The Village Notary Part 3

"Did not I tell you," said Akosh, evidently amused by the judge's perplexity, "that old Peti is our servant and messenger. Who would ever have thought of the sheriff's quick-footed gipsy being taken up and handcuffed?"

"It is true," said Mr. Skinner, despondingly. "But why didn't he speak?--why not mention the letters? Come here, you d---- old rascal!"

thundered the judge, who was one of those amiable men whose rage reaches the boiling point at a minute's notice, and whose words are most offensive when they ought to be most conciliating. "You dog! why did you not say that you were sent by the sheriff? I have a mind to give you two dozen--I have!"

The gipsy was aware of the favourable change in his prospects, and he replied, with considerable coolness, that the cruel treatment of the Pandurs had caused him to forget all about it; "besides," added he, "my lady told me not to show the letters to any one; and, moreover, I was sure my innocence would come to light."

"Your innocence! it is shocking," cried the justice, holding up his hands; "the fellow has a letter from the sheriff in his pocket, and the blockhead relies on his innocence! Here are your letters;--go!--run!--and woe to you if the letters come too late to St.

Vilmosh!"

The gipsy nodded his head, and hastened in the direction of St. Vilmosh!

He was scarcely gone, when Mr. Skinner vented his pa.s.sion upon the Pandurs. He expressed his astonishment, intermixed with curses, at the impertinence of these worthy men for having caught the sheriff's gipsy; and when they appealed to Mr. Kenihazy, all the comfort they received was a gentle hint of certain misgivings that gentleman entertained respecting their being suffered to go at large. Akosh and the rest of the company were amused with Mr. Skinner's violence and the agility of the gipsy, who every now and then looked back, and ran the quicker afterwards. The notary and the clergyman remained serious: and when the party had left, and neither the merry laugh of Akosh nor Skinner's ever-ready curses fell upon their ear, Tengelyi turned to his friend, saying, "Do you still think that hare-hunting is the _cruellest_ pastime of these gentlemen?"

"No, indeed!" sighed Vandory; "and to think that these men are public functionaries, and that the weal and woe of thousands is in their hands!"

"Ha!" cried Tengelyi, turning round, and directing the attention of his friend to a dark point which moved over the vast expanse of the heath, "is not that our gipsy?"

"Yes; but he runs rather in a line with us, instead of to St. Vilmosh."

"So it seems," said Tengelyi, "and for once the sheriff's orders will not be obeyed. Perhaps he is bribed by the other party; but who knows?

Skinner may be right, and Peti is leagued with Viola. In that case he is now on his way to inform the outlaw of what the judge most wisely communicated to him, for I am sure that gipsy does not run so fast without good cause. But what does it matter to us?"

And the two friends returned to the village.

CHAP. II.

On a ridge of the Carpathian mountains, where, gradually lessening, they descend to the green Hungarian plain, lies the village of Bard, amidst meadow land, forests, and vineyards. Its situation is most pleasant, though lonely; and, removed as it is from the busy high road and the means of traffic and communication, the village is both unknown and poor. About fifty years ago, there lived in this village Esaias Tengelyi, the curate of Bard, and father to Jonas Tengelyi, whom we mentioned as notary of Tissaret. The life of Esaias Tengelyi pa.s.sed peaceably and unnoticed, like the place in which he exercised his sacred calling, or the valley and the mountain side which sheltered his humble cottage. The condition of the Reformed Church in Hungary does not by any means deserve the epithet of "brilliant," even in our own days; but the present village pastors are most enviably situated in comparison to their brethren of fifty years ago. Still the life of the Reverend Esaias Tengelyi, though full of privations, was rich in enjoyment. He loved his cottage, its straw-covered roof, and the brown rafters of its ceiling. Sometimes, indeed, he wished to have the windows of his room a little larger,--and he went even so far as to take the resolution of administering, at his own expense, to this drawback to the comforts of his home. The huge stove, too, which served also the purpose of an oven, made his room preposterously small, and on baking days it threw out a greater quant.i.ty of heat than was consistent with comfort. The neighbouring curates, whenever they came to pay their respects to the Reverend Esaias, were violent in their strictures upon the parish of Bard, for neglecting to provide their pastor's study with a decent flooring: nay, more, the good man was seriously reproved, and earnestly adjured to follow the example of his brethren in office, who had successfully pet.i.tioned the Synod respecting the gross indecency of pastoral clay floors. But Tengelyi could not be moved to stir in behalf of his house: perhaps he liked it better as it was. Its windows were indeed small; but then he had often sat by them reading the Scriptures; and they had seen the roses on his wife's cheek. The stove was large,--of course it was,--but in winter it offered a convenient and warm seat; and the clay floor of his study was the same on which his father's feet had trod, when he was meditating his sermons, while the son made his first attempt to stand on a pair of trembling little legs.

