched lips and
+throat than to cloud his mind. The other pair of eyes belonged to the
+Lady Idalia. Even when she was whirling in the dance, she never let
+Berezowski out of her sight; she followed the longing looks that he cast
+at Magdalene; she cast glances at Father Peter, half-concealed in his
+corner; and Lord Grazian, who was ready to burst with rage, caught the
+scornful lightning of her glance. She knew how to read the hearts of all
+four, and it was her diabolical pleasure to drop into the hearts of all
+four her various poisons, one kind for one, and another for another;
+here, frenzy, there deadly fear, and still again, rage and jealousy. To
+one, contempt; to another, despair; to a third, shame and disgrace; and
+to a fourth, unquenchable, diabolical fire.
+
+Father Peter held his hand screening his eyes as he watched the handsome
+youths leading the ladies of their heart to the dance. In many dances a
+kiss is the forfeit. Who has any suspicious thoughts of the innocent
+kiss of a maiden? In those times, certainly, it was merely a joke in all
+honor. He was not jealous of any one of the stately crowd of young
+knights, but the blood boiled in his veins when he saw how the old rake,
+destined to be her bridegroom, watched the slender figure floating past
+him, light as a gentle dream. Gentle though she was, yet she knew how to
+evade his embraces. If he were only her partner, what a blow he would
+give that eager old sinner! The young fop took no care whatever of his
+lady. And what miserable dancers they are too! When he led the dance it
+was quite different--he would like to show them, if it were not for the
+cowl.
+
+Thus far he had been so fortunate in avoiding the throng of guests that
+he had not once met Magdalene. Even if he had come directly in her path,
+she might not have recognized him, for she rarely raised her eyes unless
+addressed.
+
+The cushion dance came next. To a monotonous melody, the silken cushion
+passed from hand to hand accompanied by an exchange of kisses. The
+cushion came at last into Idalia's hands. She must have been awaiting it
+for some time for the young dancers were in the habit of gaining a kiss
+from their heart's desire. She had to wait until it was the turn of a
+young man, still free, who saw in her only a beautiful woman. Idalia
+paid the forfeit to the man at her feet; and now it was the order of the
+dance that she should come into the middle of the circle and dance alone
+while she passed in review, the dancers circling about her, until she
+made her choice. Idalia laughed silently to herself; she cast a glance
+full of bewitching coquetry at Berezowski, then swaying gracefully in
+the dance, she glided towards him and laid the cushion at his feet, then
+the circle broke up, and the chosen man was left alone. Berezowski
+reddened to the ears for joy; his eyes beamed, but they did not seek the
+beautiful face of the woman who knelt before him, but the pallid face of
+his betrothed, who stood opposite; in anticipation of the two kisses, he
+parted his whiskers carefully. The first kiss would only set him free,
+it was the second which would seal a bond. Magdalene understood the
+glance, and her face crimsoned to her very hair. Father Peter clenched
+the silver cup in his hand until the wine spilled on the table. "Quid
+habes?" called out his brother priest at the table. But just as
+Berezowski bent over to kiss Idalia, Grazian Likovay sprang between the
+two and rudely dragged the Pole back. "Hold," he cried, "my future
+son-in-law shall not kiss this woman here." Idalia sprang passionately
+to her feet and pressed her two hands to her head. "That you----! I am
+as much of a lady as you are a gentleman."
+
+"Without doubt," he replied, "you are a widow who has killed your
+husband, and now has taken into your house your paramour, disguised as a
+monk. There he sits, holding the boy in his lap to accustom him to his
+fatherhood. Or is it not true that the Jesuit there is your lover?" and
+with that he sprang to the table of the monks and dragged Father Peter's
+cowl from his head. "Now, then, who is this priest? Is it not Tihamer
+Csorbai? The lover of this beautiful woman, and in a monk's cowl?"
+
+The whole hall rang with loud laughter and outcries. Everybody
+recognized at once Tihamer Csorbai, who had vanished and been generally
+reported dead. He was anything but dead. He had simply entered the
+service of a beautiful woman. Father Peter stood in the midst of this
+crowd of screaming guests; with his right hand he seized the bench on
+which he leaned. If rage overpowers here is a death blow and a broken
+skull.
+
+"Peter," rang out the powerful voice of Emerich the Bishop, "are you a
+monk or a knight?"
+
+The youth's arm sank, he bowed his head. "I am a monk."
+
+"Then withdraw. Woe unto those who excite strife!"
+
+The rest of the monks considered that the command had been given.
+Unfastening the cords about their waists, they began to scourge the
+despised guest from the hall, with scorn and curses in a confusion of
+Greek and Latin. Father Peter took no thought except that the boy should
+receive none of the blows; he wrapped him in his cowl and hurried away
+from the company. He did not give himself time to see what happened
+later. He did not see how the pale face of Magdalene tried to rush to
+him. Why? Perhaps to shield him, and perhaps to share his shame. But her
+father seized her rudely and dragged her back to the arms of
+Berezowski,--"There is your place."
+
+The beautiful fury, with teeth shining, advanced to Grazian; her red
+hair broke loose from her cap, on which the jewelled pins shook with her
+tremor of rage. "Well, Grazian Likovay, you shall pay me for this night!
+Once already have I aimed my dagger at your heart, and this time be sure
+it shall be to your death!" And with that, she dashed out of the hall,
+pushing everything aside that did not give way before her. As she passed
+by Thurzo and his wife, she said defiantly. "My best thanks to my lord
+and his lady for their hospitality. You are not one hair better than
+others." And she snapped her fingers contemptuously, and went on her
+way. That same night, though late, she left the Castle of Bittse with
+her entire retinue. She travelled by torch-light through the fierce
+winter night resounding with the cries of hungry wolves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE TEMPTATION.
+
+
+The carriages, set on runners, were too heavy to go rapidly over the bad
+mountain roads. At the first station, the caravan was overtaken by a
+sledge in pursuit; this did not stop at their carriages, but passed them
+by. In the sledge sat Grazian, and the figure enveloped in furs beside
+him was of course his daughter. Idalia looked out of the windows of her
+carriage: "Good morning, lovely lady," called out Lord Grazian, in an
+excess of spirits, "I will go ahead as quartermaster." His meaning was
+too clear. Idalia's travelling party was large, and could only make four
+or five German miles a day, so that Grazian going in advance "as
+quartermaster" would take for himself the accommodations in the large
+castles, which she was counting on for herself and her retinue. An open
+hospitality still prevailed in that country, and travellers found in
+every castle an open gate, good beds, and abundant table, with a cordial
+welcome from the master of the house. But the accommodations in the
+villages were quite different. The servants with their horses were
+provided with straw, and the family themselves were cramped into a low,
+small room, with floor of earth, and lighted by a miserable candle,
+while their fare was coarse bread and cheese. The little sledge going
+ahead closed every castle against Idalia and her party, by spreading the
+news of this great scandal that had fallen upon the widow. On the way
+back, Idalia could not stay with any of her acquaintances. She must stay
+outside, bag and baggage in her carriage at the end of the village, or
+must pass her night in the forest, in the small hut of some cheese
+dealer. Through the long winter night, this noble lady must lie on the
+straw, wrapped in her travelling cloak, with the priest and the sleeping
+child. There they were like two comrades who fall asleep quarrelling,
+and wake up quarrelling.
+
+"In spite of your shame, _you_ can sleep? They said to your face that as
+a priest you were a fraud, as a knight you were a failure; neither
+priest nor knight. How they disgraced us in the presence of so many
+people! Like a hunchback, they threw it in my face that you were my
+lover, and you stood there like a pillar of salt and did not say that it
+was true or untrue. I looked at you just to see what you would do;
+whether you would take counsel of your heart. You looked about you; the
+dancers' swords were together in a corner; perhaps you would seize me,
+cast your cowl from you and say, 'It is true, I am Tihamer Csorbai, and
+that woman there is my wife, and he who dares come between us is a dead
+man.' You did not do so. On the contrary, you gazed toward Heaven. I
+waited patiently to see if you would say, 'I am Father Peter, I am a
+priest, and on my priestly oath I say she is free from my love,--if she
+were as free from other sins, she might be counted among the saints.'
+But this too you did not do. You dropped your head when the Bishop
+called out at you. And you submitted when the other monks struck at you
+with their scourges. Oh, how detestable you were! If you really had been
+my lover, I would have spit at you--in your face--yes, right in your
+face! Behind your back, they said that you were not worthy of the name
+of priest, that you were no priest and never had been one, and even if
+you had, they would have driven you out; you were a timid, cowardly
+soldier who endured the scourge because he feared the sword. What will
+you do now? Will you creep behind the cross that Christ Himself may
+drive you away? Will you let them beat this monk's cowl of yours from
+town to town? Do your vows require you to bring your priesthood into
+disgrace, and become a stone of offence at sight of which every one
+stands aside, even if they are in the height of the dance; and at sight
+of whom the common people will flee from the church when they see you at
+the altar?"
+
+And then again:
+
+"Can you sleep? Why not? It is an easy thing for a man to choke down
+disgrace. But I am a woman, and I am lying on scorpions. In the presence
+of the noblest of the land you made me an object of scorn to the whole
+world. There will be the report of it everywhere. The beggar-student
+will sing my story from window to window. Peddlers will carry from
+village to village the story of Father Peter and the Lady of Madocsany,
+and hawk it about for two denarii, pictures thrown in. What a disgrace!
+You can hide yourself away under your cowl, that is a good place for
+you! But where shall I hide myself? How can I endure the glance of
+people--that constant blow in the face? Where shall I shut myself in, so
+that no human being can find me? Where shall I lose myself, so that even
+I cannot find me? How shall I live or die on these thorns? What's that
+to you--do you say? Ha ha! You say God has punished me, and you are
+satisfied. You drawl out your prayers and fall asleep over them."
+
+And then again:
+
+"Are you awake? The cock is crowing, the day is dawning at last. The
+night is long for those who cannot close their eyes. Why do you avoid
+talking with me? I despise you from the bottom of my heart. If you were
+as great a jewel as you are a piece of clay, I would not reach out my
+hand to take you up. Keep your love for the angels, or for Beelzebub, it
+is all one to me. All I ask from you is my honor. If you are a man of
+honor, if you are a Christian, you must know what your duty is. The
+offence was an open one, and it must be openly satisfied. Listen to me,
+and then consider at your leisure. You and I will go over to the
+Protestant church. We will go to Saros-Patak, or to Klausenburg, and
+there this can take place without delay. The six weeks' instruction is
+superfluous. We will marry. I need nothing more except your name--the
+name still honored. You surely do not want all the world to call me Mrs.
+Father Peter. You are not Emerich Thurzo; his wife can be called Mrs.
+Bishop, night or day, but Mrs. Monk--no one can say that by daylight.
+The price for my torn veil is the cap of Mrs. Tihamer Csorbai. Beyond
+that, I do not care whether you love me, or do not love me, or whether
+you love another. You can go away, when you cannot stand it any longer,
+or you can stay. It does not matter to me what you answer; my decision
+is made; in defiance of the Bishop, I am going to be a Calvinist; and I
+am going to marry a second time, if not you, then somebody else; but it
+is fitting that I should recover my honor by the man by whom I lost it.
+But I will not beseech you any longer. Do not be afraid that I shall
+crawl after you on my hands and knees. Two words can separate us; if you
+say, 'No, No,' then I say, 'Nor I, either,' and you shall never enter my
+gate again. To the threshold you may come, and I will count out to you
+your money, and then we will never breathe the same air again."
+
+Father Peter was terrified at these words. If Idalia drove him out of
+the castle, then he could have no further meetings with Magdalene, for
+the only entrance to the subterranean passage was from the castle; and
+in his brain important plans were forming; he must without fail speak
+with Magdalene. She will come to the familiar place and expect him
+Sunday nights.
+
+"What you have said is serious, and requires time for consideration.
+Give me two Sundays that I may take counsel with the one who guides my
+fate."
+
+Idalia though that Father Peter referred to the wise Counsellor of all,
+but he really meant Magdalene.
+
+"Very well, I will wait two Sundays, but then you are to give me a
+definite answer."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"An answer that swerves neither to right nor left."
+
+"It shall be either wise or foolish. Whatever it is, it shall be that
+wholly."
+
+"By your monk's vows?"
+
+"I vow it on my word of honor as a knight."
+
+At this the lady began to weep violently, and her sobs awakened the
+sleeping boy.
+
+"Why do you weep, mother?" he asked in fear.
+
+Idalia pressed him to her heart. "I am weeping for you, my poor little
+orphan, my only treasure, my angel;" and with each tender name, she
+covered the child's cheek with kisses and tears while she pressed him
+close to her throbbing heart.
+
+"Does he love me already,--my father?" stammered the child, nestling
+closer to his mother. "He loves you surely, for you kiss and embrace me
+again."
+
+"We shall soon find out," Idalia whispered in his ear, and sighed
+deeply.
+
+Soon the whispering ceased. Father Peter heard the deep breathing of
+mother and child, and the loud beating of his own heart.
+
+Outside the cock crowed for the third time. Was it not Peter's
+cock,--the first Peter?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE FEAST.
+
+
+The next day, they reached Madocsany, and the second day after, the
+feast began. They had hardly time to get rested. In truth, the feast
+began. The beautiful Lady of Madocsany did not close her gates, as she
+had said she should do, on the way home: she did not try to find any
+thick veil for her head to cover her face before the eyes of the world.
+The one expression, "On my word as a knight", had kindled a new glow in
+her heart. What was the world to her now! Whoever did not respect her,
+she did not respect. Contempt for contempt. The people of the castle did
+not go abroad, but they broached their casks, spread their tables, and
+summoned the pipers; and where there are spread tables, good wine, and
+fair women, there are guests in plenty. It is true, it was a mere revel.
+Not one personage of note. Perhaps the same drunken set that frequented
+the Mitosin Castle when there were feasts there; if so, no one could
+afford to reproach his neighbor. At Mitosin they criticised the Lady of
+Madocsany, and at Madocsany the Lord of Mitosin. They flattered both,
+and drank to the health of the one who owned the wine; and Father Peter
+tarried with them in the interval. He no longer spent his nights in
+singing psalms, but listened to the reckless conversation of this motley
+crowd. No one counted it against him that he had been driven from the
+Castle at Bittse; here it is no disgrace, quite the contrary, to be the
+beloved of a beautiful woman, the more glorious because it was unlawful;
+they clapped him familiarly on the shoulder, and admitted him as their
+companion. And he had to accept this quietly, and realize that there was
+something still more disgraceful than to be despised by men of position,
+and that was to be honored by the worthless. So he spent every evening
+with them; every evening, the side of the castle toward the Waag was
+lighted up, so that the household at Mitosin could see what a great
+feast it was. In their sledging parties on the frozen Waag, with sound
+of bells and bright torches, music, and crack of whip, they passed so
+near Mitosin Castle that their voices floated up to the windows of Lord
+Grazian Likovay. What sport! Father Peter took his part. "A lucky dog!
