Pretty Michal Part 44

The waggish crowd pressed upon them from all sides, and while the funeral car with its canopy, its cortege, and its banners surrounded the door, one of the buxom wenches fell upon the neck of the drabant and kissed and hugged him, while a giant raven with a pointed beak forced his tankard on the headsman's a.s.sistant, and compelled him to drain it to the dregs, finally bonneting him with the empty tankard.

All this lasted for a single brief instant, but it was quite long enough for the cloister door to open and close again. What had happened in the meantime was known only to the initiated.

Then the fools' procession went on more noisily than ever.

When they arrived at the Miskolcz gate, the superrector Zwirina and his halberdiers barred the way.

"Whither are you going?" said he to the carnival horseman.

Simplex held a quill to his mouth, and squeaked through it in a thin, chirpy, birdlike voice:

"We are going to bury the dead carnival."

But Augustus Zwirina was a knowing man, and he had his suspicions.

"Let me see if this carnival is really dead," said he.

And with that he tore the cover from the face of the figure lying in the coffin.

The fellow representing the carnival rose in his bier, distended his broad mouth, and grinned in the superrector's face. He was an honest brushmaker's apprentice. The whole crowd burst into roars of laughter and derisive yells. Everyone instantly guessed that the superrector had sought for Valentine Kalondai in the carnival's coffin.

Old Zwirina was very angry and ashamed.

"You may take him to h.e.l.l, if you like!" cried he to the crowd of revelers, and, by way of jocose emphasis, he gave the backward part of the carnival horse a spanking thump, but received a kick in return which sent him sprawling into the mud. The horse, which lost one of the red slippers of its hind feet in consequence, then bolted off like mad, while Simplex yelled like a c.o.c.kney horseman on a runaway nag, tugged at the reins, and implored the laughing crowd to stop the beast. But the mob only chivied the horse all the more, till it had far outdistanced its panting escort. When at last he arrived in the neighborhood of the churchyard, Simplex blew his trumpet with all his might, and at the shrill sound two stout lads leaped up out of the cemetery ditch, leading after them a horse saddled and bridled.

"Valentine!" cried Simplex, "ecce tuum Bucephalum!"

Then the man forming the hinder part of the carnival steed sprang quickly forth from beneath the horsecloth. It was not the Turk Ali, but Valentine Kalondai.

The condemned convict threw himself upon the horse and galloped off.

Simplex and the comrades who had a.s.sisted him in the execution of this stratagem threw their masquerading costumes into the churchyard ditch, and after making a wide circuit of the town, returned to it by the Leutschau gate as if they knew nothing at all about it.

The Turk Ali had exchanged roles with Valentine in the gates of the cloister.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

The Lenten penance succeeds the carnival revels.

When they brought the news to Augustus Zwirina that Valentine Kalondai had happily escaped, the big fat man suddenly grew blue in the face, and was struck down with apoplexy on the spot. So swiftly did death overtake him that he had not even time to make his will.

This extraordinary case made a huge sensation throughout the town.

Whole processions of acquaintances thronged the house of mourning, and in the courts of the Zwirinas there was wailing and woe.

Now the courtyard of the Kalondais was only separated from that of the Zwirinas by a narrow part.i.tion wall. When then Dame Sarah heard the lamentations in her neighborhood, and learnt the cause thereof, viz., that her son had managed to escape and that the superrector had died of grief in consequence, she planted herself in the pa.s.sage, and, despite the keenness of a February morning, began to sing the psalms in which King David celebrates the humiliation of his enemies. The louder grew the lamentations next door, the louder she sang her revengefully exultant psalms.

Who could forbid her? Were they not sacred songs?

On the day of the funeral, too, she sat on the balcony of her house, and while the priests and the choristers below were intoning dirges by the side of the bier, and the relations of the dead man accompanied these mournful songs with their sobs, the butcher's widow, dressed in white, as if she were holding high festival, mingled her exultant songs of triumph with their sobs and dirges.

And henceforward, through the still watches of the night, when everyone was asleep, Dame Sarah sang her psalms and exulted over her fallen and humiliated enemies.

Who could forbid a poor forlorn widow to seek comfort for her afflicted soul in spiritual songs?

As for Henry Catsrider, he was driven from his profession three days later for putting to shame the dignity of his office, the reputation of the city, and the majesty of the law by his bungling. On the same scaffold which he himself had erected his own apprentices tore his red mantle from his shoulders and the red cap from his head, struck him three times in the face before all the people with the great silver seal hanging round his neck (which was a gift from the King of Poland), and finally drove him away amid the derisive laughter of the crowd.

What became of the degraded headsman, how and where he ended his days, on these points nothing has ever been recorded.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

In which it is shown how ghosts haunt churchyards.

The adherents of the disgraced faction did not cease persecuting Valentine Kalondai.

From the very first they had sent pursuers after him who had followed hard upon the fugitive; but at a certain inn, when they were already close upon him, two men, evidently instructed beforehand, met him with a fresh horse. The fugitive mounted and was instantly off again, while his pursuers thought it best to slowly ride their jaded nags back to town.

The new superrector, young Ignatius Zwirina, calculated thus: Valentine Kalondai will one of these days come back of his own accord to the neighborhood of Ka.s.sa. His beloved rests there in the churchyard ditch, and he will never be able to keep away from the spot where she whom he loves so much reposes.

So in the ditch where pretty Michal had been cast he kept nine musketeers in ambush, night and day, that they might seize Valentine when he came thither, and shoot him down if he sought to fly.

The trap was laid for him, and they made certain that he would fall into it.

Nor did he remain long away.

In the first stormy night, when the Lenten wind drove the shapeless clouds from one end of the sky to the other and shook the leafless trees, and the will-o'-the-wisps darted about among the graves, a lonely horseman approached the churchyard from the plains.

A poplar which had been torn down by the storm marked the spot where pretty Michal lay.

"I hear the tramp of horses' hoofs," murmured one of the musketeers in the ditch.

"What if it be the devil riding on a buck-goat?"

"Yes, indeed, who else would think of riding over the plains at such a time?"

"Look how the will-o'-the-wisps are dancing!" said a third, raising his head a little above the ditch.

From time to time, a reddish tongue of flame shot up from among the graves, casting a lurid glimmer on the angels praying on the monuments.

Then it seemed as if the deep notes of a horn were mingling with the howling of the storm. It sounded like a subterranean music. A shudder ran down the backs of the musketeers in the ditch and their teeth chattered.