After all, there was nothing like the window, the stove, and the floor, for a countless number of sweet and tender emotions were connected with them. Esaias Tengelyi was happy; he felt that the largest window, that the smallest stove, and the most splendid floor of old oak, could not add to his happiness.

But that happiness could be lessened. The pastor's wife died, and the heart which had harboured so much bliss was henceforth the home of bitter sorrow. Tengelyi gave no words to his anguish, nor did he strive to add to or lessen his grief; but his friends felt that time was as nothing to the sorrow of his heart, and that his hopes and wishes were not on this side of the grave. His little son, Jonas, was the only tie which bound the old pastor to the world. The boy was but four years of age when his mother died; what would become of him, if he were also bereft of his father? People have scarcely a heart for their own children; how then is an orphan to fare for love? And the boy was most beautiful, when he cast his deep blue eyes upwards to the father's sad face! His voice had the tones of that dear voice which taught him his first words; his yellow locks were smooth and orderly, as if fresh from his mother's hands;--what was to become of the child on this wide earth, and with no kindred, but his parents in the grave? Tengelyi would not be comforted, but a sense of his duty kept him alive.

Little Jonas throve under his father's care. He knew not what it was to be motherless in this world, where the heart finds that trusty, faithful love it yearns for, only at a mother's breast. A child's heart is a little treasury of joy, and there is no room in it for great griefs. In the first days after the event, little Jonas called for his mother, and receiving no answer from that mild, loving voice, he sat down and wept his fill; in the night he dreamed of her, and lisped her name. But as time wore on, his mother's name was rarely mentioned, and when spring came, with its flowers, her memory pa.s.sed away like the distant notes of a song. All this was natural. Children are most enviable, because they are most forgetful. A thousand flowers are blooming round a child: why should it ponder on the sorrows of the past? A thousand melodies flit around it, and the young heart leaps to them: it has no ear for the sad accents of distant love.

Thus did the first years pa.s.s away. When Jonas had completed his eighth year, his father commenced his education. The old pastor's plan was extremely simple. He made the child ask questions, and answered them in a manner which was at once explicit and adapted to the boy's capacities.

He had no idea of making his son a phenomenon; on the contrary, he did all in his power to limit his mental activity to a narrow circle, to prevent his being confused by a variety of subjects. The cla.s.sical languages, as far as Jonas could understand them, and the rudiments of natural and political history, were all that old Esaias taught his son; they were all he thought necessary for that son's future vocation.

For old Tengelyi, like the majority of fathers, had already chosen a profession for his son, and though, on consideration, he would have shrunk from the idea of forcing anybody, and much less his own boy, into a career which might be repugnant to his tastes, still, when he thought of his child's future life, he could not possibly fancy that his son should wish for any thing besides the curacy of Bard. Old Tengelyi had himself followed his father in that sacred office. It was so natural to think that he in his turn would be followed by his son. But while the father was thus tracing out his future career, and planting in the garden, besides improving the house, as he thought, for the child of his heart, the boy Jonas Tengelyi antic.i.p.ated other scenes and a different sphere of action. The poor curate's library contained but few books, but among them was a great treasure; namely, a copy of Plutarch--a relic of college life, with a portrait of the hero to each biography. This ill.u.s.trated copy of Plutarch was the only book of its kind in the vicarage, and indeed in the village of Bard. Jonas pa.s.sed many hours in looking at the solemn faces of the cla.s.sic heroes, nor was it long before he knew all their names and actions; and though the old pastor regretted that the book was not an ill.u.s.trated Bible, by which means he might impress upon his boy's mind the history and the deeds of the heroes of our faith, still his heart grew big with joy when the child expatiated on the virtues of Aristides, or (his little cheeks glowing all the while) told of the death of Leonidas and Socrates. And old Esaias blessed the pagan author who wrote the book, and the college-chum who made him a present of it, and even the very printer who had produced it. The whole future life of Jonas was influenced by these early lessons; and though the milder doctrines of Christianity made a deep impression on his heart, yet his mind would always return to the models of cla.s.sic excellence. His sympathies were all with the heroes of Plutarch.