+he knew when to lay down his cowl," they said to his face.
+
+In his sleeping room he was alone: for since their return from the
+Bittse wedding, the mother had kept her child with her. She no longer
+urged him to study, and all his days were spent in playing. As soon as
+Father Peter was alone in his room, he drank a pitcher of water, and
+poured another over his head, to wash away all traces left on his face
+by the revellers' kisses. Then he knelt down before his bed, and
+struggled with serious thoughts; his brow on his folded hands. The old
+man was aroused in him, the defiant,--the man of hot, passionate love;
+the devil of pride was struggling to break the fetters of his vow.
+Already he felt a loathing for the cowl he wore. His soul was no longer
+oppressed by the weight of a great guilt. The insult of the father had
+released him from the blood-money for the son.
+
+Friday before this, a message had come from the Jesuit monastery to the
+lady of the castle, to the effect that she should not serve her guests
+any meat that day, and that she should send back Peter, who must be
+brought before an ecclesiastical court for his sins of conduct. The
+widow sent back in reply a letter and a purse. In the letter she said:
+"I send you back, not one, but a thousand Peters;" and in the purse were
+a thousand gold pieces stamped for the emperor Peter. And the fathers
+made answer: "Also serve the fish."
+
+Tihamer Csorbai had a horror of Father Peter. He could not find his
+faith again. Every dream misled him: and there were dreams that his
+waking moments carried on,--fabulous treasures, for which the waking man
+had only to stretch out his hand to hold what he had seen in the dreams
+of sleep.
+
+During these few days, Idalia was not recognizable. For days at a time,
+she would not leave her sitting-room, but worked there with her maids
+like a simple peasant girl who prepares her trousseau. She stayed at the
+banquet only long enough to eat and drink, and then vanish. This great
+tumult was only to defy the world. She herself played the coy maiden,
+who waits for her wooer, and whispers to her mother, "There is a suitor
+in the house." If by chance she met Father Peter, she drew back before
+him.
+
+Sunday morning, the company scattered to the four winds. "Six days shalt
+thou eat and drink, but the seventh is holy--" so it stands written.
+When the bells for early mass rang, Idalia dressed herself for church,
+and took her jewelled prayer-book in her hand. But first she summoned
+Father Peter.
+
+"I am going to church. Perhaps for the last time to the Roman church. Do
+not come to-day; leave me alone. Meantime, take care of my only
+treasure." And then she covered Cupid's cheek with kisses, and went to
+church.
+
+"Do you see how fond my mother is of me?" said Cupid, throwing his arms
+about Father Peter's neck. "Since we have come back she is so fond of
+me. That's because you're fond of her, I know, for she whispered it in
+my ear. You're not Father Peter, but Tihamer. Nights, she says this name
+over and over, and then she hugs and kisses me. Once I asked her who
+Tihamer was; at that she turned red, and laughing loudly, covered my
+mouth; then she took me up on her lap and kissed me. 'Wouldn't it be
+fine if you had to say Papa-Tihamer?' That means you. I know; you need
+not try to make believe to me,--you're no monk; I knew that when you
+threw the ball at the Fool's head. Do you know what my mother and her
+four maids are working at in her quarters? Come, I'll show you, there's
+nobody there. They're all gone to church." And the child dragged Father
+Peter into his mother's innermost room, where he had never been before.
+It was a marvel of convenience and elegance. Cupid ran to a richly
+carved wardrobe, which he opened. In it hung a rich travelling cloak
+trimmed with rosettes, and large buttons, lace, and gold embroidery.
+
+"That's what they've been sewing and embroidering. And do you know who
+is to have this for a present? Why, it's for Tihamer, and nobody else.
+They told me not to tell anybody, but I'll just tell you. To-day is
+Sunday and to-night, when you go to bed, you'll find on your bed these
+clothes, and riding boots, and a gold sword. Yes, you can try them all
+on and see if they fit."
+
+Father Peter looked around him. He thought he caught sight of the
+tempting countenance of a grinning demon behind him, and this urged him
+a step farther.
+
+"Yes, and I know something more," Cupid went on. "From to-day on, every
+night down in the summer house, there'll be two horses saddled, and the
+key is left in the rear gate. I heard her arrange it all with the
+gate-keeper. For you know the monks down there keep watch over our gate
+day and night, so that if Father Peter should once try to escape from
+here, they could pursue him and catch him and throw him down into a deep
+dungeon, because he tried to run away. But if you two slip out through
+the garden gate some night, on those good horses, with me tucked under
+the cloak of one of you, then the monks may follow, but they will never
+overtake us."
+
+Cupid's shafts all went home. All these preparations fitted so well into
+the framework of those dreams which the monk pursued day and night,
+when they did not pursue him. The entire plan of flight was completed;
+all one had to do was to adopt it. All obstacles were removed. The monk
+who flees with a woman may be arrested in any village, bound and brought
+back; but when a distinguished couple, on richly caparisoned horses,
+dash along, who would stop them?
+
+"But you're not going to leave me, I'll tell you that beforehand," Cupid
+ran on. "There's a little fox-skin ready for me too, and little boots
+bordered with rabbit; don't be afraid, Mamma won't leave me behind. She
+takes me up on her lap now, just as she used to when I was a little boy,
+and as we are in the picture. Would you like to see the picture? I'll
+show it to you. It isn't everybody can see it at any time. It's shut up,
+but I know just how to press the springs, so it will open." He was then
+in front of the carved work which divided as he pressed a spring. When
+the picture came in sight, it lighted up the whole room, it was of such
+radiant beauty. It was an Italian masterpiece--Venus and Cupid, the
+veritable goddess of the myth, with the magic charms of beauty, in the
+act of bathing her child; her eyes were turned toward the spectator,
+languishingly, roguishly, seductively; a companion piece to the Venus
+of Correggio. The monk held his hands before his eyes,--he was dazzled.
+
+"Shut it up," he ordered the boy.
+
+"You're not afraid of it, are you, that it will hurt you?"
+
+Father Peter hurried out of Idalia's room. At the door, he met the lady.
+His eyes betrayed the struggle of his soul. Idalia was gracious, and
+acted as if she had noticed nothing. She looked down.
+
+"I have just come from church, Father. I have sinned, and wish to
+confess."
+
+Father Peter looked at her in astonishment.
+
+"Yes, I have sinned in the church, and now I have come for you to shrive
+me. I sinned at the altar when I was praying. I prayed God: 'I thank
+Thee, Lord, that Thou hast not prevented me from doing what I vowed to
+do, and that was to rob Thine altar of one whom my heart loves. I thank
+Thee that Thou hast sent upon us shame and disgrace to drive him away
+from Thy holy offices. I beg Thee, I pray Thee, grant me to hurry him
+away with me to destruction. Close the gates of Heaven against us. Grant
+that I may make him a heretic and a denier of the saints. Grant me to
+lead this saint out of the number of Thy believers; send me Thy evil
+angel to aid me in this work of mine.' This was my prayer at the altar
+named in honor of Ignatius Loyola, while they were singing the Dominus
+vobiscum. It was a sin, Father, I smite my breast and own it was a sin,
+I kneel before you; do you absolve me?"
+
+Father Peter took the hand of the penitent and raised her. His tongue
+could with difficulty shape the words, "I absolve you."
+
+"You do absolve me!" cried the woman, and pressed passionately the hand
+that he, unthinking, had left in hers. "Then you have absolved me, and I
+bind you to it."
+
+Then she hurried in triumph from the room, leaving him alone. From the
+inner room rang out the laugh of Venus and Cupid. To be sure, the
+picture was still open, and probably it was at that they laughed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+UNDERGROUND.
+
+
+All day, it was evident from the features and actions of Father Peter
+that he was the prey of unusual excitement. He would draw himself
+together with a shiver as often as he met the triumphant glance of
+Idalia. The lady of the castle considered the victory certain. These
+confused looks, this stammering, this awkward manner, she regarded as
+the dying convulsions of this man's conscience. One blow more, and his
+pride, his vows, would be killed. At the evening meal, the three were
+alone together. After the long visit of their guests, this was quite
+unusual; but such an undisturbed family circle is usually very
+agreeable. Then husband and wife say to each other, "Our guests were
+dear to us, but now that they are gone, they are still dearer."
+
+After the meal was over, Idalia sent the household to rest, and had the
+child put to sleep in her own room; the two were alone together. The
+lady took her harp and sang; she sang of Heaven, of Paradise, and of
+love; but Father Peter's soul was not with her. The great clock struck
+eleven. Father Peter seemed to be sitting on hot coals; he arose, and
+did not wait for the conclusion of the song, although a touching one.
+
+"Good-night."
+
+"What,--going so soon?" asked Idalia, astounded.
+
+"It will soon be morning."
+
+"I thought that with the morrow, Sunday would be over, and you would
+answer my question."
+
+"This is the first Sunday, and I asked for two."
+
+The lady knit her brows.
+
+"And do you need so much time to settle your accounts with those above?"
+
+--"And with those below."
+
+Father Peter had involuntarily spoken the truth. The consuming flame of
+suspicion blazed up in the soul of this woman. In the presence of such
+love-charms, such fascination, such unconcealed passion, it is
+impossible for a man to persist in marble insensibility unless he loves
+another. Such deathlike calm is only possible to one who lives in
+another world, and is there blessed. She forced her countenance into a
+gentle smile.
+
+"Very well, I wish you a restful night. But I have one favor to
+ask,--that you take my little boy back into your room; since he has been
+sleeping with me the bad dreams have returned. You know better how to
+manage him; let him spend the night with you."
+
+Father Peter's features betrayed the uneasiness that had taken
+possession of him. This demand of the lady would only delay his meeting
+with Magdalene.
+
+"Very well, I will take the child with me," he said with enforced calm.
+
+"I will bring him to you myself at once," replied the lady. Idalia
+hurried to her room, and awakened Cupid, who was asleep in a small bed
+beside hers. The child awoke in terror.
+
+"What's the matter--are you going to kill me?"
+
+"No, indeed, my darling, my angel, how could I!"
+
+"But your face looks just as it did when you threatened to put the pin
+through my head."
+
+"You've been dreaming. Come, my dear, to-day you are to sleep with your
+father, with Father Peter."
+
+"Beside Tihamer? Call him here. He can come to me, more easily than I
+can go to him."
+
+"You must mind me, if you don't wish to make me angry, and be cast off."
+
+At that Cupid began to cry. When a child wakens out of his first sleep
+and sobs himself half dead, sleep cannot be coaxed back in less than two
+hours; and this Idalia knew perfectly well.
+
+"Listen to me, my little boy, you are a dear little boy, and I am your
+loving mother, and always will be if you mind me. I will give you
+everything that you want. But if you don't do as I say, I'll torment
+you, and let you go hungry, and dress you in rags. Now you are a clever
+little boy, and you know perfectly well that Father Peter is not what he
+pretends to be. The question is whether he deals with the good spirits,
+or with the bad. Only a good little boy like you can find that out. See,
+I'll give you a little silver whistle that you can hide out of sight.
+Now come into Father Peter's room. As soon as you have lain down, shut
+your eyes, and open your mouth, and act as if you were already asleep;
+draw a deep breath and leave your mouth open: meantime, notice carefully
+what Father Peter begins to do when he thinks you are asleep; if he
+leaves the room, slipping out carefully, dressed in his cowl, and does
+not go through the door where I should see him, or through the main
+entrance hall where the watchman would stop him, but lets himself out
+of a window, down by a trellis where the vines grow, then as soon as he
+is a little way off, blow this silver whistle; I will be near by, and
+hear you, and then I will come and we will find out whether Father Peter
+works with good or bad spirits. Have you understood me?"
+
+"Yes," said the child, "and it shall be all right."
+
+Curiosity was stronger in the child than fear. The thought that in
+keeping watch as his mother bade him, he was to find out Father Peter's
+secrets, pleased Cupid very much.
+
+"Carry me there," he said, "and don't worry. I'll find out about him."
+
+When Idalia had given the child to Father Peter, and he had gone to his
+room, she concealed herself behind the secret door of a niche in the
+corridor; such as were to be found in many places in the thick castle
+walls. She had hardly waited half an hour when there was a shrill
+whistle. She hurried to the boy's room. Cupid sat up in bed; on his
+features could be read a mingled expression of astonishment, fear, and
+mischievous delight.
+
+"You can come now," he said.
+
+"Keep quiet," said his mother.
+
+"He won't hear me, he's not there."
+
+"Where is he, then?"
+
+"He has gone underground,--to Hell."
+
+"Tell me what you have seen."
+
+"I did as you told me. While I was still saying my prayers, I began to
+yawn, and before we reached the Amen I was lying on my back on the bed
+and snoring. Father Peter sank down on his knees beside my bed and
+finished the prayer: 'Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
+evil, Amen.' And with that he struck his hand on his breast, and sighed
+deeply several times. At last he rose, his whole body shook as if he had
+swallowed down a bitter medicine; then he struck his head against the
+wall, and there was such a noise that I thought his skull would go to
+pieces; then he bent over me, listened to my breathing, and covered me
+carefully; then he went to his own room and shut the door behind him.
+Before, he always left the door open to hear me wake. I got up quietly
+and slipped to the door to watch what he was doing. When he caught sight
+of the gaily embroidered clothes lying spread out on his bed, how his
+eyes shone! He did not hesitate long,--quickly threw off his soutane and
+sandals, and put on the cloak, the laced stockings, and the spurs--what
+a fine young man he was! You ought to have seen him! And then when he
+had put on his sword, he drew it from the scabbard, and struck a few
+stray blows into the air; oh, how bright his face was! Nobody would
+have said it was Father Peter. I thought he was going to surprise
+you--that he was dressing himself to make you a visit; but he did
+nothing of the kind; he brought out a dark lantern and lighted the
+candle in it, and shut the cover down: then he put his monk's cowl over
+his knight's suit, and covered his fur-trimmed cap with its hood. Then
+he was Father Peter again. What he did then, I could not see, for he
+went to the window, but I heard the window creak, and I heard the vines
+rattle against the wall. I went to my window and looked out; it was
+dark; Father Peter hid his lantern under his cowl; but I could see this
+much, that he went toward the chapel of Saint Nepomeck, that is in the
+corner of the garden near the wall; you know, it is that saint that
+every peasant takes his hat off before, and we cannot play with our
+balls or our tops near him, for if we should accidentally hit the saint,
+a great curse would come on us, because this saint preserves us and all
+the villages from floods; he is a great saint, isn't he?"
+
+"Who cares what kind of a saint he is! Tell me quickly what happened."
