Pretty Michal Part 39

twice, and taking good care not to mistake the inkhorn for the sandbox when he sanded his signature.

And then, his heavy fist still reposing on the bundle of doc.u.ments, he requested the conrector to fold together a sheet of paper and, "fracto margine," to write, in the name of the town council, a letter of citation to the headsman of Zeb, Henry Catsrider, bidding him, as in duty bound, to appear within eight days at the city of Ka.s.sa, in order to execute the law's sentences which had been pa.s.sed that day, copies of which were sent him. He was then to present his account to the civic auditor, who was authorized to discharge it.

This citation Valentine also subscribed.

He had still a faint glimmer of hope.

When Henry Catsrider receives this citation and learns that he, the headsman of Zeb, must come face to face with Valentine Kalondai whom he had formerly robbed of his beloved, he was then a genius, a luminary, a cleric and a scholar, face to face with him who had once been an expelled convict, but now was sheriff; when he reflects that he who was now a branded monster, an outcast from every city, is to appear before his former rival, who was now the first magistrate of one of the most important cities of the land; and when, besides all that, Henry Catsrider discovers that one of the condemned, on whom a masterpiece of his h.e.l.lish art was to be performed, was his father's former housekeeper, who had once actually been his own nurse and suckled him, why, then, he would surely have human feeling enough to remain at home, and, as he was often wont to do, send his oldest apprentice to execute the sentence in his stead.

Valentine actually believed that there was still some human feeling left in Henry Catsrider!

When all this had been done he arose from his seat of honor.

The whole town council bowed before him. The conrector, Ignatius Zwirina the younger, expressed the satisfaction felt by all the burgesses at having a sheriff whose wise and firm administration would serve as an example to all his successors.

And now Valentine hastened home.

He asked no questions. He let no one speak. He stifled the words on the lips of his mother and his wife with kisses. Then he took his pretty Michal on his knee, and whispered in her ear in the tones of a lover to his lady:

"Come what may or must! Be it weal or woe, our comfort is that we shall share it together!"

And pretty Michal was content that it should be so.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

The fulfilment of the proverb, as you make your bed so must you lie in it, comes to pa.s.s.

Valentine Kalondai knew Henry Catsrider ill, and all his psychological calculations foundered completely.

During the last few years Henry Catsrider's nature had entirely degenerated.

When Valentine was his fellow-student at the college of Keszmar, Henry was a stuck-up youth, proud of his learning, who was always boasting to his comrades of his mental capacity and his physical strength till he became positively unendurable. The weaker ones he persecuted. In his wrestling-bouts with them he shockingly maltreated them, and when they played pranks he reported them to the authorities. But the end and aim of all his brutal self-a.s.sertion was to become a clergyman. In this calling he would also have been sly and tyrannous, always looking after himself and a scourge and a burden to his colleagues; but his father had violently torn him away from this path of life, and forced him to go back to his proper trade. And perhaps the old man was right.

For this was, after all, the trade for which Henry was intended by nature, and within a few years he was as much at home in it as if he had done nothing else all his life. Coa.r.s.e society soon brings down everyone who mixes in it to its own level. The feeling, too, that all the world despises him, arouses in a man the defiant instinct to avenge himself on the whole world for such contempt. Till then he had led the life of a recluse, but now he suddenly plunged into a continual orgy, and hated sobriety. The ghastly death of his father had filled him with the cruelty of a wild beast, and the destruction of his house had extinguished in him the last sparks of human feeling. After the loss of his wife, whom he had loved pa.s.sionately, he sank completely into the slough of vileness, and sought the society of those women whom not the altar but the pillory would sooner or later unite to him--to-day a glowing kiss, to-morrow a hissing iron. As, moreover, he had lost a large part of his treasures in the burning of his house, he became avaricious likewise. He wanted to make up again what he had lost. Just then they were beginning in Poland to play at games of chance with the painted cards invented by Peter Gringenoir, and Henry spent all his time in the Polish cities playing cards with the cheats and filchers of the district. And in these gambling dens he generally managed to lose some fresh piece of his silver plate which he brought with him in the leg of his boot. Woe betide them who then fell into his hands!

Once he was warned by the authorities that he would be degraded and expelled from his office if he did not attend to it better.

After all this we may readily suppose that Henry Catsrider, when he received the summons from the town council of Ka.s.sa, did not hesitate a moment to appear personally in answer to it. That this summons was signed by Valentine Kalondai, as sheriff, did not disturb him in the least. On the contrary, the idea of appearing before his former rival as executioner rather tickled him than otherwise. That one of the victims was Red Barbara afforded him the greatest satisfaction. He suspected at once that the witch had set his house on fire and stolen a portion of his treasures. That she had also filched from him his greatest treasure was, however, unknown to him as yet. He would not for any consideration have relinquished to anyone else the bliss of tormenting her.

A week after the dispatch of the citation, the wagon of the executioner of Zeb rattled over the stones of the market-place of Ka.s.sa. It was a black vehicle, with red wheels and axles, on which the somber company, like a troupe of itinerant comedians, brought with them all the requisites of their terrible stage. Mounted drabants and musketeers escorted them before and behind.

