The Slaves of the Padishah Part 46

All this was merely prefatory!

Kiuprile began to perspire; Kucsuk Pasha twirled his sword upon his knee; Feriz Beg turned round and contemplated the fountains of the Seraglio through the window.

"Make haste, do!" interrupted Maurocordato impatiently; whereupon Farkas Bethlen, imagining that he had offended the interpreter by omitting him from the exordium, turned towards him with a supplementary compliment:

"Great and wise interpreter, most learned and extraordinarily to be respected court physician of the most mighty Sultan!"

Kiuprile yawned so tremendously that the girdle round his big body burst in two.

Farkas Bethlen, however, did not let himself be put out in the least, but continued his oration.

"Our worthy Prince, his Highness Michael Apafi, has been much distressed to learn that those seditious rebels who have dared to raise their evil heads, not only against the Prince but against the Sublime Porte also, as represented in his person, in consequence of the frustration of their plans, have fled hither to damage the Prince by their falsehoods and insinuations. Nevertheless, although our worthy Prince is persuaded that the wisdom of your Excellencies must needs confute their lying words, your goodwill confound their devices, and your omnipotence chastise their audacity, nevertheless it hath also seemed good to his Highness to send us to your Excellencies in order that we may refute all these complaints and accusations whereby they would falsely, treacherously and abominably disturb the realm ..."

Maurocordato here took advantage of a pause made by the orator to take breath after this exordium, and before he was able to proceed to the subject-matter of his address, began straightway to interpret what he had said so far for the benefit of the Grand Vizier, being well aware that the Vizier would not allow anyone to speak a second time before he had spoken himself.

The speech of the interpreter was this time dry and monotonous. All Farkas Bethlen's homiletical energy was thrown away in Maurocordato's drawling, indifferent reproduction.

The Grand Vizier replied with flashing eyes, his face was twice as venomous as it had been before, and his gestures plainly indicated an intention to show the envoys the door.

Maurocordato interpreted his reply.

"The Grand Vizier says that not those whom ye persecute but you yourselves are the rebels who have broken the oath ye made to the Sublime Porte, inasmuch as your ambitious projects aim at the separation of Transylvania from its dependence on the Porte and at the conquest of Hungary--both sure ways of destruction for yourselves. Wherefore the Grand Vizier gives you to understand that if you cannot sit still and live in peace with your own fellow-countrymen, he will send to you an intermediary, who will leave naught but tears behind him."

The Hungarian gentlemen regarded each other in astonishment. Not a trace of simpering amiability remained on the face of Farkas Bethlen, who was furious at the failure of the speech he had so carefully learnt by heart. He bowed still deeper than before, and sacrificing with extraordinary self-denial the remainder of his oration, especially as he perceived that any further parleying would not be permitted, he had resort to more drastic expedients.

"Oh, sir! how can such accusations affect us who have always been willing faithfully to fulfil your wishes? We pay tribute, we give gifts, and now also our worthy Prince hath not sent us to you empty-handed, having commanded Master Michael Teleki not to neglect to provide us with suitable gifts, who has, moreover, sent to your Excellencies through me two hundred purses of money,[20] as a token of his respect and homage, beseeching your Excellencies to accept this little gift from us your humble servants."

[Footnote 20: Equivalent to 100,000 thalers.]

With these words the orator beckoned to one of the deputation, at whose summons, four porters appeared carrying between them, suspended on two poles, a large iron chest, which Farkas Bethlen opened, discharging its contents at the feet of the Grand Vizier.

The jingling thalers fell in heaps around the Divan, and the sound of the rolling coins filled the room. The features of the Grand Vizier suddenly changed. Maurocordato stepped back. Bethlen's last words had needed no interpreter; the Vizier could not keep back from his face a hideous smile, the grin of the devil of covetousness. His eyes grew large and round, he no longer clenched his teeth together, he was rather like a wild beast eager to pounce upon his prey.

Farkas Bethlen humbly withdrew among his colleagues; the Vizier could not resist the temptation, he descended from the Divan, rubbing his hands, tapping the shoulders of the last speaker, smiling at all the deputies, and even going so far as to extend his hand to one or two of them, which those fortunate beings hastened to kiss, and spoke something to them in Turkish, to which they felt bound to reply with profound obeisances.