+
+"Well, Father Peter went to the chapel, and threw his arms around Saint
+Nepomeck. 'See, see,' I thought, 'The monk and the stone saint are
+kissing each other;' instead of that, he pushed the statue of the saint
+to the ground and stood in its place. 'What now,' I thought, 'is Father
+Peter going to be Nepomeck?' No, for he began to sink down into the
+ground and when he had gone quite out of sight, the statue of Nepomeck
+got up by itself and took its old place. But why do you look at me that
+way, are you going to kill me? How ugly you look all of a sudden. Have I
+said anything bad?"
+
+Idalia struck the child on the head. "Curses on you for what you have
+said." And even her voice sounded different--like the rattling of
+chains. This speech, this look and the blow filled the child with such
+terror that he crawled under the bed, and did not venture forth until he
+saw that he was alone; then he was afraid of the loneliness, and began
+to howl and cry. "Mother, mother, don't leave me alone; the souls of the
+departed come and wail, and try to carry me off!" But nobody came.
+Suddenly, there appeared on the ceiling a ray of light as if somebody
+were going through the garden with a lantern. Cupid crawled out from
+under the bed, and went to the window to call out to this person in the
+garden. It was the figure of a woman in black, her hair covered with a
+black veil, and with a dark lantern in her hand. By the light of this
+lantern, the child could see that it was his mother. He saw her go
+directly to the chapel of Saint Nepomeck. She too stepped up to the
+statue and threw her arms about its head, and the statue dropped down
+quietly. Idalia now in her turn took the place of the statue and
+vanished into the earth: the statue raised itself again.
+
+"My mother too has gone down to Hell!" whispered the child, trembling,
+and sank down on his knees in terror. "Father in Heaven do not be angry
+at me, I will never again leave off the end of my prayer. 'Lead us not
+into temptation, but deliver us from evil, Amen.'"
+
+Six steps led from the statue of Nepomeck down into the earth, the
+seventh step was movable and turned on a pivot; if you stood on one end
+of this, the statue above raised itself, but if you stood on the other
+end, it sank gently down, The builders of this subterranean passage had
+chosen well the guardian of their secret. The place where stood the
+statue honored by all, was protected from investigation; it was not
+possible that in this vicinity any one could be found who would venture
+to overturn the sacred Nepomeck.
+
+Lady Idalia had wrapped herself in a black cloak, and placed two pistols
+in her belt, and she carefully concealed the dark lantern. The mole-hole
+of the Hussites yawned before her! A long, dark, black defile, the more
+gruesome since it did not run straight but round about; the entire
+tunnel so like a catacomb, was vaulted, hewn out of the hard quartz. The
+walls were already as black as a scaffold, with the underground mould,
+which had so covered everything over that objects lying on the ground
+could hardly be recognized. And on this mould-covered floor were traces
+of steps,--fresh distinct traces of steps going and coming. One could
+see the imprint of the five nails in the monk's sandals, evidently he
+had been there often before; the freshest imprints, however, were of the
+spurred boots of a knight. Idalia followed these hastily. She feared
+neither the underground darkness nor all the terrors of the invisible
+world, which in their collected form bear the name of Night, great black
+mass--what she carried in her bosom was still blacker than this
+darkness.
+
+At a turn of the tunnel, she saw moving before her a light, at a
+distance of perhaps two hundred feet; it was the gleam of a torch that
+he had evidently lighted here in the tunnel from his lantern, to see his
+way better. Now when a man carries a torch in his hand, he is so blinded
+by it that he does not see if some one comes behind him, especially if
+this somebody is wrapped up in a black cloak, keeps in the dark, and
+conceals her dark lantern. Idalia could approach so near the form
+striding on before her that she was in a position to recognize it. It
+was Father Peter in his cowl, but with spurred boots. He went rapidly,
+but Idalia went more rapidly, and almost overtook him.
+
+The tunnel was long, with side passages opening into it, here and there.
+Feminine curiosity compelled Idalia to cast a glance into each one of
+these caverns; here she could use the full light of her lantern. One of
+these caverns might have been a wine-cellar; there were still some casks
+there; from this she concluded that there must be a still wider exit;
+for through the narrow opening by the statue of Nepomeck, one could not
+roll in such casks. A side passage led into a large, roomy hall, where
+in one corner were to be seen the remains of a wooden staging; what
+might have been here once?--a secret church for Hussite gatherings--or a
+court--or even a place of execution? This higher ceiling was not covered
+over with mould, but with a glistening dampness. In another corridor
+were heaped up rusty old weapons and armor. In a dome-shaped cavern was
+a cask on end, of a bright green; when she lighted it up with her
+lantern, she saw that the cask was entirely covered over with
+copperplate, and the green was from the verdigris; out of the bunghole
+of the cask hung a long twisted cord. "Suppose I were to set fire to
+this cord, what would result?" Idalia asked herself, and hurried on her
+way. Suddenly the figure before her stood still. An oaken door with
+bands of iron closed the tunnel; here the tunnel was walled with brick,
+and the threshold of the door was of hewn stone; the masculine figure
+placed his torch in an iron ring on the wall and approached the door.
+This was made fast by a lock with a secret combination, such as are used
+in closing cellars and underground doors; such locks, even when they are
+rusty, can be opened by those who know their secret, but if a man does
+not know this secret, he cannot open it in a lifetime. An iron pole,
+notched on the inside, runs through the iron rings; on the outside of
+the rings are engraved all kinds of letters; and the man who knows the
+word which is the key to the opening of the lock, will turn these ten
+rings until this name appears. Then are found on the inside of the rings
+the spaces in their order, and the notched pole can easily be drawn out,
+otherwise, one might turn these rings until the day of judgment and not
+succeed with the lock. The secret of this lock Father Peter had learned
+from the YAW DEREVOCSID EHT, and at every one of his underground visits
+he had made fast the lock. While he was busy opening the lock Idalia
+looked around her. Near by the door were two side passages opposite each
+other; she must conceal herself in one of them to keep better watch; she
+chose the right one, because this lay in the shadow, while the light of
+the torch shone into the other. It needed a self-control beyond woman's
+powers not to utter a shriek as she threw the light of her lantern into
+the cavern she entered. It was a square room, black with smoke, with
+wall of cement: it might once have been a sleeping room, for there were
+beds and benches; and in all the resting places lay the forms of women,
+some as if asleep, others still in convulsive attitudes crouching in the
+corners or leaning against the walls; one sat at the table, with her
+head resting on her hands, and a Bible open before her. She was reading
+while the others listened; one crouched under the table with a rosary in
+her hand,--she was a Catholic--all were richly dressed and their gowns
+were covered with lace and gold and silver embroideries; and yet their
+garments were decayed and those that wore them were skeletons. The fair
+blond hair of the one reading seemed to have grown even after death, for
+the floor all about her was quite covered. These were the women spoken
+of in the mystic book, who here await the resurrection. Evidently they
+too had come here to explore the secret of the strange lock when their
+provisions had failed them, and here they had miserably perished. On the
+wall above each figure was cut her name, her religion, and the day of
+her death. On the table lay a handsome enameled watch; by this they had
+reckoned how many days this long night here below had endured. Nobody
+had inscribed the name of the last. It was a maiden, with a maiden's
+wreath on her head,--perhaps she had been stolen from the altar.
+
+Idalia stood looking at this abode of death. It seemed to her as if all
+the skulls, with their eye sockets staring into eternal nothingness,
+grinned at her, as if they would say to her, "We have waited for you.
+Now you have come; you too are one of us." Should she flee this place,
+turn back home and throw herself in penitent prayer before the statue of
+the Virgin Mother of God? Was it a dream that she saw here? And what she
+felt--the anguish, the revenge, the terror--was all this only a dream?
+Do such feelings come in waking moments? The creaking of the door
+recalled her consciousness. She looked out, and what she saw gave back
+all her kindling rage.
+
+Father Peter had laid aside his monk's cowl, and stood there in knightly
+costume, like a bridegroom ready for the marriage altar. He was proud
+and handsome! The noble fearlessness of the man was mirrored in his
+countenance. Ah, in this guise he belongs to another! He is hers only in
+that hateful, hideous, coarse cowl, which she contemptuously pushed
+aside with her foot, as he stepped through the door to close it behind
+him. So the jealous woman stamped her foot upon this deceitful cover of
+hypocrisy. "You cloak of lies! You sacred mask! Pious costume of a
+comedian! Chrysalis of a golden butterfly! The chrysalis is fixed to my
+tree, but the butterfly flies to the flower of another. Shame, curse and
+ruin upon you, and upon him who has worn you and shall wear you again!"
+And at each curse, she stamped again upon the cowl. Then she opened
+carefully the door. She set the lantern on the floor. The distance
+before her now was not great, for the straight corridor with brick walls
+extended about a hundred feet farther. By the light of the lantern in
+the hand of the man before her, she could press forward with sure
+step--there was no hindrance in her way.
+
+At the end of the corridor, the knight stepped aside into a recess, and
+as he disappeared, there shone forth a dull light on the opposite wall,
+which indicated that a door had been left open, and that the wanderer
+had reached his goal. Quietly, she too slipped into this place; the
+opening was the frame of Saint Anthony's picture; she looked through and
+saw the interior of the chapel before her. Who was in the chapel? A
+knight and a maiden. What are they doing in the chapel? They stand in
+close embrace. The listening woman had heard no outcry through the
+stillness of the night. Evidently the maiden was not surprised; she had
+surely been waiting for him. They might have agreed long ago to meet
+here at this hour, and that was why the monk was in such haste. The kiss
+lasted long. Perhaps only a minute by the watch, but a thousand years of
+torment to the jealous watcher. This endless time sufficed for her
+inflamed imagination to paint the picture of the previous moments. Yes,
+without doubt, here waited for him this maiden with mourning,
+despairing, broken heart. She waited for her former lover in monk's
+cowl, who now laid aside the vows that forbade his heart to beat. She
+waited for the disgraced, scourged monk; perhaps with the firm
+resolution, that they would together mourn all this sorrow which is
+without relief here below, and then together abandon this world in which
+they have nothing more to seek.
+
+But when instead of the humble priest, she saw step forth from the frame
+the handsome knight of old, she forgot at once that a church arched
+over her, and that a crypt was beneath her feet: she forgot that she had
+come here to weep, to pray, to prepare herself for death,--and threw
+herself into the arms of her fascinating lover.
+
+All this the feverish fancy of the jealous watcher saw during the
+eternity of that kiss. And when they separated, and she saw their
+expressions, they were those of the blessed. How is it when one looks
+out from the gateway of Hell at the smile of the Blessed? She played
+with the trigger of her pistol. How easily she could kill them both. But
+the cup of bitterness, too, must be drained in swallows, as well as that
+of pleasure. Perhaps she can yet offer this cup to another and say, "My
+Lord, I drink to your health!" Such a festivity should not pass without
+the drinking of healths. But first she must watch through to the end
+what they were doing, and hear through to the end what they were saying.
+
+The knight looked about him, and then seized the maiden by the hand.
+"Come away from here," he said in a hurried whisper. "What I am going to
+say, the church and sacred picture must not hear."
+
+The maiden drew back. "For Heaven's sake, what can you have to say to me
+of that kind?"
+
+The listener must leave her place quickly, for she must reach the oak
+door before the lovers stepped through the recess of the altar picture
+into the passage, otherwise the light of the torch shining in when they
+opened the door would betray that somebody had been watching for them;
+and then must they kill her, and she did not wish to lose her life so
+cheaply. She had closed the door before the maiden had allowed herself
+to be persuaded to follow her lover. Idalia concealed herself again in
+the room of the beautiful women of old. She leaned against one of the
+eternal sleepers, concealed her face in her veil, and hid the lantern
+under her dark cloak. Soon she heard the creak of the door, gliding
+steps, and the clink of spurs.
+
+"I tremble," said the maiden.
+
+"What do you fear when I am with you?"
+
+"Everything, and myself."
+
+"I will defend you against the whole world."
+
+"And against myself?"
+
+"Do you not love me still?"
+
+"Because I do love thee, I fear for myself."
+
+"If you do love me, you will come with me."
+
+"Whither?"
+
+"Out into the world where I shall lead you."
+
+"But you are a priest!"
+
+"No longer. In the same way that I could put on the monk's cowl, I can
+lay it off again. That blow on the cheek that I received is the
+expiation for the sword stroke that I gave."
+
+"And your vows?"
+
+"God will not count this against me, and as for man, I care not. _I have
+read the Holy Scriptures through to the end, and nowhere in them can be
+found that to love is a sin, and that to renounce love is a sacrifice
+pleasing to God. This monstrous idea is an invention of man._"
+
+One of the many occupants of the room of the dead stirred at these
+words, for she heard her own words--repeated to another. This was the
+fruit they bore!
+
+"Listen, something moves in that room over there!"
+
+"Don't look that way," said Tihamer.
+
+"Who's there?"
+
+"Noble ladies who have been asleep for two hundred years." Magdalene
+took his lantern, and threw its light timidly into the dark space.
+
+"What a frightful sight--skeletons in bridal attire!"
+
+"Leave the place."
+
+"One of them has her head covered with a veil."
+
+"Perhaps it is a widow; under the veil is a death's skull."
+
+"It seems to me as if it moved."
+
+"Only your imagination."
+
+"There's a light shines through her cloak."
+
+"Decayed bones do sometimes shed a light."
+
+The knight drew the maiden away from the sight. It is true that
+sometimes a light does shine through decayed bones and a death skull
+does see and hear. The maiden in her terror burst into tears. The youth
+encouraged her tenderly as he took her in his arms.
+
+"Listen to me, my Heaven, my all of happiness; we have no other choice
+except this passage under the earth, or that other to Heaven. For I
+cannot return to my monastery, and I will not be condemned to the
+temptations of my tormenting devil."
+
+("His tormenting devil! that's what I am," whispered the figure under
+the veil.)
+
+"And what fate awaits you?" continued the knight; "--to be chained to a
+beast--to be sacrificed more horribly than if you were offered up to a
+bloodthirsty idol!"
+
+"No, no! Death rather!"
+
+"My plan is for you to live and be happy."
+
+"Did you not promise me to take me to a convent?"
+
+"I thought then that I too should end my days in woe; but now I know
+that I am not yet a consecrated priest. Bishop Thurzo told me so to my
+face, and reprimanded me for usurping the name of Father. But even if I
+were a consecrated priest, I should still be free to change my fate. If
+I become a Protestant, no vow binds me any longer. _We will go to
+Transylvania, and adopt the Hungarian faith; you know ever so many
+belong to this faith, just, pious, God-fearing people; a third of the
+population of the country is Protestant. God will not punish us either
+for this._"
+
+("Ah, he learned that too from me; how well he remembers!")