At times, when old Tengelyi was from home, Jonas would follow his fancies through the dark shades of the woods. He would sit on the ruins of Bard Castle, looking at the forest-clad mountains and the wide distant plain, and there he sat and pondered until the sun went down and the evening breeze woke him from his dreams. There he was happy; for there is no greater happiness than the delight which a pure heart feels when thinking of great deeds and generous men. The childhood of nations and individuals idolises all heroes, and thus did Jonas.

A child's perceptions of distance are very weak: it is the same in the moral world. Children try to grasp any shining bauble which strikes their eyes, no matter whether far or near. Life has not yet taught them to wait, to plod, and perhaps to be disappointed. The boy is equally ignorant of the bitter truth, that there is usually but _one_ road which leads to the high places of this world, and that the ascent, though easy to some, is impossible to others, for from where they stand there is no path which leads to the top. And yet how closely is our boyish admiration of a great man allied to the idea that he is our example and our hope! Children, when isolated,--that is to say, when they are deprived of the society of other children,--are apt to become dreamers: and this was young Tengelyi's case. His dreams were of a dangerous kind, and his conversation was such that his hearers became convinced of fate having destined that boy to be either very great or very wretched.

Old Esaias did not indeed suffer from these apprehensions. His son's enthusiasm, his hatred of tyranny, his love of his kind, proved nothing to old Tengelyi but that Jonas would turn out a first-rate village pastor. He never dreamt of this enthusiasm being applied to other purposes than those of the pulpit; and he did all in his power to develop the talents of so hopeful a preacher. He enlarged on the sufferings of the poor and the cruelty of the rich; on the equality of mankind before G.o.d, and the duties we owe to our fellow men.

In the course of time Jonas was sent to school at Debrezin. Though he was only thirteen, his character was already formed. His was a boundless enthusiasm for all things n.o.ble and generous; his was an equally boundless hate against all that is mean; his was the daring which is ever ready to oppose injustice with words and with deeds; and his was that austerity of principle which is apt to make a man unjust. In short, poor Jonas would have proved a model man in Utopia. In our own civilised society, the excess of his good qualities was likely to cause him to be shunned, if not hated. Nevertheless he was popular with the masters and the boys; and the happiest years of his life were spent in the dull routine of a public school. The masters admired his ambition, and the rapid progress it caused him to make; and though he seldom condescended to join in the plays and athletic exercises of his comrades, they paid a free tribute of admiration to his love of justice and his courage. His studies delighted him, for his soul yearned for knowledge. Jonas was indeed happy!

Old Esaias Tengelyi continued meanwhile in his life of tranquillity and contentment. His humble dwelling grew still more quiet when his son left it; and the grey-headed pastor walked lonely among the fruit-trees of his garden, where he formerly used to watch the gambols of his child; but the serenity of his mind was still the same. His life pa.s.sed away like the course of a gentle stream which mixes with the ocean. Esaias was aware that his days were numbered; but there was nothing appalling in the thought. He was at peace with G.o.d and the world; and though he grieved to leave his son, his soul yearned for her that had left him.

His last remaining wish was to expire in the arms of his son. His wish was granted. Jonas returned to Bard, and a fortnight after his return his father was laid in the grave. The poor of Bard wept with Jonas, for they too were the old man's children; a simple stone with an inscription of rude workmanship (for the hands of poor peasants wrought it) marks the last resting-place of Esaias Tengelyi.

His father's death threw Jonas into a different career. Hitherto he had sacrificed his ambition to his sense of duty, but now his choice was free; and, at his time of life, there are few who will tread an humble and tranquil path. Jonas preferred to embark in a political career; and since the study of law is the first condition to eminence, he devoted the whole of his energies to the rudiments of that dry and uninteresting science. Having turned his paternal heritage into money, and realised the modest sum of six hundred florins, he pa.s.sed three years at the German universities, but especially at Heidelberg, where the strongest bonds of friendship united him with that very Rety, in whose village our readers have seen him established as notary. His studies ended, we find Jonas Tengelyi at Pesth, in the act of entering into public life. He had great hopes, great ambition, and very little money. But Jonas was not a man to be daunted by privations. He took his oath, was admitted as "juratus," rattled his sword for eighteen months on the steps of the Curia, and, being thus duly prepared, he was at length admitted to the bar.