The worshipful town council had a very hard time of it that day. In the early morning, two squadrons of Walloon cuira.s.siers had marched into the town, blowing, not the Hungarian farogato whose richly varying melodies so much delighted the people, but those shrill trumpets which were only invented for the annoyance of mankind. And between the two squadrons of cavalry, sitting on mules and chanting discordant hymns, the Jesuit fathers also came back to the town.

The colonel of the foreign soldiers and the superior of the Jesuits hastened together to the townhall, and a great dispute arose between them in the council-chamber as to which of them should have the precedence. General Loffelholz a.s.serted that, by virtue of his rank, he was ent.i.tled to settle military matters with the magistrates first of all. Prior Hieronymus, on the other hand, appealed to the privileges of his order, which placed him above every temporal authority.

Neither the soldier nor the monk would give way, and the pair of them kept their heads covered, the one with his plumed hat, the other with his hood. At that moment the sound of clanking spurs was heard coming along the corridor, and now both the contending parties gave way before the third comer.

The man who now entered also wore a plumed biretta on his head, but it was scarlet. His powerful body was dressed in a scarlet coat, and over it he wore a long scarlet mantle.

The clergyman and the soldier instantly made way for him. They were careful not to come into contact with so much as the hem of his garment.

It was the headsman.

Henry Catsrider's face had very much altered since he had laid aside his priestly garb. His former long fair hair was now clipped short, and his beard flowed down in two long reddish wisps. His face was puffy from much drinking, and his large eyes, that had once been so sparkling, now gleamed out of his coppery, swollen countenance like smoldering embers. His large, coa.r.s.e mouth was all awry. The humanized wild beast had relapsed again into its original savagery.

Even if he had worn no hangman's weeds, all the world might have read his frightful profession from his face. As he approached, everyone timidly made way for him.

And if there was anyone who had as much cause to shudder at the appearance of this shape, as if the skeleton with the scythe had suddenly sprung up out of the ground before him, it was certainly Valentine Kalondai. To him this creature was not only the man of blood, but the man whom he had robbed of his wife.

Even at the time when pa.s.sion had led him to this step--a step to which a whole host of concurring circ.u.mstances, hot blood, and the force of fate had constrained him--even then he had thought that he might one day fall in with him whom he had made a widower, but he had then said, "I will rather get together a robber band than surrender my beloved to destruction!" That would have been a very different kind of meeting. A meeting like this was more than human foresight could have foreseen.

All eyes turned to him who was the head of the city, the president of the town council.

And even at that moment his strength of mind did not forsake him. He looked Henry Catsrider straight in the face, as if they had never known each other, as if he had never trespa.s.sed against him.

The headsman planted himself in front of the sheriff and said: "'They have called me, and I have come!'"

Valentine, with perfect _sangfroid_, completed the quotation:

"'I have sprung from the dust of an accursed earth.'"

This distich, it is said, was written in Chaldaic characters on the wings of those locusts which first appeared at the call of Moses, and always reappear when the Lord would abase the pride of man.

Everyone knew this saying. The words of the sheriff, therefore, called forth a slight smile on every face, and a murmur of merriment ran through the room because he had so dexterously turned the tables on the coa.r.s.e intruder.

Still more satisfied with his wisdom were they when he p.r.o.nounced judgment in the precedence dispute. "The Church first, then the temporal power, last of all the headsman."

But the Walloon general, a strapping fellow, tapped his saber, said he was the first man in the town, and made a terrible to-do.

Valentine Kalondai thereupon shoved back his presidential chair, laid down his mace, girded on his sword, and donned his hat. There were now four persons in the council-chamber who had their hats on.

Then he turned to the general and said: "Have we come hither to deliberate or to fight?"

The Walloon perceived that he had met his match. Such courage pleased him. He held out his hand to the sheriff and said with a laugh: "Well, well, Master Sheriff, I have not come hither to squabble. Pray sit down again and deliberate," and with that he drew back.

This resolute behavior made such an impression on the members of the council that, as the sheriff resumed his seat, they greeted him with a loud _vivat_, while the victorious prior stretched forth his skinny arm toward him and said: "Deus benedicat tibi!"

"I have asked no blessing of your reverence; he who sits in the judgment-seat may not even accept a benediction;" and he forthwith began to investigate the points in dispute between the city and the College of Jesuits.

If you really want to test a man's presence of mind and dialectic skill, just engage him in an argument in a foreign language.

Valentine now showed that he could negotiate with the Jesuit in Latin and with the Walloon in German, without stammering or stuttering in the least. And indeed, as the conrector could not help remarking to his neighbor, the sheriff was a far greater master of both languages than those with whom he was negotiating. His precise, curial style was easily victorious over the Jesuit's dog Latin, and his expressive German, with his pithy Lutheranisms, was more than a match for the general's Platt-Deutsch dialect.

And the headsman was standing behind him all the time!

The questions before him were by no means easy to solve. On the part of the town a charter had to be drafted and signed, guaranteeing to the Jesuits all their privileges and possessions, and declaring their cloisters a sacred asylum, whose very threshold the secular authorities should never cross. The College of Jesuits had also to subscribe an agreement pledging itself not to convert Protestants to the Roman faith by force, artifice, moral pressure, or any sort of cajolery.

Valentine's clear intelligence knew exactly how to hit the proper mean between these directly antagonistic pretensions, and keep the doc.u.ment entirely free from those artfully insinuated clauses whereby the Jesuits tried again and again to smuggle in their mental reservations.