+
+"We will go to distant lands, where no one has ever heard our name. _I
+will buy an estate where we can live in comfort._ I may become as rich
+as I please; look in this niche here; _here are treasures heaped up that
+we need only to take; all is mine_. It was left me as an inheritance by
+the one who hid it here in former days. I have the proof in writing. The
+treasure is doubly mine; on the casks of gold and silver are inscribed
+my family arms; the Hussites of old stole it from our castle Lietava. It
+is my inheritance, see there!" The knight threw the light of his torch
+into this niche of the wall; the maiden's eyes were blinded by the sight
+of the treasure heaped up there.
+
+"I can take as much of it as my shoulders can carry off."
+
+But the maiden said sadly, "I have no desire for the treasure. Who knows
+what curse is resting there!"
+
+"I too am willing to renounce it. Then we will go away poor, _and we
+will journey to some poor little village, whose church tower is
+surmounted with a weather-vane; you shall be the wife of a poor
+Calvinist pastor, and take care of your own kitchen and vegetable
+garden_. A thatched roof shall be our shelter, and happiness shall dwell
+within."
+
+("These words, too, did I put into his mouth.")
+
+"How beautiful it would be," sighed the maiden, "if it were not a
+dream!"
+
+"All can be real, if you will but say yes."
+
+"Ah, do not tempt me! Already have I gone so far that I can no longer
+cast a stone at any sinful woman. I am the most sinful of all. I have
+allowed myself to be overpersuaded--not by you so much as by my own
+heart--at night, and Sunday night too--when all good people are asleep,
+to steal out of the house, God's house, the church I chose for a meeting
+place with you! I have drawn the veil over my face in the presence of
+men, and drawn it aside in the presence of the saints. I am more sinful
+than the Lady of Madocsany, for I do what she only meditates. I come
+here under the cloak of innocence."
+
+"I swear to you, you are more holy than the saints there on the wall. If
+your soul condemns you because you only half-love, quiet it by saying
+that you love me wholly."
+
+"What would you have me do?"
+
+"Follow me now,--this very moment. The way of escape is open. _In the
+summer-house of Madocsany Castle are two horses saddled, the key is in
+the rear gate_; we can escape unnoticed. When the morning dawns, and our
+escape is discovered, we shall be beyond the mountains."
+
+("My own plan of flight.")
+
+"Leave me, for Heaven's sake, tempt me not. A week to consider."
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"One day then at least, to consider this whole plan of yours. If I am to
+turn aside from God and all the saints, let me at least finish weeping
+in their presence; let me tell them why it is I love you more than
+Heaven."
+
+("Ah, you too know that? And yet you did not learn it from me!")
+
+"Let me go back for a day--just for one day--I must take leave of the
+memory of my mother, must beg her gentle picture for forgiveness, must
+collect my few relics, set free my poor little dove, and once more kiss
+the hand that has so often abased me, but that I still bless. I cannot
+go with you until I have kissed my father's hand for the last time."
+
+"Very well, it shall be so; but promise me that you will come again
+to-morrow."
+
+"By my eternal happiness, I will come."
+
+"And follow me out into the world?"
+
+"God pardon me for what I am doing!"
+
+"And so I let you go. God be with you."
+
+And he kissed the maiden's brow.
+
+"Accompany me with your light back into the church; now that I am
+sinful, I am afraid of the darkness of the church."
+
+Both went back through the door into the passage way, and the door
+closed behind them. Idalia came out of her hiding-place--the bones of
+the widow----! She shook the mould off her cloak. She came near letting
+loose the hot lava of her passion. In the ring of the closed door hung
+the ring of the secret lock: the name that served as key was Hieronymus.
+She had only to put the iron pole across the door, shake up the rings,
+and then pound with her fist on the heavy door, and cry,--"I wish you a
+pleasant journey, you turtle-doves! You can go out past the two bears,
+and that third one, your father. I send kind greetings to all three."
+But she knew how to control herself; it should not be done this way.
+To-morrow is yet to come, and that shall be the _dies irae_. She had
+nothing more to say. She caught up her lantern, and ran hastily back, so
+hastily that she slipped several times on the damp ground. When she had
+run about a thousand feet, she looked back. She did not see the
+torch-light coming near her. Naturally they must take leave of each
+other, and that required time.
+
+It was still the dead of night when she reached the end of the
+passage-way. Saint Nepomeck stood aside for her, and then took his place
+again. Idalia hurried up the secret stairway to Father Peter's room.
+
+The child in his fear had fallen asleep on the bearskin in front of the
+bed. The mother laid him on the bed and covered him over, and he did not
+awaken. Then she looked out of the window to wait until the saint's
+statue came down again. It was a good half hour before the figure of
+Father Peter appeared from underground. So then their parting must have
+lasted half an hour. He had escaped through the window; through the
+window he must come back. She waited until he began to climb up the
+trellis-work; then wrapped her sleeping child in her cloak and carried
+him to her own room. Father Peter should not speak with him again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE ICE-BLOCKED FLOOD.
+
+
+This night was not for sleep. Idalia went from room to room with the
+death-wound at her heart. She did not herself know what she was looking
+for. She stopped before her mirror and gazed at herself for some time.
+Her deep sorrow, her restless passion, had made her face still more
+beautiful. The tears shining in her eyes lent a peculiar charm to her
+features. "You lie. I am not beautiful! I am a demon--the demon that
+pursues him!" The mirror then said to her, "You are hideous." Now she
+knew what she must do. She sat down to write a letter.
+
+
+"To his Lordship, Grazian Likovay.
+
+Honored Lord: If you would know whose lover Father Peter really is, keep
+watch to-night and when you hear the bells ring at midnight,--those
+bells that you think are rung by spirits, since they have no cord--then,
+instead of covering up your head in fear, arise and go with your
+servants into the ghost-haunted chapel; there you shall learn which one
+of us has cause to go begging for his lost honor. What I have said, I
+have said--to-night after midnight. If you take warning, well and good;
+if not, also good. It matters not to me whether you accept it, or
+whether you do not. You will repent if you listen to me: you will repent
+still more if you do not.
+
+I remain, your respectful servant,
+
+The widow of Franz Karponay."
+
+
+She sealed the letter with her own crest. Meantime, it had been
+gradually growing light. She sent for the Fool.
+
+"Hirsko," she said, "Can one cross the Waag?"
+
+"Hare and hounds can; but man could hardly do it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because during the night, the ice began to move, and if it has not
+caught fast on the island, it must be going right merrily."
+
+"Would you dare cross over with this letter?"
+
+"If I had two heads, and could lose one there and leave the other here,
+I do not say but that I would undertake it."
+
+"Listen, Hirsko; I'll give you a new suit from head to foot, if you'll
+take this letter through. If you return, you shall have wine enough for
+a lifetime."
+
+"And if I go to the bottom, I shall have water enough for a lifetime."
+
+"Just try it. It's not so very dangerous. See this purse, it's full of
+money; that too is yours, if you succeed."
+
+The Fool shook his big head. He was not ready to accept her proposition
+that he should "just try it, for he could float like a pumpkin."
+
+"Now listen, Hirsko; I know that you have always been in love with me.
+If you carry this letter over and come back, I'll be your wife."
+
+At this the Fool gave a bound, and then began tugging with both hands at
+his shoe strings.
+
+"Tira li! You're not joking, just give me a kiss."
+
+Idalia offered her lips to the monster. He hurried out of the room with
+the letter, down to the Waag, striding along with a six-foot pole.
+Idalia stationed herself at the balcony window and watched her
+messenger. The ice had already begun to move on the Waag; single fields
+of it floated down the centre of the stream, and giant cakes were heaped
+one above another; only a Fool would undertake such a task. The
+messenger's figure disappeared at times behind the barricades and then
+reappeared: now and then, he broke in, and worked his way out again
+with his pole. After an hour's struggle in the very face of Providence,
+he reached the other shore.
+
+"He's well over," said Idalia, and left the window. For Hirsko it was
+hardly well; for Lord Grazian, when he had read the letter, in his first
+outburst of anger, had him bound and scourged to the full value of a
+woman's kiss. But the arrow had not missed its mark; it clung fast by
+the barb to his heart.--
+
+Now Idalia can go to breakfast. Father Peter was already there; his face
+showed no change.
+
+"I did not find the boy in his bed this morning," he said
+good-naturedly.
+
+"No, naturally not," she said, with a suppressed laugh. "After you had
+laid him down, put him to sleep, and closed the door between the two
+rooms, he awoke, and becoming frightened to find himself alone, ran to
+me, and he is asleep still."
+
+Father Peter made an effort to appear calm. The lady continued pertly:
+"Shall I guess why you closed the door between the two rooms? You found
+in your room a new suit of clothes, and did not wish the child to see
+you try them on."
+
+There was a whirring sound in Father Peter's head. It was dangerous to
+say that he had not done so, for perhaps the lady would send for the
+garments and see that there were traces of mud on the boots. He had to
+answer the question with a smile. "Yes, you are right."
+
+"Well, how do they fit?"
+
+"That's for another to say."
+
+"And when shall she say it?"
+
+"When I answer your late questions."
+
+"And when shall I get that answer?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+The lady clapped her hands with a laugh. "Ha, ha! To-morrow. So you
+won't keep me waiting a week. Not until next Sunday? To-morrow I shall
+learn whether you are Father Peter or Tihamer Csorbai! To-morrow, even
+to-morrow!"
+
+And with that she jumped up and danced the cushion dance, singing
+enchantingly as she danced. Then she threw the cap from her head at the
+feet of the man, and knelt on her cap, as on a cushion.
+
+If Tihamer Csorbai had entered into the joke and set free with a kiss
+the woman on her knees before him, then would she have plunged a
+poisoned dagger into his heart, and the other woman, at least, would
+have been saved. But nothing of the kind entered into the knight's
+thoughts. The woman rose without a kiss, and danced and danced, until
+she danced herself out of the room. No expression on her face betrayed
+what was raging in her soul. She went to her room to waken her boy. She
+was tenderness itself. Young Cupid complained of the frightful dreams he
+had had in the night. He saw first Father Peter and then his mother push
+Saint Nepomeck aside and follow each other down to hell.
+
+"You little goose, you ate too much plum-cake last evening."
+
+"But I did not dream this, I saw it with my own eyes. I was in Father
+Peter's room."
+
+"Oh, you darling, you were with me all night long. I could not cover you
+up often enough, you kicked about so."
+
+"Where's my little silver whistle?"
+
+"Your little silver whistle! Dear soul, you left that in the land of
+dreams."
+
+"I am still cold. I am all of a tremble."
+
+"You are feverish, sweetheart; stay in bed to-day, and I'll bring your
+playthings to you, and make you a nice tea that will make you well
+again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+IN THE GHOST'S HOUR.
+
+
+Grazian Likovay read the letter through two and three times, and could
+not understand it. There is nothing more difficult than putting an idea
+into an empty head. Then he had to call Master Mathias to his help.
+
+"See this letter! A fool wrote it, a fool brought it, and only a fool
+can understand it."
+
+"It's plain enough to me."
+
+"How so? How so?"
+
+"You've not forgotten, have you, the disgrace you brought on Father
+Peter at the Bittse wedding-feast? I was there myself. I saw it, and I
+remember the face you tore the cowl from; it was exactly Tihamer
+Csorbai's face."
+
+"I hit him a blow that told, didn't I?"
+
+"Yes, you did; but a wound of that kind is not forgotten, especially
+when it falls on a wound that is not yet scarred over. Now you know
+Tihamer Csorbai is the rejected suitor of your daughter Magdalene, and
+that we live so near each other that the two castles stare each other
+in the eye."
+
+"Then you think the letter is about Magdalene?"
+
+"I am sure there is no other woman in the household. But if all these
+beautiful women, young and old, hanging in these frames, were living,
+Tihamer would still give his heart to Magdalene alone. For if a handsome
+woman were all he asked, he would have had it right there in Madocsany,
+and he need not have made any pilgrimages for her."
+
+"But just look out of the window. Do you see how the ice is crashing out
+of the river? When the fool came over, the ice had just begun to move;
+but now heavy blocks of it are rolling along. See, the huts along the
+bank have been swept away, and the ice has cut off thick tree trunks
+like a razor. Do you think a human being could cross the river
+to-night?"
+
+"Gracious Lord, I have read in the Bible that Peter trod the water with
+bare feet, and that was a sea. Whatever is in the Bible, as a good
+Lutheran, I must believe."
+
+"But that was in old times, and it was Saint Peter; he could do
+anything. To-day is To-day."
+
+"All I know, gracious Lord, is that a priest can do a good deal, a
+lover can do more, and when you get both in one, he can do everything."
+
+"We must talk it over with Berezowski." The old suitor, since his return
+from the wedding feast at Bittse, had been staying at Mitosin Castle. It
+was understood that he should wed the beautiful Magdalene, and take her
+to his house in Galicia. The license was all ready. The only reason that
+the marriage had not yet taken place was that father-in-law and
+son-in-law kept the bottle going from hand to hand until morning, and
+then the lover had to be dragged off to bed by his hands and feet, and
+neither a fire alarm nor a murderer's stroke could have roused him from
+his bed. Afternoons, this bigot Lord would not enter into any churchly
+ceremony, and so the wedding was put off from day to day; and the
+wedding feast was secretly consumed by the guests in advance.
+
+To-day too they shook and pulled the bridegroom elect; they roared in
+his ear; but to all their attempts, his only reply was a movement of the
+hand to brush away a fly, or of the foot, as aimed at a dog; and then he
+slept on steadily.
+
+"Wait," said Lord Grazian, "I have an idea. I will question the girl."
+And he went in search of his daughter. He found Magdalene at an open
+window.
+
+"Well, my child, you must have hot blood to open the window in such
+ice-cold weather as this."
+
+"I am giving my doves their freedom. They will have nobody to feed them,
+if I go away to-day or to-morrow."
+
+"So you know that you are to be married to-day or to-morrow."
+
+"Yes, I know, dear father."
+
+"And you have stopped tearing your hair out and bursting into tears, and
+crying out, 'I'd rather die a hundred times than marry him!'"
+
+"I will not weep again in your presence, my father."
+
+"Your nature is entirely changed. Has this been since the Bittse wedding
+feast? When I tore the cowl from the head of your former lover, and you
+learned that he was now the lover of a beautiful woman--that changed
+you, did it?"
+
+"That was a frightful moment, father."
+
+"And you do not love the priest?"
+
+"I swear to you, dear father, that I do not love the priest."
+
+"That would be dreadful. I don't know what I should do with you if you
+dared even to dream of that. But what's this little bag for?"
+
+"I am going to put some little relics in it, that I have kept of my poor
+mother's; the small medallion with her miniature, a lock of her hair,
+woven into a flower, and a little silver cross that I used to wear when
+I was a child. All are to go with me when I am far, far from here."
+
+"You have changed entirely and become a good daughter. I shall live to
+give you my blessing."
+
+"Oh, do give me your blessing, if only one word," entreated the girl, as
+she knelt before her father. "Just let me kiss your hand once, and then
+lay it on my head."