This period of our hero's life contains nothing whatever for his biographer or the public to take an interest in, excepting always the negative wonder of Tengelyi having been a "juratus" for eighteen months without having once fought, got drunk, or played at billiards. Need we add that he was very unpopular among his comrades?

But we will add that Jonas Tengelyi, though deeply read in law, could not prevail upon his examiners to insert into his diploma a better qualification than the simple word "laudabilis," while two young gentlemen, whom he himself had ground for the examination, pa.s.sed triumphantly each with a "praeclarus." Poor Jonas, though thus roughly handled at the very threshold of public life, forgot all his grief that very evening, when he took his seat in the humble conveyance which was to take him to the county of Takshony. The jolting of the coach which bore him to the scene of his future struggles, opened the brilliant realms of a fanciful future to his mind. The past was forgotten.

The reasons why the young barrister proposed to practise in the county of Takshony are very obvious. He was not, indeed, a large landholder in that blessed county, nor could he expect the patronage and the support of powerful friends. He chose Takshony because, of the fifty-two Hungarian counties, there was not one which offered more, nor, indeed, less chances for him, poor and friendless as he was. Hungary was all before him where to go, and he went to Takshony. If he was to trust the evidence of the natives of the county, it was the most enlightened district in the kingdom; and, if credit could be given to the a.s.sertions of its neighbours, there never was a county so dest.i.tute of common sense: a man of Jonas's stamp was therefore certain to prosper in any case. In an enlightened county his merits were sure to be appreciated, and in a dull county they were as certain to be wanted. Besides, he trusted the promises, and looked for the support of his friend Rety, who was son to the sheriff of Takshony. Tengelyi was, consequently, not a little elated and excited when, after a tedious journey, the coach deposited him safe and sound in the high street of the county town, whose appropriate name in English would be Dustbury. This town, unless a traveller happens to see it on a market-day, has little to distinguish it from the common run of Hungarian villages; indeed, there would be considerable danger of its being thus lowly estimated but for the imposing bulk of the county house, before whose ma.s.sive gates a batch of culprits may at all times be heard roaring under the beadle's rod, and thus proclaiming the force of the laws of Hungary.

Dustbury, the capital of the county of Takshony, was to be the scene of Tengelyi's future labours and triumphs. He sent his letters of recommendation to their various addresses, read his diploma in the market-place, hired a small study, and waited for clients. Nor did he wait long. Young physicians and young advocates have in general plenty to do, but their practice is rather laborious than profitable. As a tax upon entering public life, they are called upon to exert themselves in behalf of the poorer members of the community. Tengelyi's turn of mind made him eminently fit to be the advocate of the poor. He embraced the cause of his humble clients with uncommon enthusiasm, and pleaded it with equal warmth. He was the friend and protector of the oppressed, and his love of justice made him soon something like a marked man in the town of Dustbury.

At first his position was rather tolerable, for he confined his practice to criminal cases. A prisoner whom he defended was indeed condemned to death, and some other clients of his received a severer sentence than they had a right to expect; but this was, after all, the gentlest means for the court to show their sense of the impertinence which prompted "such a vagabond counsel to lecture his betters;" and certainly the court showed an admirable tact by this indirect manifestation of the contempt in which they held Tengelyi's pleadings.

But there was no feeling of personal animosity against him, until he dared to take up a civil process against one of the a.s.sessors, whom he all but forced to refund a certain sum of money which that gentleman had condescended to accept as a loan from a poor peasant. This affair settled Tengelyi. The young counsel's impertinence was the nine-days'

wonder of Dustbury. His colleagues shunned him,--his landlord gave him warning to leave his house,--and there is no doubt that the self-const.i.tuted advocate of the poor would have been ignominiously suspended from his functions but for the intercession of the sheriff Rety, who pleaded Tengelyi's extreme youth in extenuation of his offence. "He is sure to profit by our example," said old Rety; "and when he has once sown his wild oats he will be a credit to the county."

An event occurred meanwhile which promised to establish Tengelyi in his career. The counsel of the Baron Kalihazy died, with sundry cases still pending on his hands; and the head of the family of Kalihazy, who had made Tengelyi's acquaintance at Dustbury, thought of appointing the young barrister to the vacant post of fiscal; that is to say, he proposed to make him the legal friend and adviser of the Kalihazy family. So determined was the whimsical Baron to turn the young man's talents to account, that not all the persuasions of his friends could induce him to relinquish his insane project, which he was on the point of executing, when Paul Hajto, the leading counsel of the Dustbury bar, interfered. Mr. Paul Hajto was the most intimate friend of our hero.