During this scene Maurocordato had quitted the Divan, and as in default of an interpreter the envoys were unable to understand the words of the Vizier, and could only bow repeatedly, Kiuprile, who had learnt Hungarian while he was Pasha of Eger, arose and roared at them in a voice which made the very ceiling shake:

"The Vizier bids you go to h.e.l.l, ye dogs of Giaours, and if we want you again we will send for you!" Whereupon he gave a vicious kick at a thaler which had rolled to his feet, while the deputies, after innumerable salutations, left the Divan.

On the departure of the Prince's envoys, the Grand Vizier immediately sent for Beldi and his comrades. When the refugees entered the Divan, not one of them yet knew that the envoys of the Prince had been there and brought the money which they saw piled up before them, though they could not for the life of them understand what the Grand Vizier and themselves had to do with all that money; and inasmuch as Maurocordato had also departed, and the cava.s.ses sent after him could not find him anywhere, the Hungarians, in the absence of an interpreter, stood there for some time in the utmost doubt, striving to explain as best they could the signification of the peculiar signs which the Grand Vizier kept making to them from time to time, pointing now at the heaps of money and now at them, and expounding his sayings with all ten fingers.

Every time he glanced at the money he could not restrain his disgusting, hyaena-like smile.

"Don't you see," whispered Csaky to Beldi, "the Grand Vizier intends all that money for us?"

Beldi could not help smiling at this artless opinion.

At last, as the interpreter did not come, Kiuprile was constrained, very much against the grain, to arise and interpret the wishes of the Grand Vizier as best he could.

"Worthy sirs, this is what the Grand Vizier says to you. The Prince's deputies have been here. They ought to have their necks broken--that's what _I_ say. They brought with them this sum of money, and they said all sorts of things which are not true, but the money which they brought is true enough. Having regard to which the Grand Vizier says to you that he recognises the justice of your cause and approves of it, but the mere recognition of its justice will make no difference to it, for it will remain just what it was before. But if you would make your righteous cause progress and succeed, promise him seventy more purses than those of the Prince's envoys, and then we will close with you. We will then fling _them_ into the Bosphorus sewn up in sacks, but you we will bring back into your own land and make you the lords of it."

A bitter smile crossed the lips of Paul Beldi, he sighed sorrowfully, and looked back upon his comrades.

"You know right well, sir," said he to Kiuprile, "that we have no money, nor do I know from whence to get as much as you require, and my colleagues are as poor as I am. We never used the property of the State as a means of collecting treasures for ourselves, and what little remained to us from our ancestors has already been divided among the servants of the Prince. We have no money wherewith to buy us justice, and if there be no other mode of saving our country, then in G.o.d's name dismiss us and we will throw ourselves at the feet of some foreign Prince, and supplicate till we find one who must listen to us. G.o.d be with you; money we have none."

"Then I have!" cried a voice close beside Beldi; and, looking in that direction, they saw Kucsuk Pasha approach Paul Beldi and warmly press the right hand of the downcast Hungarian gentleman. "If you want two hundred and seventy purses I will give it; if you want as much again I will give it; as much as you want you shall have; bargain with them, fix your price; I am here. I will pay instead of you."

Feriz Beg rushed towards his father, and, full of emotion, hid his face in his bosom. Beldi majestically clasped the hand of the old hero, and was scarce able to find words to express his grat.i.tude at this offer.

"I thank you, a thousand times I thank you, but I cannot accept it; that would be a debt I should never be able to repay, nor my descendants after me. Blessed are you for your good will, but you cannot help me that way."

Kiuprile intervened impatiently.

"Be sensible, Paul Beldi, and draw not upon thee my anger; weigh well thy words, and hearken to good counsel. To demand so much money from thee as a private man in exile would be a great folly, but a.s.sume that thou art a Prince, and that this amount, which it would be impossible to drag out of one pocket, could easily be distributed over a whole kingdom and not be felt. Do no more then than promise us the amount; it is not necessary that thou shouldst pay us before we have made thee Prince."