+
+Grazian let the girl draw his hand to her lips.
+
+"Only say that you forgive me all the sorrow I have caused you against
+my will."
+
+Her entreaty deceived Grazian's sleepy mind.
+
+"That's good, I am not angry with you," he growled out, and with his
+hand stroked the head of his daughter, kneeling before him; it was meant
+for something like a blessing. "But now you must consider yourself
+ready, for the priest is here. To-night we must go to bed early, and get
+up betimes to-morrow, for to-morrow shall be the wedding."
+
+Then Lord Grazian went back to the room where he had left Master
+Mathias.
+
+"You're on the wrong track, young man," he said; "I have just shrived
+the girl. She really is entirely changed. She does not cry at all when
+I talk about her wedding, and I told her that to-morrow was to be the
+day. She said, 'Very well,' and kissed my hand very prettily."
+
+"Then that's the very best proof that she has something else in mind.
+She has said good-bye because she intends to go away to-night with her
+lover before the wedding to-morrow. That is why she consented so
+readily. I know women better than that."
+
+"All the devils of Hell! Suppose that should be so! I will eat fire and
+drink poison if that's true. Wake that Pole up, even if he is half-dead.
+One can't manage a thing of this kind alone. Rouse the household."
+
+"We will do just the opposite. If we give the alarm, they too will learn
+it and be on their guard. Instead of that, let everybody drink until he
+cannot waken himself, and we will drug the bears. There is some secret
+connection with the church--those bells at midnight, and the ghost in
+the lighted church that your lordship himself has seen and heard,--all
+that does not happen without the help of man. There is something
+underneath it all. Just leave the whole matter to me, my Lord; by
+evening, I will map out such a campaign as to catch Beelzebub himself if
+he is in the business."
+
+Until evening there were whispered consultations throughout Mitosin
+Castle, but the women were kept out of the secret. While Magdalene was
+at supper, the church was filled with Berezowski's armed servants. The
+bridegroom, in a violent passion, insisted that he would be present
+himself. As twilight came on, Berezowski slipped into the chapel, and
+concealed himself there with his armed followers in the crypt. They had
+a cask of beer and a checker board to make the time pass more rapidly.
+When it was hardly dark, Grazian gave orders for all to go to their
+night's rest, for the next morning they must rub their eyes open early,
+for there was to be a wedding in the house. The whole night through, not
+a soul must stir, and cellars and store-houses were to be kept locked.
+At evening, the students sang the Maiden's song before the windows of
+the bride's room, and then all the lights in the castle went out. There
+was as deep a quiet as if no one were awake; only the cracking of the
+ice on the Waag sounded on the still night.
+
+When the great castle clock struck midnight, Magdalene arose, put on her
+gown, fastened to her girdle the little bag with its relics, and slipped
+noiselessly down the stairway to the little gate in the rear that led to
+the bear den. She looked about her, but the bears were not to be seen.
+After Candlemas, the bears begin their winter sleep, when the weather
+outside is raw. The bears did not cross her path. Fearlessly she went to
+the church-door. From there she breathed one last farewell to the castle
+of her fathers, that she was to leave forever, and then entered the
+door. As before, the moonlight fell upon the church, and lighted up the
+pierced saints, the nameless gravestones, and the altar picture in its
+carved frame. Now had she reason to fear, for she had learned what those
+saints suffered from the darts that pierced them. She had learned who
+slept under nameless gravestones, and the names of those terrible forms
+that frightened and misled the hermit in the picture.
+
+If her deliverer, if her lover, would only come sooner! The owls in the
+tower hooted more than ever. Suddenly the bell rang and the altar
+picture shone brightly. Her lover was near. What a wonderful altar
+picture that was that appeared in the place of Saint Anthony,--a Saint
+Ladislaus! This was a genuine Hungarian saint, not one tortured to death
+by heathen, but one who struck the heathen down! Now he came down from
+the altar frame to comfort the kneeling maiden.
+
+"It is well that you hurried: to-morrow they are to take me away to
+Poland. You might never more have seen me."
+
+"Let us hasten, my love."
+
+"Just wait a moment until I offer one last prayer at my brother's
+grave."
+
+"Let me add mine."
+
+And so the two went and knelt before the monument of the murdered
+brother, and hand in hand offered their prayer.
+
+"Amen," and "Amen." The girl kissed the bust carved in stone. "You
+forgive me, do you not, dear brother?" she said.
+
+"How could I help forgiving you, my dear sister?" rang out a hoarse
+voice from the depths, and with that the crypt door opened, and out
+plunged Berezowski's armed force, and at their head the wronged
+bridegroom with drawn sword. In the hand of Tihamer Csorbai too, the
+sword suddenly flashed.
+
+"Well, if you are no priest, I'll kill you on the spot," roared
+Berezowski, raising his weapon for a heavy stroke; but Tihamer advanced
+and struck him under the shoulder, so that his arm dropped. Berezowski
+himself fell back on the floor without seeing the end of the struggle.
+
+"Back underground again, you cowards!" shouted Tihamer, dealing deadly
+blows at his assailants, who withdrew before his terrible anger toward
+the crypt door. Just then, the church door opened and in rushed
+Grazian's household of servants with torches and weapons; he himself
+carried only his crutch in his hand.
+
+"Here monk," he cried, "stand, parson, you Father Peter, tempter! You
+shall be beaten down with a stick." And he rushed blindly toward him
+with his crutch raised. Magdalene threw herself between the two.
+
+"By all the saints! Father! Tihamer! Do not harm each other, trample
+rather on me!"
+
+"Out of the way!" growled her father, and with his foot he pushed aside
+the maiden kneeling before him. Luckily for him, one of his own company
+had thrown himself in the way, and received on his head the heavy sabre
+cut that Tihamer had intended for the father. Two more servants fell
+fatally wounded under the knight's grim strokes, and then his sword
+broke off at the hilt. But this miserable pack of menials did not
+conquer him: it was true he had no sword, but on the altar were great
+candelabra in copper. He seized one of those, and struck such blows
+right and left that soon his way was free before him. Whoever laid hold
+of him was glad to let him go again. With one leap he was on the altar:
+already was he in the altar frame, and behind him lay the secret
+passage; he had only to open the oaken door and push the bolt, and he
+was saved. But as he cast a glance from the altar down to the church
+below, bright with the red light of the torches, he saw a sight that
+held him riveted fast to the spot: he saw Grazian Likovay seize
+Magdalene's long streaming hair, and drag the helpless maiden to the
+church door.
+
+This robbed him wholly of his senses; rage stifled every human thought
+in his soul. He was now nothing but a wild beast--a lion robbed of his
+lioness; roaring with anger, he sprang with one bound from the altar to
+the floor; each hand was armed with the heavy candelabra, and with these
+as clubs he threw himself on the pack of servants, crushing everything
+before him in the way of human bones. Like Hercules in his Nessus-shirt,
+he raged through the midst of the servants and forced his way to the
+church door where Grazian was dragging his daughter by the hair. He
+overtook the old man, and dealt a heavy blow at his head, but Grazian
+caught it with his hand. Somebody from behind threw a cloak over
+Tihamer's head, another made a plunge at his feet, and soon he was
+overpowered, thrown down, and bound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL WOMAN'S REVENGE.
+
+
+The ice on the Waag rolled more and more mightily! Not within the memory
+of the oldest inhabitant had it ever been so dangerous before. The icy
+flood crowded through the brook of Madocsany to the mill-dam, easily
+broken through, and then it might have found its way to the castle wall.
+
+"See," said little Cupid to his mother, "Why did you push Saint Nepomeck
+out of his place, you and Father Peter? Now Saint Nepomeck is paying you
+for it."
+
+"Oh, you've been dreaming."
+
+"No, I saw it! I am still trembling at it."
+
+"If you are trembling, then you have fever. Go back to bed, and don't
+look out of the window. I'll send Hirsko to tell you a story."
+
+(Yes, Hirsko, who knows where he is now?)
+
+"No, send me Father Peter instead, he'll tell me the truth."
+
+"Very well then, Father Peter."
+
+Since dawn, Idalia had been fully ten times to Father Peter's
+sitting-room to see if he was at home; but neither he nor his handsome
+cloak was to be seen. Through the opened window whistled the wind. The
+lady went out on to her glass-covered balcony and looked in astonishment
+at the great ice sea which the Waag had changed the valley into, for the
+time; a sea through the centre of which flowed a swift current, while
+its borders were of ice barricades, rising mountain high. The four
+tin-roofed towers of Mitosin Castle were resplendent in the morning
+sunshine. Suddenly it seemed to her that a black spot detached itself
+from the opposite bank and made its way through the ice stream. Soon she
+could see through the glass that it was a boat with five men. What might
+this boat be bringing? There need be no fear of five men. Here were five
+and twenty servants, hunters and haiduks already, and all armed with
+guns and halberds. The men in the boat were making a truly perilous
+attempt; the masses of ice threatened every moment to sink the boat.
+Often they jumped out to pull it through the ice blocks. At one moment a
+giant slab of ice rose and then suddenly plunged down, almost destroying
+them all, like so many water rats. A man must have a deeply fixed
+purpose to go to Madocsany such a day. Who could it be? There were four
+in the crew, it was apparent from a distance. The fifth was so wrapped
+in his bearskin that he was not recognizable. At last they came in
+safety to the mill-dam. Then the crew sprang out of their boat, dragged
+it up on the ice, fastened it to a willow; and now the fifth person, all
+wrapped in his bearskin, rose and climbed up on the bank. Then Idalia
+recognized him at a glance--he limped. It was the lord of the
+neighboring estate. Grazian Likovay was approaching,--her foe in whose
+heart she had now turned her knife for the second time. But he comes
+alone--what has he in mind? Was the old bear looking up his former foe,
+to throttle her, like a wild-cat? The bear would find by experience that
+the wild cat had claws she knew how to use.
+
+The Lady Idalia wore a long Russian cloak, bordered with fur, and in the
+broad sleeves was carefully concealed a poisoned dagger, which must by a
+single scratch inevitably send down to death the strongest man.
+
+At the same time, the haiduks entered the next room as a reserve force,
+and the steward and manager stood ready to strike down the first man who
+tried to injure their lady. Unnecessary prudence. Grazian Likovay had
+come without weapons; he could not have used any, had he had it; for
+his right arm was in a sling, and his hand was bandaged. Father Peter's
+last blow with the candelabra had been aimed at his head, but Likovay
+caught it with his hand, and so maimed it. The left hand was occupied
+with the crutch and his cap, now removed.
+
+With downcast head and humble soul, dragging the lame foot, Grazian came
+into the presence of the Lady, and addressed her in a voice like that of
+a beggar at the door.
+
+"Humbled to the dust, I come, my Lady, to you, a poor, dead, buried old
+man. I acknowledge that I have been defeated, maimed, destroyed. I also
+recognize that I deserved it. I was the guilty one. I was the fool. When
+disgrace reached to the very tower of my own house, I sought it in your
+cellar. I accused you of a shame that was my daily bread. You were
+right. May this give you comfort."
+
+"What have you done? I hope that you have not been killing or
+murdering."
+
+"Oh, don't be frightened. I know how sensitive your heart is. You would
+have mourned if the wild, foolish Grazian Likovay, in consequence of a
+good word from you, in consequence of a truly friendly warning worthy of
+a kinsman and a neighbor, had throttled one after the other, both man
+and maiden. No, he has not done so; on the contrary, it is we who have
+been mowed down."
+
+"By Father Peter?"
+
+"Yes, by Father Peter, but in the form of Tihamer Csorbai. He is a
+valiant knight. First, he all but killed my intended son-in-law, the
+good Berezowski, and then he crippled two of my brave haiduks, and when
+his sword broke, seized the church candlesticks and dealt us blows. I
+received one, I beg you to look at it." And with that he took the bloody
+bandage off his hand.
+
+Idalia was horrified; she wished to help Grazian bind it up again, but
+he would not allow it.
+
+"Don't trouble yourself, gracious Lady, with my teeth and my left hand I
+can bind it up somehow."
+
+"And what became of Father Peter?" urged the lady.
+
+"He finally succumbed; 'many geese are the death of even a boar!'"
+
+"Do you mean that he was killed?"
+
+"No, not killed. I told you already that I did not kill anybody. I am a
+gentle, pious man. Neither I, nor anybody else at my command, will kill
+Father Peter."
+
+"Then what will become of him?"
+
+"I'll take care of that; but not a hair of his head shall be touched; I
+promise you that in advance. I swear to you, even, that he shall outlive
+me."
+
+"What is to be done with your daughter?"
+
+"Oh, you need have no concern on her account, gracious Lady, I have not
+killed her either. Neither have I shut her up in a dungeon, nor even
+once scourged her. I have become a good, inoffensive man."
+
+"What have you done, then? Have you forgiven her?"
+
+"I have not only released her from punishment, but I have even let her
+go. I let her go, just as I once promised her, if she should ever again
+presume to meet Tihamer Csorbai."
+
+"You have not lost your senses, I hope."
+
+"Must you know at once what I promised her? Very well, I promised her
+that I would set her in a boat, and would push her, boat and all, into
+the Waag, and then she might, in God's name, float whichever way the
+water carried her. Just at present, the Waag offers a fine opportunity
+for such a boat-ride."
+
+"Is it possible that you have really done this?"
+
+"It is, indeed. If you had listened in the stilly night, a little after
+midnight, you might have heard for a long time her cries for help, in
+the pauses of the crashing of the ice floes. I could not bear them,
+because the wind was blowing in the opposite direction, and the ice
+splitting sounded too loud."
+
+"You are a monster!"
+
+"Oh, no indeed! I am a humble crawling worm of the dust. I am a halting
+cripple. I am an uprooted, decayed willow. But why do I complain to you
+of my sorrow? I did not come through the icy flood to find Hell itself,
+to bewail my misery to you here in Madocsany Castle. I will not cause
+you one unpleasant hour in this way. I come, however, on a very
+important matter, which I wish to settle to-day between us. I wish to
+sell you the Mitosin estate."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"The entire Mitosin estate. Castle and everything, including all the
+stock. I wish to sell it to you for all time. Your worthy husband once
+wanted to buy it of me, when I was in need of money, because of my son's
+debts. Your husband offered me then sixty thousand dollars and thirty
+thousand ducats, but I did not consent. I preferred to sell the
+beautiful fertile property of Alfald, my wife's dowry, but the Mitosin
+Castle of my ancestors I would not set a price on for my neighbor; my
+pride would not allow it. Now I have no more pride, I am humbled to the
+dust. The disgrace which has fallen upon my house has been seen by
+hundreds, has been talked of by hundreds; it is impossible for me to
+stay longer in this vicinity. I must go forth into a country where
+nobody understands our language,--to Wallachia or Little Russia. That is
+why I offer you my estate. If you will pay the sum your husband offered,
+I shall accept with joyful thanks. If you wish to pay less, I shall not
+protest against it. I wish to flee from my possessions, and therefore I
+will sell them at any price, just as a dying man tries to sell his
+mattress to get money to buy his coffin."
