Midst the Wild Carpathians Part 26

It was a long, straggling, Wallachian hamlet at which the patrollers now arrived--one house exactly like another; low clay huts with lofty roofs and projecting eaves, surrounded by quick-set hedges, the doors so low that one had to stoop in order to enter. Every house consisted of a single room, in which the whole family, parents and children, goats and poultry, lived together. At the entrance of the village stood a gigantic triumphal arch made of marble blocks; over the princ.i.p.al portal was the torso of a Minerva; on the facade were battle-pieces in high relief, and beneath them this Latin inscription in large Roman letters--"This town has been built by the unconquerable Trajan as a memorial of his triumph!" And behind the arch a heap of wretched clay huts!

On the capitol of a fallen Corinthian column, in front of the village dead-house, sits the _prefika_, the oldest old woman in the place, lamenting with meretricious tears over the dead young maiden who lies within. On the side of a gra.s.s-grown hill close at hand one sees a round stone building, raised once upon a time, no doubt, in memory of some Roman hero; but the Wallachian population has turned it into a church, covered it with a pointed roof, and daubed the interior with hideous paintings.

The Patrol-officer called the people together into the church, which was the only public building in the place. The crowd stood around him, the old men leaning on their crutches. The blood-red rays of sunset pierced through the round window-panes, giving a peculiar appearance to the interior of the venerable edifice, whose walls were daubed all over with figures of grotesque saints, whom the monstrous fancy of the rustic artist had provided with scarlet mantles and spurred jack-boots. Amongst so many pictures of the marvellous, that well-known allegory which represents Death as a skeleton, dragging off with him a king, a beggar, and a priest, was not lacking, and scattered among the icons were a few bandy-legged fiends derisively stretching out their tongues at poor d.a.m.ned sinners whom they clutched tightly by the hair.

Behind the iconastasis the priest and the Patrol-officer took their stand, surrounded by gilded icons and consecrated candles. When Clement had read his credentials to the people, he called to the village elder, a tall man with large projecting teeth, to come in front of the altar-rail, and addressed the following questions to him--

"Are there amongst you any sorcerers and magicians who can summon the devil to their aid?"

The crowd received this question with an awful whisper, and after a long pause the magistrate replied--

"There was one last year, your worship, a G.o.dless villain with blotches on his neck and body, which were patches st.i.tched on to him by the devil, for even when we singed them with red-hot irons he did not feel it. We sent him to the Sanhedrim at Fehervar, where, failing to stand the water test, he was burnt alive."

"Are there among you any hags or vampires which injure other people's children, make knots in men's bowels, ride through the air, colour milk red, hatch serpents' eggs, or seek for gra.s.ses which can make them invisible, and open barred and bolted doors?"

This question called forth a hundred different answers. Every one tried to communicate his own personal experiences to the interrogator; the younger women in particular pressed upon the Patrol-officer with furious importunity.

"One at a time, please," cried Clement, with great dignity. "Let the magistrate say what he knows."

"Yes, there used to be an old witch here, worshipful sir," said the village elder obsequiously. "We called her Dainitsa.[34] She had long molested mankind, for her eyes were red. She could, when she chose, bring down such storms upon the village that the wind would take off the roofs of the houses. Once she brought a hailstorm upon us, and G.o.d's thunderbolt smote the village in three places. Thereupon the women here grew furious, seized her, and threw her into the pond. But even there the witch railed upon them and said--'Take heed! You will live to beg of me the water which you now give me to drink!' Then the women fished up her dead body from the bottom of the pond, thrust a dart through her heart, buried her in the valley, and rolled a large stone over her grave. But the very next year the witch's curse came upon us. Throughout the summer not a drop of rain fell in our district. Everything was withered up, and our cattle carried off by the murrain. Dainitsa had drunk up all the rain and dew. So we went to her grave, bored a large hole therein, and filled the grave with water till it ran over, shouting at the same time--'Drink thy fill, accursed hag! but lap not up all our rain and dew!' And so at last the great drought came to an end."

[Footnote 34: _Dainitsa._ She who sings in a low voice, _i. e._ she who mutters spells. From Roumanian _daina_, which is derived from the Hungarian _danolni_, to sing.]

The priest gravely vouched for the accuracy of this narrative, and Clement made a note of it in his parchment roll.

Now came the third question.

"Are there any among you who dare to smoke tobacco, either by cutting up the leaves into small fragments and putting them in his pipe, or by roasting them on the fire and inhaling the ascending steam?"

"There are none, sir!" returned the elder. "We do not know that dish."

"And do not try to, for whoever is caught in the act will, in accordance with the law of the land, have the stem of his pipe thrust through his nose, and be led in that guise all round the market-place."

