Pretty Michal Part 43

"A little higher!" said Catsrider.

"What! higher still? Well! how will that do for you?"

This nonchalance made the headsman perfectly furious. He had no opportunity of reveling in the mental agony of his foe, for, even on the very threshold of death, Valentine only bantered him. In ordinary times it was not in Valentine's nature to behave thus, but now a feeling of mad disdain had come over him, whereby he expressed the utter scorn he felt for all his enemies.

"Now, master headsman, pray don't keep me waiting."

Rage filled Henry's heart, and rage is a bad marksman. He raised his sword, and the blow fell just where the hair on Valentine's head was coiled in its thickest folds. The false blow made Catsrider lose his balance. He stumbled, fell sprawling, and struck his head so hard against the corner of the coffin intended for Valentine that he remained lying there senseless.

The mob raised a fearful howl when, after the blow had descended, they saw the delinquent spring up while the executioner lay p.r.o.ne on the ground.

"Let him go free!" cried some; "when the headsman misses his blow the delinquent should be reprieved." Others, however, were for the headsman's apprentices taking up the sword and completing the sentence.

During this uproar Valentine looked down from the lofty scaffold. He saw the excitement of his enemies on the dais, and heard them cry:

"Down with him!"

He saw a desperate woman attempting to force her way through the crowd, and recognized in her his mother. He threw a glance at his slain beloved, and then an idea suddenly flashed through his brain.

"Hither, Valentine, hither!" It was the voice of Simplex.

Valentine sprang down from the scaffold among the crowd.

"After him, seize him!" cried the members of the town council to the drabants surrounding the scaffold.

The throng was very dense. Each man pressed hard upon his neighbor.

But when Valentine broke through, a path was made for him which closed immediately on his pursuers. Not one of the crowd laid hands on him. Simplex and his comrades covered his flight.

He escaped from the crowd, and ran along the street with his pursuers hot upon his heels, headed by the superrector with his gold-headed stick of office raised aloft, the headsman (who had in the meantime recovered) with his drawn sword, and the drabants with their halberts.

At the end of the street Valentine found an open door, through which he darted. This door closed behind him, and when the pursuers came up and loudly demanded admission, it suddenly reopened and out stepped the Prior of the Jesuits, Father Hieronymus, with the charter in his hand. They could tell it by the long pendant seals.

"Be off!" cried he, "this house is an asylum!"

It was the cloister of the Jesuits. The secular authorities were debarred from crossing the threshold by their own charter.

So wondrously fulfilled was the prophecy of the prior, that the seed which Valentine had sown when he subscribed this doc.u.ment would one day turn out to his advantage.

When, however, they brought the news to Dame Sarah that her son had fled to the cloister of the Jesuits, and now remained beneath their protection, the poor lady was quite overcome and said:

"Would that he had rather died by the side of his Michal!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

Wherein carnival revels are described.

Out of this incident a great dispute arose. The worshipful corporation held it as a point of honor that when once they had condemned a man to death, that man's head must be severed from his body. The College of Jesuits maintained, on the other hand, that whoever had once taken refuge in their cloister could be removed by no earthly authority from that sacred asylum.

And besides their respective rights in the matter, each party had other reasons in _petto_.

Those who had got the government of the city through Kalondai's fall could never feel absolutely at their ease so long as he remained alive. They were afraid that the rapid turn of Fortune's wheel might bring him to the helm again, and then, woe betide them.

But the Jesuits calculated that Valentine, out of grat.i.tude for his deliverance by them, would become their convert, in which case their hands at Ka.s.sa would be greatly strengthened.

Both parties therefore thought it worth while to send plenipotentiaries to the Palatine and the Supreme Court of Hungary, pet.i.tioning for a decree in their favor.

Meanwhile the gates of the Jesuit cloisters were watched day and night, so that Valentine might not escape.

There were two persons who made it their special business to watch the cloister: Augustus Zwirina, who sent a drabant, and Henry Catsrider, who sent one of his own apprentices.

The headsman had another reason, besides mere personal vengeance, for cutting off Valentine's head. His own neck was in danger. The world is so bad that even the headsman has enemies. Report said that Henry was drunk when he came to execute the law's sentence, and that was why he missed his aim. And the executioner has his own executioner also, who strikes him in the face in the middle of the market place, if he commits a fault sufficiently grievous to carry deprivation from his office along with it.

Therefore Henry bowled up at the windows of the cloister every evening, and threatened to quarter Valentine alive when he got him into his hands.

The watchers allowed no suspicious person to leave the cloister unsearched. It happened once that a servant died at the cloister. As they were carrying the corpse away to be buried, the town council ordered the coffin to be searched to make sure that Valentine was not being smuggled out in that way, and a stringent order was issued forbidding people to go out at night without lanterns, under the penalty of imprisonment.