+
+Idalia raised her head proudly. The ornaments on her cap glittered; thus
+does the demon of satisfied revenge exalt his horns; the Bittse day was
+avenged, richly avenged with interest, and interest on interest. Her
+torn veil had been paid for with a whole shroud. They had wished to
+drive her hence, and now it was they who must flee. Now would she exult
+in her triumph.
+
+"Well, noble Grazian Likovay, if you wish to sell your Mitosin estate
+forever, I will pay you the price for it that my poor departed husband
+offered. The gold is at hand; I am not accustomed to put it out at
+interest; you can have it when you please."
+
+"Then, at once; for to-morrow at this time no living soul shall speak
+with me in the owl-nest of Mitosin. So then, at once,--that is what
+brought me here. I have ready with me the contract that your husband
+sent me, in two copies. We have only to fill in the blanks left for the
+names and amounts, sign the contract, seal it, and have it witnessed.
+Have you any men here who understand writing?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Idalia did not need to go far for them. In the adjoining room, her
+steward and manager were listening; both learned men, who understood
+Latin too; she could call them. Now she was ready to offer her guest an
+arm-chair, and even have a cushion put under his gouty feet. The two
+learned men took up the two copies of the sale and purchase and compared
+the contents. Then they wrote the names and the amounts of the dollars
+and ducats. Both parties added their names with the same pen, and
+imprinted the red seal.
+
+"Perhaps I ought to have sealed mine in black," muttered Grazian through
+his teeth, "But who can tell?"
+
+Then both witnesses signed and sealed the document: each one took his
+copy, and now it was time to pay the money. Idalia had gold and silver
+brought and placed on the great oaken table. All had been packed in
+casks, large and small, arranged to open at the top, and on each cask
+was written the amount within.
+
+"Do you require us to count the money, or weigh it out?" asked the Lady
+of Madocsany.
+
+"We will neither count it, nor weigh it; whoever put it in knew how to
+count it, I am sure. And now I think everything is in order. Why should
+any one wish to deceive me, who is neither my friend nor my relative.
+There, boys, is a little drink-money for your trouble. And now close up
+the casks."
+
+And with that he put his left hand into a cask, not one of silver, but
+of gold, and tossed a handful of it into the witnesses' caps, as they
+lay on the floor.
+
+"The trade is done, gracious Lady. Now I give you the key of my castle.
+I shall spend the night at my agent's. By to-morrow morning, the Waag
+will be firm; my lame foot feels in advance that it is going to be very
+cold. You and your people can drive across in sledges, enter my towered
+hen-roost, and give your own invitations to a house-warming. Store-house
+and cellar are full. Now I ask one favor of you. Be so kind as to have
+your servants carry these casks to my boat for me. I will go ahead and
+wait for them there."
+
+"But surely you will seal the casks with your own signet."
+
+"What's the use of such care? These people will not deceive me, they are
+not relatives of mine. They are entire strangers, who have never
+received a favor from me. I can trust them."
+
+"At your own risk."
+
+"Now then, gracious Lady, let us shake hands for the last time. I regret
+that I cannot offer you my right hand. Now we can part in peace; neither
+one of us owes the other anything more in this world." And he offered
+Idalia his left hand. "What account we may have to settle with each
+other in the world below, Beelzebub will tell us, I suppose." With that
+he pushed her hand aside violently, took his crutch in his left hand,
+clapped his cap on his bald head, and without a word, limped out of the
+room and did not look around until he had reached his boat.
+
+Twelve haiduks carried the casks of money to his boat; were they all
+there or not? Nobody counted. Anything more?
+
+Then Likovay seated himself in the stern of his boat, and said to his
+boatmen, "Push off."
+
+The boat moved still more slowly than before; but what wonder, when it
+was heavier by the hundredweight of silver and gold?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE GRAVE OF GOLD.
+
+
+Grazian Likovay's gouty leg really was a good weather-prophet; they had
+hardly reached the middle of the Waag when the ice crowded around them,
+and the boat was held firm amid the blocks. One of the crew, at the
+peril of his life, had to cross the ice cakes to the shore, arouse the
+people of the castle, and return to the boat with a long rope. By
+clinging to this rope, Grazian and the crew, with the casks of gold,
+were brought to shore. Here the lord of the castle was met by Master
+Mathias with a troica on runners. The casks were put in, and Lord
+Grazian seated himself on the driver's seat, with Master Mathias beside
+him to guide the three horses.
+
+"Knock the top out of one of the casks, my good friend, and pay the
+whole household their wages for a year. The treasurer, legal adviser,
+and general manager have been paid already and their goods packed up;
+within an hour every living thing will be gone from here. Every one I
+find staying behind will be shot down; you alone may stay with me."
+
+"I beg your pardon for contradicting you," said Master Mathias, "but
+everybody knows already how much gold we brought back from Madocsany,
+and there is cause to fear that we shall be robbed if we stay alone."
+
+"Don't worry. We'll put the whole troica into the church for the night,
+and nobody can force his way in there. As soon as the moon rises, we'll
+make ready the horses, take our seats in the carriage, and drive out
+into the wide world toward Galicia. We have money enough, and can live
+there like lords."
+
+"But you know one cannot live by gold and silver alone; we must have
+something to eat."
+
+"That has all been prepared for. In the agent's house, we shall get our
+evening meal, and provisions for the journey; here's the key. There
+you'll find some choice Tokay; we will carouse on that to-day and take
+what is left with us. Now get the sledge into the church."
+
+This was done. The horses were put into the sacristy, because from their
+unguarded stable they could be easily driven away. One cask of gold was
+left outside, and with this Master Mathias paid the whole retinue a
+year's wages; then showed them all outside the gate and locked it
+behind them. After that nobody else could get into the castle, for the
+keys were already at Madocsany. The cask was still not entirely empty.
+
+"What shall I do with the rest?" asked Master Mathias.
+
+"Put the money in your pockets, you may need it on your way."
+
+Master Mathias did not wait to be told twice.
+
+"No, don't kiss my hand, faithful fellow, I do not deserve it. But
+listen. You are master of a thousand arts, and so I suppose you
+understand masonry; bring your tools here into the church."
+
+Master Mathias obeyed. He brought the mortar, the trowel, and the
+smoothing board.
+
+"Now pick up your tools and follow me."
+
+Grazian led Master Mathias through the opening of the altar frame, (the
+picture had been cast aside) into the secret passage-way; then to the
+heavy iron door, which when opened from outside set the church bells
+ringing. This door opened into the long passage-way, and at its very
+beginning were two side passages. In front of one of these side passages
+had been unloaded a pile of bricks. Lord Grazian threw a light into the
+dark space.
+
+"See!"
+
+"What a frightful place," said Master Mathias, with his teeth
+chattering. "What kind of women are those?"
+
+"Bones of women, as you see."
+
+"How did they get here?"
+
+"They know best how they got here, but how to get away from here was
+what they did not know. And yet they tried in every way, as you see.
+Here they tried to break through the wall; with knives they pulled out
+two and three rows of bricks, and then grew weary of the work and gave
+it up. The wall is six feet through here."
+
+"Yes, fully."
+
+"Now then, do you know what these bricks here are for? You are to wall
+up the opening of this other space."
+
+"I can do that easily."
+
+"But first swear to me as a good Lutheran, on the Holy Gospels, that you
+will never in this life tell one word of what you have seen and heard in
+this place to any living soul."
+
+With that he drew from his pocket a small Bible, and required Master
+Mathias to put his hand on the Bible and repeat the oath after him.
+
+"Now to your work."
+
+Out of the depths of the recess there sounded forth a sorrowful song:
+
+"De profundis ad te clamavi, Domine----"
+
+"Who is that?" whispered Master Mathias with a shudder.
+
+"Take your torch and look at him."
+
+Master Mathias threw the light of the torch into the dark space. Then he
+saw Father Peter in his monk's cowl, bound, and in an upright position.
+All around him were heaped up gold and silver and jewels that held him
+fixed. His cowl was drawn down over his face, so that it could not be
+seen.
+
+"Father Peter!" whispered Master Mathias, turning to Lord Grazian.
+
+"The Devil is in you that you guessed it! Yes, it really is Father
+Peter."
+
+"Who brought him here?"
+
+"I did, with my crooked leg, and my crushed hand."
+
+"So then he has not been killed."
+
+"You heard him sing."
+
+"And you wish me to wall him in?"
+
+"Not wholly. Leave a hole in the wall, about the size of the head of a
+small cask, so that he shall not suffocate."
+
+"And who shall bring him food when we leave this country?"
+
+"A raven of the Prophet Elias. Anything that is in the Bible is true: if
+it happened once that a raven brought bread to a hungry prophet, it can
+happen twice. Now to your work. You have begun this work, and you must
+finish it. Do it good-naturedly, my faithful friend, or else I'll shoot
+you in the head and then this one after you."
+
+Master Mathias was all in a cold perspiration, and went to work.
+
+"While you are doing this, I will take a little walk in this underground
+paradise."
+
+And Lord Grazian took his lantern on his maimed right arm and limped off
+through the dark, winding underground passage, counting his steps as he
+went. When he had counted five hundred and forty steps, he found himself
+in front of that cavern where the great cask stood, all covered over
+with green. He raised the cover; under this was a thick layer of wax
+that he bored through with his knife. The cask contained what he had
+supposed at the first glance--gunpowder.
+
+He gathered up a little of the dust and scattered it over his torch, it
+blazed up; the gunpowder had been kept dry through these centuries under
+its layer of wax. Then he unbuttoned his coat, and brought out a long
+cotton fuse which he had wound around his waist a number of times. With
+his left hand and his teeth, he fastened this fuse to this match hanging
+at the bunghole of the cask; then he walked back, drawing the fuse after
+him--it was just five hundred and forty yards long. When he came to the
+end, he lighted the fuse, and noted by his watch how long it took to
+burn one yard--just one minute. How many hours are there in five hundred
+and forty minutes? That was too much for his head; Master Mathias would
+tell him.
+
+When he returned, the wall was done, and Master Mathias was busy
+smoothing it off around the open space. It was strange that Grazian had
+not thought of this--what if Father Peter so walled up had made an
+arrangement with Master Mathias, during Grazian's absence, and by
+entreaties, threats and promises, persuaded him to make known his fate;
+or had he thought of this? Was that the purpose of the fuse, or was it
+for something quite different?
+
+"Are you through, my good friend? Tell me how many times sixty goes in
+five hundred and forty?"
+
+"Six times nine make fifty-four, so nine times."
+
+"Quite right. Six times nine makes fifty-four. The table of ones was
+more than I could ever get. Yes, nine times--that is quite enough. Now I
+too shall be ready soon. Do you go to the agent's house, make a good
+fire on the hearth, spread the table, and prepare our supper. I will
+stay here a little longer to take leave of my son."
+
+When the major-domo had gone, Grazian went back into the church. He
+lifted the casks of money from the carriage and rolled them along the
+passage-way to the space just walled in. When they were all piled up
+together, he stuck his hand in the opening:
+
+"Greetings, my beloved son-in-law, Father Peter; how do you fare on your
+wedding day? You have won a beautiful bride, I must acknowledge. You
+shall not say you led hence my only daughter with only what she had on
+her back. I will be a generous father and give her her inheritance from
+both father and mother. Was ever father-in-law so good as I?"
+
+Then he opened one of the casks and laid it with his left hand on his
+wounded right arm. He smothered the pain that this caused him and shook
+the silver shower of dollars down into the cavern; he did the same with
+all the casks that contained silver money.
+
+"This was your portion from her mother; now comes the dowry from her
+father."
+
+And he brought forth the casks full of gold, and poured their costly
+contents over the head of his son-in-law. The heaps of money came up to
+the victim's shoulders, only his head was still free.
+
+"Miserere, mei Domine----" resounded from the lips of the man buried
+alive in gold.
+
+"Ha, ha," laughed Lord Grazian, "so you want a song. Shall I
+sing you one? How do you like this: 'Gemitus mortis,--dolores
+inferni--circumdederunt me. Perhaps you like this better:--'Yesterday I
+went to town and heard the matins read. Now the priest who read the
+matins has become my lover'--You don't want any more of that, then
+here's one: 'In paradisum ne ducant te angeli--Kyrie eleison'--ha ha ha!"
+
+Then he seized his torch and hobbled off through the passage, continuing
+to mix popular songs with litany.
+
+That diabolical laughter was the last sound of the night in this
+subterranean cavern.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE FEAST OF DEATH.
+
+
+This Master Mathias was a very clever man--more clever than all the
+rest.
+
+"I have been made the receiver of a secret, so strong that it will eat
+its way through the walls that hold it. It's true I have sworn on the
+Gospel that I will not betray it to anybody; but how can Lord Grazian
+believe me altogether, when he does not believe the Gospel? I am
+inclined to think he would have much more confidence in a dead man. And
+how easy it is to make a dead man out of a living one! Just a taste of
+meat with something good on it--one swallow of a carefully prepared
+drink--and then a peaceful good night. One does not need to defend
+himself against a dead man."
+
+Master Mathias thought of this while he cut the meat that he found in
+the house, set the wine on the table and wiped off the plates. He had
+thought out a plan. In the house there was still one living creature, a
+hunting dog; he called him in, gave him some meat and bread; and the dog
+swallowed all. Then he gave him a bowl of wine; the dog drank this too,
+and nothing happened. So then neither drink nor food contained any
+poison that would kill instantly, and later--why he would watch
+carefully my Lord Grazian's hands.
+
+He had to wait some time for him to finish putting away the gold, then
+suddenly the ghostly bell rang out, a sign that some one was near the
+door of the underground passage. Lord Grazian staggered out of the
+church. The bears were not in the garden any more, their hides were
+hanging on the hedge; their master had had them skinned the day before,
+as a reward for their faithless watching.
+
+"The ghosts have been ringing again," growled out Master Mathias, as
+Lord Grazian entered.
+
+"Never mind, they have done it for the last time," said Lord Grazian,
+sitting down at the table. His feet were encased in large, high Polish
+boots, in the legs of which were all kinds of tools; out of one he
+brought a knife in a silver case and his two-tined fork. A real lord
+never puts a stranger's table-silver to his mouth. Out of the other leg
+he brought a gold drinking cup in tortoise-shell case, the "bratina"
+that can be drained at one swallow.
+
+"Now, my good servant, prepare yours, and prepare mine; you see I have
+but one arm."
+
+Master and servant sat down opposite each other, and ate from one dish.
+The master had good reason to be hungry, for he had not tasted a
+mouthful since early morning. The dog went from one to the other,
+wagging his tail; neither food nor drink seemed to have hurt him any.