The fourth question was this--

"Do any of the peasants wear cloth coats, marten-skin kalpags, or morocco shoes?"

"Pshaw!" cried the village elder. "Why, our poverty is such that we never look beyond sheep-skin jackets and leather sandals. What do we want with coloured cloth and morocco shoes?"

"Nor must you, for the Estates of the Realm have forbidden the peasantry to wear the clothes of the gentry."

Now came the fifth question.

"Which of you not only acted contrary to the decree of the Diet, that the peasants should extirpate the sparrows, but even mocked the officers charged to collect sparrows' heads?"

The magistrate humbly approached the Patrol-officer.

"Believe me, worshipful sir; by reason of the great drought and the bad season, the sparrows have all departed from our district. Tell his Highness that we have been unable to lay our hands upon a single one all through the summer."

"That's a lie!" cried Clement the Clerk fiercely.

"I speak the truth," persisted the magistrate, seizing Clement by the hand, and dexterously insinuating two silver marias into his clenched fist.

"Well, it is not impossible," said the Patrol-officer, somewhat mollified.

Last of all came the question--

"Has any among you seen foreign beasts of prey, or other strange animals, straying about in these regions?"

"Of a truth, sir, we have seen lots of them."

"And what sort of beasts were they?" asked Clement, with joyful curiosity.

"Well, dog-headed Tartars!"

"You fool, I don't mean that sort of beast. I want to know whether any one, in strolling through these woods, has come upon a four-footed beast of prey, a creature with a spotted skin? You know very well you have left no hole or corner unexplored, for even now you are hunting after the hidden treasures of Decebalus."

The magistrate shook his head incredulously, glanced at the crowd, and said, with a shrug of his shoulders--

"We have seen no such wondrous beast; but haply Sange Moarte has seen it, for he in his mad moods roams incessantly through woods and hollows."

"And where then is this Sange Moarte? You must call him hither."

"Alas! sir, he is difficult to catch; he seldom comes to the village.

But perhaps his mother is here."

"Here she is! here she is!" cried several peasants at once, pushing forward an old woman with sunken cheeks, whose head was wrapped round in a white cloth.

"What mad name is this you have given to your son?" cried the Patrol-officer; "whoever heard of calling a man 'Dead blood'!"

"'Twas not I, sir, who gave him this name," said the old Wallachian woman with a broken voice. "The villagers call him so because he is never seen to laugh or speak to any one, or answer when he is spoken to.

He did not even weep for his father when he died; nor has he ever visited the girls in the spinning-rooms, but wanders about incessantly in the woods."

"All right, all right, old lady; but that has nothing to do with me."

"I know it, sir, I know that it does not concern you; but I must tell you that the pretty Floriza, the belle of the village, was in love with my son. There was not a lovelier maiden in all Wallachia. Such black eyes, such locks reaching down to her feet, such rosy cheeks, such a slim waist were not to be found anywhere else. And then she was so diligent, and she loved my son so dearly! In her chest she had sixteen embroidered chemises which she herself had woven and spun, and round her neck she wore a string of two hundred silver and twenty gold pieces.

Sange Moarte never so much as looked at the girl. Vainly did Floriza make him posies, he would not put them in his hat; vainly did she give him kerchiefs, he would not wear them in his breast. Whenever he pa.s.sed by, the girl would sing such beautiful songs as she sat by the hearth; but Sange Moarte for all that did not linger at her threshold, and yet she loved him so dearly. Often she said to him, when they met together in the lane--'Thou dost never come to see me; perchance thou wouldst not even look at me if I were dead?' Sange Moarte replied--'Then indeed I would look at thee.'--'Then I will soon die,' said the maiden sorrowfully. 'And then will I also visit thee,' said Sange Moarte, and went his way. Does all this weary you, good sir? I shall soon have done.

Pretty Floriza lies dead. Her heart broke for grief. There she lies on her bier; the funereal _armindenu_[35] stands in front of the house.

When Sange Moarte sees it he will know that Floriza is dead, and will come forth from the woods to look upon his dead sweetheart, as he promised her, for he always keeps his word. Then you can speak with him."

[Footnote 35: _Armindenu._ A green branch placed in front of houses on the 1st of May and at funerals.

Compare Latin _Alimentale_.]

"Very well, old lady," said Clement, who had suddenly become serious, and was almost angry to find something very like poetry among rude peasants, who had certainly never read Horace's _Ars Poetica_. "You must watch for the lad's return, and let me know."

"'Twere better you went yourself, sir," said the old woman, "for I scarcely think he will answer a single question put to him by any one else."