Beldi shuddered, and said to Kiuprile with a quavering voice:

"I do not understand you, sir, or else I have not heard properly what you said."

"Then understand me once for all. If it be true what thou sayest--to wit, that the present Prince of Transylvania rules amiss, why then, depose him from his Princ.i.p.ality; and if it also be true what thou sayest--to wit, that thou dost love thy country so much and seest what ought to be done--why then, defend it thyself. I will send a message to the frontier Pashas, and they will immediately declare war upon this state, seize Master Michael Apafi and all his counsellors, clap them into the fortress of Jedikula, and put thee and thy comrades in their places. Thou art only to promise the Grand Vizier two hundred and seventy purses, and he will engage to make thee Prince as soon as possible, and then thou wilt be able to pay it; which, if thou dost refuse, of a truth I tell thee, that I will clap thee into Jedikula in the place of Michael Apafi."

The heart of Paul Beldi beat violently throughout this speech. His emotion was visible in his face, and more than once he would have interrupted Kiuprile if the Hungarian gentlemen had not restrained him.

When, however, Kiuprile had finished his speech. Paul Beldi took a step forward, and proudly raising his head so that he seemed to be taller than usual, he replied in a firm, strong voice:

"I thank you, gracious sir, for your offer, but I cannot accept it. A sacred oath binds me to the present Prince of Transylvania, and if he has forgotten the oath which he swore to the nation it is no answer to say that we should also violate ours, nay, rather should we remind him of his. I have raised my head to ask for justice, not to pile one injustice upon another. Transylvania needs not a new Prince, but its old liberties; and if I had only wanted to make war upon the Prince, the country would rise at a sign from me, the whole of the Szeklers would draw their swords for me, but it was I who made them sheath their swords again. I do not come to the Porte for vengeance, but for judgment; not my own fate, but the fate of my country I submit to your Excellencies. I do not want the office of Prince. I do not want to drive out one usurper only to bring in a hundred more. I will not set all Transylvania in a blaze for the sake of roasting Master Michael Teleki, nor for the sake of freeing a dozen people from a shameful dungeon will I have ten thousand dragged into captivity. May I suffer injustice rather than all Transylvania. Accursed should I be, and all my posterity with me, if I were to sell my oppressed nation for a few pence and bring armies against my native land. As to your threats--I am prepared for anything, for prison, for death. I came to you for justice, slay me if you will."

Kiuprile, disgusted, flung himself back on his divan; he did not count upon such opposition, he was not prepared for such strength of mind. The other gentlemen who, from time to time, had fled to the Porte from Transylvania had been wont to beg and pray for the very favour which this man so n.o.bly rejected.

The Grand Vizier, perceiving from the faces of those present the impression made on them by Beldi's speech, turned now to the right and now to the left for an explanation, and dismay gradually spread over his pallid face as he began to understand. Beldi's colleagues, pale and utterly crushed, awaited the result of his alarming reply; while Ladislaus Csaky, unable to restrain his dismay, rushed up to Beldi, flung himself on his neck in his despair, and implored him by heaven and earth to accept the offer of the Grand Vizier.

If the offer had been made to him he would most certainly have accepted it.

"Never, never," replied Beldi, as cold as marble.

The other gentlemen knelt down before him, and with clasped hands besought him not to make himself, his children, and themselves for ever miserable.

"Arise, I am not G.o.d!" said Beldi, turning from his tearful colleagues.

The Grand Vizier, on understanding what it was all about, leaped furiously from his place, and tearing off his turban, hurled it in uncontrollable rage to the ground, exclaiming with foaming mouth: "Hither, cava.s.ses!"

"Put that accursed dog in chains!" he screeched, pointing with bloodshot eyes at Beldi, who quietly permitted them to load him with fetters weighing half-a-hundredweight each, which the army of slaves always had in readiness.

"Wouldst thou speak, puppy of a giaour?" cried the Vizier, when he was already chained.

"What I have said I stand to," solemnly replied the patriot, raising his chained hand to Heaven. "G.o.d is my refuge."

"To the dungeon with him!" yelled Kara Mustafa, beckoning to the drabants to drag Beldi away.