+
+"Now then, my good fellow, let us both drink out of this 'bratina';
+first I and then you. Do you see that is the advantage of a 'bratina',
+because the master of the house cannot poison his guests, as is the
+custom with foreigners. For with us the cup goes round, and all drink
+from one cup,--first of all the master."
+
+Lord Grazian filled the cup and drained it off--
+
+"To your health, my faithful servant!"
+
+Then he passed the cup, and Master Mathias too drained it.
+
+"To your health, my beloved master!"
+
+Then followed in turn the customary toasts. "To the health of the happy
+bride!" "May God give long life to the brave bridegroom!" "Long life to
+the beautiful Lady of Madocsany!" And so the cup went back and forth with
+toasts to friends and foes until there was nothing left to be said.
+
+Meantime the moon had risen and shone through the window. The Lord
+Grazian said to Master Mathias:
+
+"Why, my good follow, you have a married daughter."
+
+"True, she lives in Tepla, poor soul. Yes, over there."
+
+"How many children has she?"
+
+"Six."
+
+"You have not drunk to their health yet, have you?"
+
+"On my soul, no."
+
+"Don't drink any more, my dear fellow, you've drunk enough already. And
+that not only for to-day, but for your whole life. You are a dead man
+already, and so am I. This 'bratina' that we have been drinking out of,
+was poisoned with an Italian poison that goes by the clock. You have two
+hours left to live. So get yourself together and go on your way; the ice
+is firm, you can go over to Tepla to your daughter. Then you can go to
+bed, send for a priest, and make your will, and you will at least have
+somebody to close your eyes."
+
+That was the end of the comedy.
+
+Master Mathias sprang up in terror, his hair on end. He began already to
+feel the pangs of approaching death. With a curse he dashed out of the
+room, leaving behind his bag of gold, and goaded by torture, rushed out
+through the castle gate over the ice-covered Waag.
+
+Lord Grazian filled his beaker again and again with wine; and drank and
+drank--all sole alone. In his heart he offered toasts to all who had
+received good from him and returned evil, and then again to those who
+had done him favors, returned only by evil. Every cup was a new draught
+of poison, though so compounded that it acted slowly. Lord Grazian must
+make haste, for he wished to fulfil his word made to the Lady of
+Madocsany--"I swear to you that Father Peter shall live longer than I."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+ALL IS OVER.
+
+
+Idalia could not sleep that night. Satisfied revenge brings no sweet
+sleep! Frightful visions chased through her brain, in which the
+distorted faces of her disgraced victims haunted her. There is a maiden
+in a boat that the ice flood sweeps along, her cry is borne on the wind;
+and that man?--it is the one to whom Idalia has prayed, whom she has
+lost, and now she would give him over to neither man nor devil.
+
+The beautiful woman had many stately rooms, and yet there was not space
+enough for her. Long since had she wept through them all. Back and forth
+she went to the balcony and blew her breath on the panes in warm rings
+through which she could look out at the Waag. A great waste field of ice
+stretched out before her, reaching from Mitosin Castle to Madocsany; the
+moon lighted up a landscape still as death; about three o'clock in the
+morning, as she gazed out from her balcony over the wide waste, like a
+mad woman, it suddenly seemed to her as if a black spot moved over
+there and came nearer and nearer the castle; as it came nearer, it
+proved to be the figure of a man; the nearer it approached, stumbling
+among the ice blocks, the more evident became its purpose to come
+straight to the castle. It was somebody from Mitosin! Idalia wakened her
+people and gave orders to carry out a stretcher and help the man who was
+with difficulty struggling through the ice, and bring him to the castle.
+This man was Master Mathias. When brought before Idalia, his face was
+hardly recognizable, it was so blue with frost and pain, and its
+features were so distorted.
+
+"I came from Mitosin," he gasped out, sinking down upon the bearskin
+before the fire where they had laid him.
+
+"Bring him a cup of warm wine," ordered the lady.
+
+"No, no! no more wine," he groaned, "leave us alone. I have had enough
+of that."
+
+When left alone with the lady of the castle, he wrung her hands and sank
+upon his knees.
+
+"For God's sake, save me, most gracious Lady, I entreat you!"
+
+"What ails you?"
+
+"The Lord of Mitosin has poisoned me and himself too. May God punish him
+for it. Help me, or I must die."
+
+"How can I help you?"
+
+"Don't begrudge me that. You know very well I have been poisoned by a
+drinking cup, although there was no poison to be seen in it. They say
+that when you poisoned your husband, you did the same thing: you drank
+from the same cup with him, so as not to excite his suspicions, and
+drank the poison; but after he died, you went aside and took the
+antidote. You lived and he died."
+
+"You're mad!"
+
+"No, I am not. Give me the antidote. You know the secret. If you set me
+free, I'll tell you a secret you will not be sorry to hear."
+
+"What secret is that?"
+
+"The secret where Father Peter is now."
+
+At this name, the lady sprang toward Master Mathias, raised him up from
+the bearskin, and laid him on a couch.
+
+"What, you know where he is! Is he still alive?"
+
+"Yes, he is, and no harm has been done yet!"
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Give me the antidote quickly."
+
+"No, no; there is time yet. I must have the secret first, there is no
+escape for you until then."
+
+Large drops of sweat stood out on the brow of the tortured man.
+
+"My master made me promise on the Holy Gospels that I would not betray
+it to any body. I shall go to Hell for this."
+
+"You'll go there anyway. The question is whether you will go sooner or
+later. If you tell me what you know, the devils will have to wait for
+you; if you keep it to yourself, you'll have to go at once. Speak at
+once or die."
+
+"You'll surely give me the medicine?"
+
+"Yes, there you have it now. While you were speaking, I dropped it into
+your mouth. I carry it with me always in the stone of my ring. See how
+green it is, gleaming in the darkness; if I should give you all of it,
+you would live a hundred years longer."
+
+The poor fellow in the agony of death told all. When he spoke of the
+chamber of the dead, and of the cavern of treasure, Idalia was convinced
+that he spoke the truth. No one who had not been there and seen them
+could know of these places.
+
+"Good," she said, "now take this. Go home to Tepla to your daughter, and
+say nothing of what you know."
+
+But what the beautiful lady really gave Master Mathias was anything but
+an antidote; it was a still more active poison, so there should be no
+time for him to communicate his secret to a third.
+
+When Master Mathias had dragged himself to Tepla to his daughter's
+house, his tongue hardly moved in his throat, and he could only stammer:
+"Father Peter--walled in--under-ground--with treasures--in
+Mitosin--still alive--I am undone." More he could not say; by the time
+the priest came, he was already dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Idalia was left alone with the secret she had extorted. Suddenly her old
+passion blazed up again to its full height like a column of fire. Her
+beloved was still alive; he was only buried, walled in deep
+underground,--abandoned by God and man, left to the company of the
+corpses, with no sound save those of the silent night; robbed of his
+loved one, betrayed in despair, with nobody to expect but grim death.
+What if somebody should go down to him in this frightful grave, and
+should look at him through that small opening; would not such a
+countenance seem like that of an angel looking down from Heaven? Would
+he not look upon her as a goddess who should bring him up from the
+depths of the grave into God's world again? Would it be possible for him
+not to yield to the force of that love which opens graves even, and will
+not leave him to God or the devil?
+
+She did not hesitate long, but threw her black cloak around her
+shoulders, placed a dagger and a sword at her belt, and looked for a
+strong axe: "It will be convenient," she thought, "to break through the
+heavy walls." She lighted her lantern, and stole out of the castle.
+
+Toward morning, a thick fog had settled over the place, so that nobody
+saw which way she went. In fact nobody ever knew which way she had gone.
+
+About six o'clock that morning, the whole country was aroused by a
+frightful underground explosion convulsing the earth. Towers fell,
+castles rocked, the Jesuit monastery fell in, and Mitosin Chapel was
+reduced to a heap of stones.
+
+Those who were awake at the time maintained that they saw a giant column
+rise up from the middle of the Waag and blaze on high. The clouds of
+smoke were visible for some time through the fog, and seemed like an
+army of darkness. The broken ice began to heave and roll violently, not
+only forward, but in all directions, overspreading the valley and
+sweeping away before it villages and forests.
+
+After the flood had subsided and the Waag returned to its bed, evil
+traces were left behind in thick layers of round pebbles; for the Waag
+is not like those friendly rivers which when they overflow cover the
+earth with a fertile deposit.
+
+In the excitement over the disturbance of the elements, people forgot
+the frightful family history that had just been enacted in the two
+castles. A few days later, relatives of the Likovay family found the
+body of Lord Grazian in the agent's quarters of the castle. The swollen
+flood had not forced its way there; but not one stone upon another was
+left of the little church. The devastating explosion had opened a way
+through this for the streaming flood of waters, whose irresistible
+current ground stone and wood to powder.
+
+The same fate met the statue of Nepomeck at Madocsany. The Hussite
+passage was filled with stones, and the flood took its path from there
+over the country.
+
+It was not for a long, long time that the members of the Likovay family
+began to inquire what had become of the treasure that Lord Grazian had
+received from the Lady of Madocsany for his estate; but never a trace of
+it was found.
+
+And the whole of this story, from beginning to end, is a true story. The
+dates are kept in the family archives: and on the lips of the people the
+name of Father Peter still lives. The place is often visited by
+earthquakes, and at such times they say, "Father Peter has turned over
+in his grave." And every time that Mitosin Castle and estate is
+transferred to a new purchaser, it is stipulated in the contract, that
+if the buried treasure is found, it shall be given back to its rightful
+owners. But the people say that the treasure will never be found, until
+Father Peter has been set free from his living grave; and this may be
+true.
+
+
+
+
+Other Books Uniform with this Volume
+
+What's Bred in the Bone                     Grant Allen
+The Desire of the Eyes                      Grant Allen
+The Wooing O't                              Mrs. Alexander
+Her Dearest Foe                             Mrs. Alexander
+Lorna Doone                                 Blackmore
+Auld Licht Idylls and A Window in Thrums    J. M. Barrie
+An Auld Licht Manse                         J. M. Barrie
+A Living Lie                                Paul Bourget
+When the World was Younger                  Miss M. E. Braddon
+The Golden Butterfly                        Besant & Rice
+A Son of Hagar                              Hall Caine
+The Bondman                                 Hall Caine
+The Deemster                                Hall Caine
+The Shadow of a Crime                       Hall Caine
+The Moonstone                               Wilkie Collins
+Wooed and Married                           Rosa N. Carey
+Not Like Other Girls                        Rosa N. Carey
+Pretty Miss Neville                         B. M. Croker
+Beyond The Pale                             B. M. Croker
+Crime of the Boulevard                      Jules Claretie
+A Galloway Herd                             S. R. Crockett
+A Romance of Two Worlds                     Marie Corelli
+Vendetta                                    Marie Corelli
+Wormwood                                    Marie Corelli
+Thelma                                      Marie Corelli
+Ardath                                      Marie Corelli
+The Three Musketeers                        Alexandre Dumas
+Twenty Years After                          Alexandre Dumas
+Vicomte de Bragelonne                       Alexandre Dumas
+Louise de la Valliere                       Alexandre Dumas
+Ten Years Later                             Alexandre Dumas
+The Man in the Iron Mask                    Alexandre Dumas
+Two Years Before the Mast                   R. H. Dana, Jr.
+The Professor's Experiment                  The Duchess
+A Step Aside                                Charlotte Dunning
+Some Women's Ways                           Mary A. Dickens
+Not in the Prospectus                       Parke Danforth
+The White Company                           A. Conan Doyle
+Micah Clarke                                A. Conan Doyle
+The Firm of Girdlestone                     A. Conan Doyle
+The Captain of the Pole Star                A. Conan Doyle
+The Mystery of Cloomber                     A. Conan Doyle
+Strange Secrets                             A. Conan Doyle
+The Betrayal of John Fordham                B. L. Farjeon
+Borderland                                  Jessie Fothergill
+Kith and Kin                                Jessie Fothergill
+One of Three                                Jessie Fothergill
+Peril                                       Jessie Fothergill
+The Wellfields                              Jessie Fothergill
+Probation                                   Jessie Fothergill
+The First Violin                            Jessie Fothergill
+Nihilist Princess                           M. T. Gagneur
+Cranford                                    Mrs. Gaskell
+Woodlanders                                 Thomas Hardy
+Two On a Tower                              Thomas Hardy
+Far From the Madding Crowd                  Thomas Hardy
+The Arundel Motto                           Mary Cecil Hay
+For Her Dear Sake                           Mary Cecil Hay
+Nora's Love Test                            Mary Cecil Hay
+Old Myddleton's Money                       Mary Cecil Hay
+A Maiden's Choice                           W. Heimburg
+Magdalen's Fortunes                         W. Heimburg
+Defiant Hearts                              W. Heimburg
+Two Daughters of One Race                   W. Heimburg
+A Fatal Misunderstanding                    W. Heimburg
+Lucie's Mistake                             W. Heimburg
+The Dagger and the Cross                    Joseph Hatton
+A Girl of the Commune                       G. A. Henty
+The Queerest Man Alive                      George H. Hepworth
+Jasper Fairfax                              Margoret Holmes
+Tempest and Sunshine                        Mary J. Holmes
+Homestead on the Hillside                   Mary J. Holmes
+English Orphans                             Mary J. Holmes
+Lena Rivers                                 Mary J. Holmes
+Peter the Priest                            Maurus Jokai
+The Golden Age of Transylvania              Maurus Jokai
+Westward Ho                                 Charles Kingsley
+Hypatia                                     Charles Kingsley
+Phantom 'Rickshaw                           Rudyard Kipling
+In Black and White and Story of             Rudyard Kipling
+    the Gadsbys
+Wee Willie Winkie and American Notes        Rudyard Kipling
+Ballads, Poems and Other Verses             Rudyard Kipling
+Under the Deodars and City of the           Rudyard Kipling
+    Dreadful Night
+Plain Tales Prom the Hills                  Rudyard Kipling
+The Light That Failed                       Rudyard Kipling
+Soldiers Three                              Rudyard Kipling
+Mine Own People                             Rudyard Kipling
+Madame Sans Gene                            Edmond Lepelletier
+Ramuntcho                                   Pierre Loti
+Guilty Bonds                                Wm. Le Queux
+Strange Tales of a Nihilist                 Wm. Le Queux
+Gold Elsie                                  E. Marlitt
+Old Mam'sell's Secret                       E. Marlitt
+Daireen                                     F. Frankfort Moors
+A New Note                                  Ella MacMahon
+Lindsay's Girl                              Mrs. Herbert Martin
+An Old Maid's Love                          Maarten Maartens
+The Cedar Star                              Mary E. Mann
+The Man Who Was Good                        Leonard Merrick
+A Daughter of the Philistines               Leonard Merrick
+A Soldier of Fortune                        L. T. Meade
+The King's Assegai                          Bertram Mitford
+Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush                Ian MacLaren
+Matrimony                                   W. E. Norris
+The Story of a Governess                    Mrs. Oliphant
+Under Two Flags                             Ouida
+The Massarenes                              Ouida
+The Splendid Spur                           "Q" (A. T. Quiller Couch)
+Warren Hyde                                 Helen Riemensnyder
+What Cheer                                  W. Clark Russell
+The Lady Maud                               W. Clark Russell
+The Wreck of the Grosvenor                  W. Clark Russell
+Cloister and the Hearth                     Charles Reade
+Forced Acquaintances                        Edith Robinson
+Sheba                                       Rita
+Kitty                                       Rita
+After Bread and On the Sunny Shore          Henryk Sienkeiwicz
+Dragon's Teeth                              Translated by Mary Serrano
+The Heart of a Mystery                      T. W. Speight
+Robert Urquhart                             Gabriel Setoun
+New Arabian Nights                          Robert Louis Stevenson
+Treasure Island                             Robert Louis Stevenson
+Kidnapped                                   Robert Louis Stevenson
+The Crystal Button                          Chauncey Thomas
+Jack Horner                                 Mary S. Tiernan
+Homoselle                                   Mary S. Tiernan
+Captain Antifer                             Jules Verne
+On the Winning Side                         Mrs. J. H. Walworth
+Uncle Scipio                                Mrs. J. H. Walworth
+The Wide, Wide World                        Susan Warner
+
+
+
+
+A DAUGHTER OF THE PHILISTINES
+
+By LEONARD MERRICK
+
+"It is the kind one longs to find after trying many and not meeting
+satisfaction."--_Times Union, Albany_.