At last the judgment of the Supreme Tribunal on the asylum question reached Ka.s.sa.

The judgment ran as follows: "Whereas the Jesuits have the right of asylum for their cloister, but whereas it is forbidden them to forcibly detain those of another persuasion, it is now hereby declared that the privilege of sanctuary can only be accorded to Valentine Kalondai on condition that he consents to be received into the bosom of the Catholic Church as a priest, but if he remains in his former faith he is to be handed over to justice. Three days'

grace, moreover, are allowed to the said Valentine Kalondai, within which time he is to come to a decision."

With this politic doc.u.ment both the Jesuits and the Zwirina faction were very well satisfied. The former calculated that the delinquent who had escaped from the scaffold would much rather submit to the tonsure than lose his whole head, and would rather renounce the friendship of Calvin than dear life itself, and this they thought would be a great triumph for them. But this very thing would have been no small triumph to Zwirina and Co. also, for the whole Hungarian party, which consisted for the most part of Calvinists, would be humbled to the dust by such an apostasy. As a renegade, Valentine Kalondai would be as good as dead and buried.

When Dame Sarah heard of this judgment, she said to Simplex, who since the days of her calamity had been a constant visitor at her house: "Go to my son, and tell him that I would rather see his head severed from his body than his soul separated from my soul. He will understand what I mean."

But Simplex had something else to say to Valentine, of which Dame Sarah knew nothing.

Two days of the respite had already elapsed; the third was Shrove Tuesday, the day of fools.

Valentine had as yet not declared his resolution, but he had now only till vespers to do so. If he still remained silent, then it would be taken as a sign that he preferred to submit to the sentence of death.

Henry Catsrider had had the scaffold reerected. Valentine could see it from the cloister window.

No one else, however, troubled himself about it, for it was the last day of carnival, and all the world was thinking of the carnival frolics. All day long boisterous masks paraded the streets--men disguised as women, all sorts of guys dressed up on horseback; and in the evening, they all met together to carry out the carnival and bury him. The lads vied with one another as to who should make the greatest fools of themselves. One lengthened his legs with stilts, another made himself up as a giant. There were some who stuck themselves all over with feathers, and strutted about like birds, while others stuffed themselves out till they were as big as barrels. One trumpeted, another rattled, a third drummed away on a huge frying-pan.

The most attractive mask of all, however, was the carnival horse, which consisted of two men. The first man made up the fore part of the horse; he wore the horse's head, which was true to nature and as large as life, while the other, who planted his head in the middle of the first man's body, composed the rear part of the horse; both were covered with a large horsecloth, on which lay a saddle with the dependent stirrups, and the whole thing looked exactly like a real horse. The man in front had all the fun of the thing. He could trumpet whenever he felt inclined, he drank whatever people liked to give him, and he held a large whip in his hand, with which he struck at everyone who came too near him. But the poor fellow who formed the rear part of the horse had a much harder billet. He saw nothing and heard nothing, and was obliged to scramble along in a stooping position wherever the man in front chose to lead him; and if his leader did not look well after him, he got from everyone of the pa.s.sers-by a sounding thump on the hindermost part of his person. It was not easy, therefore, to find someone willing to accept this role, and generally some lubber of an apprentice, who had failed in everything else, was pitchforked into it.

Now just at that time there was no such apprentice in all the guilds of Ka.s.sa, so that there was absolutely no one to take up this unpleasant role but the poor, good-natured Turk Ali, who could be persuaded to do anything, and everyone could see his red slippers peeping out from under the horsecloth as the carnival steed pranced along. It was an open secret that the carnival horseman who rode this steed was Simplex himself.

Behind the carnival steed came the carnival himself in a cart drawn by two oxen. He lay in a red coffin, which was covered all over with fools' caps, bells, and masks. Giants with heads as large as barrels and gigantic storks walked alongside of him, carrying his escutcheon on a pole, and behind the coffin marched a roystering band of apprentices made up as buxom wenches, who offered their tankards to everyone who pa.s.sed and would absolutely take no denial.

The carnival's funeral procession stopped before the dwelling of every guildmaster and every clergyman. The leader of the procession p.r.o.nounced a loud eulogium on every notability, to which the notability in question responded by refilling the empty tankards with wine or beer. On each such occasion the fool's sacristan awoke the carnival in his coffin, lifted up the pall and gave him a drink.

The carnival was also an apprentice, and he certainly had one of the very best billets, for all he had to do was to lie still and drink.

When the carnival's funeral procession arrived in front of the cloister of the Jesuits, the two armed watchmen, the drabant and the headsman's a.s.sistant, were still standing there, one on each side of the door.