Instead of censuring him for his violence, as others were apt to do, that worthy man seized every opportunity (when alone with Tengelyi) to urge him to still more violent attacks upon the court. In the present instance, too, Mr. Hajto did all in his power to remove Tengelyi from the temptations which beset the life and threaten the integrity of an advocate.

"You are not fit for the bar," he was wont to say: "you are made to shine in a more elevated sphere. If I were in your place, I would devote myself wholly to politics. As it is, you lose your cases; your labours are not only unprofitable, but useless. Hungary wants a thorough reform; you are the man to regenerate the country. Besides, you can be an advocate and a politician too, if you _will_ stick to the bar." Tengelyi resisted; but flattery is too persuasive, especially for youthful minds; and he set about seriously to prepare a speech for the next Sessions.

The day came. Tengelyi made his speech, which astonished the whole a.s.sembly, not solely by its cla.s.sic Latin and its most modern sentiments. No! The astonishment of the meeting was chiefly caused by the unheard-of fact that a young advocate, scarcely twenty-four years of age,--and a man who was not even an a.s.sessor, and much less a landowner,--dared to speak at all. Such effrontery was so marvellous, so unaccountable, so unheard-of, that the n.o.ble members of the meeting were utterly at a loss to express their disgust. But they did express it somehow; and the sheriff, and the notary, and the recorder of the county overwhelmed the young intruder with a torrent of words, of which we will only say that they were rather sincere than elegant. Tengelyi, nothing daunted, replied to each of them, and carried the matter so far that every man in the room cried "Actio!"[4] whereupon the discomfited reformer was obliged to pay the usual fine of five-and-twenty florins into the recorder's hands.

[Footnote 4: See Note III.]

The loss of this sum was a severe blow to Tengelyi, who had not another florin left. Besides this, he lost the fiscalship and the briefs of Kalihazy's family; for that gentleman was among his opponents, and Tengelyi had not spared his future patron's arguments or feelings. The Kalihazy briefs were that very evening made over to his friend, Mr. Paul Hajto.

To make a man a martyr is the surest means of making him popular, at least with _one_ party. Every sheriff, recorder, or notary has at least _one_ enemy, namely, the man who wishes to oust him in the next election. The truth of these great political axioms was tested in Tengelyi's case. His attack upon the magistrates of the county, and his subsequent martyrdom, gained him some friends. Konkolyi, in particular, who thought of opposing Rety at the next election, was loud in his praises of the young man's courage and common sense. The smaller n.o.bles were not fond of Konkolyi, for they thought him proud; but they idolised Rety, who had an amiable way of calling them his cousins, and of taking a vast interest in the health of their wives and children. Konkolyi had not, therefore, any chance of prevailing against Rety, though he, too, exerted himself to the utmost, by means of bounties, drinking-bouts, and dinners, to convince his fellow n.o.bles of his merits. Hajto was Konkolyi's fiscal. He was aware that his patron possessed large domains, a fine castle, and on income of twenty thousand florins a year, and that a man of such transcendent merits wanted but one thing for the shrievalty, namely, a trifling majority of votes. But so great was Rety's popularity, that Hajto had lost all hopes of carrying his patron's election, when Tengelyi's quarrel with Rety opened a fresh field for intrigue.

Hajto came that very evening to see the poor young man; he praised his speech, censured Rety's tyranny, protested that the county magistrates _must_ go out at the next election, and finally persuaded him to come to Konkolyi's house.

Konkolyi was a courtier, and chamberlain to his Majesty the Emperor. The great man received Tengelyi with unwonted condescension; and, corroborating every one of Hajto's words, he protested that poor Jonas must allow his friends to elect him to the justiceship of the district, as the only means of giving his opinions the weight which they deserved. Jonas pleaded his youth, his poverty, his being a stranger to the county; but his objections were overruled.

"We know you, my dear Sir, we know you," said the chamberlain, with his kindest smile. "You have made a speech; that's enough. 'Ex ungue leonem.' We have put our hearts upon making you a justice. You are n.o.ble; and a n.o.bleman, however poor and unknown he may be, is ent.i.tled to the highest place in the kingdom."