+
+"A constantly increasing pleasure as you peruse page after
+page."--_Evening Gazette, Boston_.
+
+"It is a good one and an interesting one."--_Buffalo Express_.
+
+"A noteworthy novel."--_Chicago Tribune_.
+
+"He works out the situation to a fortunate conclusion."--_Book Buyer_.
+
+"A distinctly good novel of real life."--_Boston-Times_.
+
+"A capital story."--_New York Press_.
+
+"It is a novel of more than usual interest and cannot fail of an
+abundant popularity."--_Army and Navy Journal_.
+
+"A delightful story."--_Cincinnati Enquirer_.
+
+"Has a quality of its own."--_Literary World_.
+
+"Unusually strong points."--_Buffalo Commercial_.
+
+"An extremely clever story."--_Albany Argus_.
+
+"Interesting creation."--_Louisville Times_.
+
+"With a feeling of loving regret I lay down the book."--_Evening
+Record_.
+
+"An interesting and well told tale."--_Evening Star, Washington_.
+
+"An extremely clever tale."--_Indianapolis Sentinel_.
+
+"More than usually interesting."--_News, Indianapolis_.
+
+"An excellent story well told."--_Rochester Herald_.
+
+"Starts upon a good literary level, and maintains it to the end, and
+never for a moment degenerates.... One sits through the story with
+genuine pleasure, and rises from the reading of it with indubitable
+refreshment."--_Daily Chronicle_.
+
+_12mo, cloth, $1.25_
+
+NEW YORK; R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+_12mo, cloth, $1.25_
+
+JASPER FAIRFAX
+
+BY MARGRET HOLMES
+
+Author of "Chamber Over the Gate," Etc., Etc.
+
+
+"Will be read with interest."--_Chicago Record_.
+
+"One of those typical American novels in conception and
+development."--_Boston Courier_.
+
+"Of interest from first to last."--_Public Opinion_.
+
+"A good, strong, skillfully told American novel."--_Chicago News_.
+
+"A story that will create a sensation."--_Boston Globe_.
+
+"One of the most original, able and remarkable of recent
+novels."--_Minneapolis Tribune_.
+
+"The book is thrilling and dramatic."--_New Orleans Item_.
+
+"Will not lack for admirers."--_Boston Times_.
+
+"Very attractive story."--_Plain Dealer_.
+
+"One of the best Southern novels we have ever read."--_Atlanta Star_.
+
+NEW YORK
+R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
+9 AND 11 EAST 16TH STREET
+
+
+
+
+_12mo, cloth, $1.25_
+
+An Unofficial Patriot
+
+By HELEN H. GARDENER
+
+
+"It is a side of the slavery question of which Northern people knew
+nothing."--_John A. Cockerill, N. Y. Advertiser_.
+
+"Strong and picturesque sketches of camp and field in the days of the
+Civil War."--_San Francisco Chronicle_.
+
+"The book is being dramatized by Mr. James A. Herne, the well-known
+actor, author and manager."--_N. Y. Press_.
+
+"It tells a splendid story. "--_Journal, Columbus, O_
+
+"Will be sure to attract the attention it deserves."--_Philadelphia
+Press_.
+
+"In its scope and power it is unrivalled among war stories."--_Ideas,
+Boston, Mass_.
+
+"In many ways the most remarkable historical novel of the Civil
+War."--_Home Journal, Boston, Mass_.
+
+"The interview with Lincoln is one of the finest bits of dialogue in a
+modern book."--_Chicago Herald_.
+
+"Will probably be the most popular and saleable novel since Robert
+Elsmere."--_Republican_.
+
+"One of the most instructive and fascinating writers of our
+time."--_Courier-Journal, Louisville_.
+
+"Is calculated to command as wide attention as Judge Tourgee's "Fool's
+Errand."--_N. Y. Evening Telegram_.
+
+"Has enriched American literature."--_Item, Philadelphia_.
+
+"Remarkably true to history."--_Inter-Ocean, Chicago_.
+
+"Entitled to a place with standard histories of the War."--_Atlanta
+Journal_.
+
+NEW YORK: R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+_12mo, cloth, $1.25_
+
+THE DAGGER AND THE CROSS
+
+BY JOSEPH HATTON
+
+Author of "By Order of the Czar."
+
+
+"Most dramatic manner.... Deserves to rank well up in current
+fiction."--_Minneapolis Tribune_.
+
+"Villainy of the deepest die, heroism of the highest sort, beauty
+wronged and long suffering, virtue finally rewarded, thrills without
+number."--_St. Louis Globe-Democrat_.
+
+"Clean wholesome story, which should take prominent place in current
+fiction."--_Chicago Record_.
+
+"Finely conceived and finely written."--_Toledo Blade_.
+
+"This is his masterpiece."--_Buffalo Express_.
+
+"The chief merit is the account of the Plague in Eyam.... It is a true
+story and Eyam is a real village."--_Boston Journal_.
+
+"Weird and interesting to the point of being absorbing. The only way to
+get the story is to read it."--_St. Louis Star_.
+
+"Seventeenth century romance steeped in the traditions of the Church and
+of the times."--_Detroit Journal_.
+
+NEW YORK
+R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+_12mo, cloth, $1.25_
+
+THE CEDAR STAR
+
+BY MARY E. MANN
+
+Author of "Susannah."
+
+
+"An admirable piece of work, and is worth a crowd of far more
+pretentious productions."--_News and Courier, Charleston, S.C._
+
+"Heartily alive and extremely well written."--_Boston Gazette_.
+
+"Resembles some of Stockton's works."--_Pittsburg Press_.
+
+"Takes high rank among a decade's array of entertaining books."--_Boston
+Courier_.
+
+"Possessing among other merits that of original detail."--_Cincinnati
+Times-Star_.
+
+"The author has a very genius for clever character drawing."--_Detroit
+Journal_.
+
+"There is much force and action."--_Boston Herald_.
+
+"Intense human interest."--_Bulletin_.
+
+"The author has a genius for clever character drawing."--_Baltimore
+American_.
+
+"An unusually pleasing novel and well written."--_Philadelphia Press_.
+
+"A charming book, beginning with good chapters of child-life, and
+containing memorable figures, notably Billy the Curate and Betty
+herself. Betty is, indeed, quite a discovery."--_London Academy_.
+
+NEW YORK
+R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+_12mo, cloth, $1.25_
+
+THE MAN WHO WAS GOOD
+
+BY LEONARD MERRICK
+
+AUTHOR OF "A Daughter of the Philistines," "One Man's Views."
+
+
+"A second success.... An exceptionally able novel."--_Literary Review_.
+
+"Remarkable for its splendid delineation of character, its workmanship
+and natural arrangement of plot."--_Chicago Daily News_.
+
+"Has distinction of style and character, dramatic force and literary
+effectiveness."--_Phila. Press_.
+
+"An intensely dramatic story, and written with force and
+precision."--_New York Times_.
+
+"Mr. Merrick's work is of a very high quality. Is the most masterly of
+his three books."--_Chicago Tribune_.
+
+"The delicacy of the character sketching has a brilliancy and
+fascination strangely magnetic."--_Minneapolis Tribune_.
+
+"Is a forceful, dramatic and altogether human story of English
+life."--_Boston Times_.
+
+"Strong story."--_Chicago Record_.
+
+"It is useless to say that so strong, so fierce a book must be written
+well."--_Chicago Times-Herald_.
+
+NEW YORK
+R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+_12mo, cloth $1.25_
+
+DEFIANT HEARTS
+
+BY W. HEIMBURG
+
+AUTHOR OF "My Heart's Darling," "Her Only Brother," "Tales of an Old
+Castle," Etc., Etc.
+
+
+"The story is true to life in some of its manifold phases and will repay
+reading."--_Minneapolis Tribune_.
+
+"It is written in the usual entertaining style of this well known
+author."--_Boston Courier_.
+
+"Very good reading."--_New Orleans Picayune_.
+
+"The action is vigorous and the story interesting."--_Public Opinion_.
+
+"Capital story by an established favorite."--_Philadelphia American_.
+
+"Is a charming German story by the author of "Heart's Darling," "Good
+Luck," "Her Only Brother," etc."--_Southern Star_.
+
+"It possesses the positive virtue of being pure and wholesome in
+sentiment."--_Detroit Free Press_.
+
+"It comprises all the many qualities of romance that recommend all
+Heimburg's other stories."--_New Haven Journal_.
+
+"It is simple, but dignified and free from any of those smirches that
+suggest the presence of vice and impurity."--_N. Y. Home Journal_.
+
+
+
+
+_12mo, cloth, $1.25._
+
+"When The World Was Younger"
+
+By M. E. BRADDON
+
+
+"Miss Braddon skilfully uses as a background the great plague and fire
+in London, which gives realism to her picture."--_Rochester Herald_.
+
+"The characters are clearly drawn and strongly contrasted. The manners
+of the times, the intrigues of the court, the landmarks of London, are
+unerringly painted."--_Boston Times_.
+
+"The first attempt Miss M. B. Braddon has made in the line of the
+historical novel."--_Literary World_.
+
+"She has chosen the period of the Restoration of Charles the Second for
+her romance, and has given us an excellent description of the state of
+society in London and at the Court during the reign of that dissolute
+monarch."--_Home Queen_.
+
+"It is needless to say that the story is well told."--_San Francisco
+Chronicle_.
+
+"One of the strongest and most enjoyable of her stories."--_Philadelphia
+Inquirer_.
+
+"It abounds in mystifying plot, lovable characters, rapid and thrilling
+incident and delightful descriptions of English scenery."--_Boston
+Globe_.
+
+"A tale worth reading."--_San Francisco Call_.
+
+"Full of incident, chapter after chapter, brimming with vital
+meanings."--_Boston Courier_.
+
+"Beautiful, innocent and brave was Angela, the heroine."--_Philadelphia
+Bulletin_.
+
+"It is a Braddon story in the famous old Braddon vein."--_St. Louis
+Mirror_.
+
+"This one reviewing the days of Cromwell and the Charles is no shallow
+piece of work."--_Philadelphia American_.
+
+"Miss Braddon has caught the atmosphere cleverly and manufactured a
+stirring novel which bears evidence of careful thought and
+planning."--_Chicago Record_.
+
+"The scene is laid in England in the early days of the Restoration.
+Charles II., Nell Gwyune, Pepys, and Milton are among the
+characters."--_Buffalo Express_.
+
+"None of her books tells a more interesting story."--_St. Louis Star_.
+
+R. F. FENNO & COMPANY, New York
+
+
+
+
+_12mo, cloth, $1.25_
+
+Dust in the Balance
+
+By GEORGE KNIGHT
+
+
+"Deserves more extended notice than we are able to give."--_Public
+Opinion_.
+
+"Remarkable for its poetic imagery and its beauties of
+diction."--_Bookseller_.
+
+"Interesting, poetic, dramatic--dealing with crucial moments in
+life."--_Boston Times_.
+
+"Delicate, fantastic touch."--_Time and Hour_.
+
+"A vein of sincere, sympathetic humanity--marked by passages of earnest
+poetic feeling."--_World_, New York.
+
+"Charmingly fanciful style, sweet, wholesome and entertaining."--_The
+Wisconsin_, Milwaukee.
+
+"Of exceptional merit and interest. Boldness of conception,--poetic
+beauty and vigorous originality."--_News_, Milwaukee.
+
+"Romantic in character."--_Argonaut_, San Francisco.
+
+"The sentences are short, sharp and crisp."--_Boston Globe_.
+
+"I never heard of the author before, we shall all hear of him
+again."--_Time and Hour_.
+
+"Portrays human experience with a hand that is masterly and
+true."--_Boston Courier_.
+
+"Interesting, well written, quaint, humorous, pathetic,
+mystical."--_American_.
+
+"Most poetic and delicate in treatment."--_Occident_.
+
+NEW YORK
+R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+_12mo, cloth, $1.25_
+
+Betrayal of John Fordham
+
+By B. L. FARJEON
+
+
+"The plot is well constructed, the story is well told, and there is
+enough of mystery to satisfy the most exacting reader."--_Saturday
+Evening Gazette_
+
+"'The Betrayal of John Fordham' is a new story by B. L. Farjeon. It is
+of the detective order, full of murder and innumerable wrongs that
+become, at length, righted, and the much abused hero comes to happiness
+as the curtain falls. The working out of the plot, combined with
+peculiar incidents makes the story worth reading, especially if one
+likes a detective story. Almost everyone does, for a change."--_Boston
+Times_.
+
+"Running through the story are the threads of one or two affairs of the
+heart, which are woven into pleasant conclusions. Some of the scenes are
+stirringly dramatic."--_San Francisco Chronicle_.
+
+"A new book, which, like the preceding ones from the pen of the same
+author, is a strong story and which promises to be extensively read, is
+B. L. Farjeon's new novel, 'The Betrayal of John Fordham.'"--_New Haven
+Journal_.
+
+"The plot is intricate and deeply involved and dramatically and
+skillfully worked out."--_Brooklyn Eagle_.
+
+NEW YORK
+R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+   This book, as originally published, did not have a table of contents.
+   A table of contents has been created for this electronic edition.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PETER THE PRIEST***
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