What could Tengelyi do? He consented, and became a distinguished member of Konkolyi's party. It was Hajto's task to make him friends among the lesser n.o.bility. Nothing could be better adapted for this purpose than the speech which had caused Jonas to be fined at the Sessions. Hajto took possession of that speech, and translated it,--of course with a few unimportant alterations. Wherever Tengelyi mentioned the poor, his translator inserted the words "poor n.o.blemen;" and the blame which Tengelyi bestowed upon the undue length of criminal prosecutions and the ill-treatment of the prisoners, was artfully changed into denunciations of the unseemly despatch which was used in criminal proceedings against n.o.blemen, and the unjustifiable tyranny of the county magistrates who refused to bail certain incarcerated n.o.blemen for the election. If the author had seen his production in its altered state, the chances are that he would have disapproved of it; but certain it is that Hajto's edition of the speech insured its popularity. The n.o.ble const.i.tuents of the parishes at Ratsh and Palfalva were in raptures with their new advocate; and though Rety's party endeavoured to disenchant them by publishing the original text of the speech, they found it impossible to undermine Tengelyi's popularity, confirmed as it was by the martyrdom of an "actio." Whenever the n.o.blemen came to Dustbury, they made a point of paying their respects to their tribune; whenever he accompanied Konkolyi to some neighbouring seat, he was received with deafening cheers. His popularity brought him some more substantial benefits, in the shape of briefs and fees, for his professional advice; in short, he had every reason to be satisfied with the progress he had made. His future promotion was all but certain. But suddenly a compromise was talked of.

Rety was willing to withdraw from the contest under the condition that his son was accepted as justice. Konkolyi's party opposed, because that very place was promised to Tengelyi; but Hajto interfered, and, as usual, succeeded in arranging matters to the satisfaction of all parties concerned. Tengelyi was at that generous time of life when men are p.r.o.ne to make sacrifices. He, therefore, was prevailed upon to withdraw his claims to the justiceship, and to solicit the votes of the county for the inferior post of deputy-justice. The election commenced in due course, and Konkolyi and the younger Rety were returned. Tengelyi was pleased with the triumph of his friend, and not the less because that triumph was obtained at his own expense; but who can picture his dismay when the election of the deputy came on, and another man, a friend of Konkolyi's, was chosen to fill that place? His heart was crushed within him, for he, the proud man, saw too late that he had been the tool of a party which cast him off the very moment that his services could be dispensed with. His popularity pa.s.sed away like a dream. The part which young Rety had acted in the election was, to say the least, suspicious; and that brotherly attachment, which distingushed the two young men at college, received a serious shock. But this was not all.

Jonas loved for the first time in his life; he loved as only those can love who are alone in the world, for whom there is no other being on the face of the earth whom they place their trust in, whom they hope for, and to whom they cling. Erzsi, the object of Tengelyi's attachment, was fully deserving of his love; but she was poor: nevertheless our hero married her. He was consequently still more imperatively called upon to resign his early dreams of glory, and to devote his energies to gain a livelihood.

Tengelyi and his wife left Dustbury; but they returned two years later poorer than ever, and the more disappointed from the very humbleness of their wishes and plans. In the course of those two years he had tried to keep a village school, to be tutor in a rich man's family, and to act as steward on another rich man's lands; but he signally failed in each. His return to Dustbury marked the saddest period of his life. Up to that time he had undergone privations; now he suffered from want; his struggles with the world had been full of disappointments, but now he was borne down by utter hopelessness. Thus he pa.s.sed three years of misery; and although Rety had by this time succeeded to his father's estate, and to the almost hereditary dignity of sheriff of the county, he never a.s.sisted his old friend. He respected Tengelyi too much to relieve the poor man's necessities by a gift of money: his principles were too rigorous to allow him to use his influence and his patronage in behalf of his friend. Nevertheless, after three years of unutterable wretchedness, Tengelyi was surprised to see Rety enter his little house.

The sheriff came to tell his old friend that the notary of Tissaret was just dead; and offering that place to Tengelyi, he a.s.sured him, with a generosity which did honour to his heart, that the new notary should have the same immunity from local and parish burdens which had been from time immemorial enjoyed by all his predecessors in office.

Jonas thanked Rety for this unexpected favour. That very week he went to Tissaret, where we found him at the commencement of our tale, as a village notary of twenty years' standing, and with grey hair, but still sound in mind and body. The twenty years he lived at Tissaret had pa.s.sed as such a number of years in the life of a poor village notary is likely to pa.s.s; nor did they contain any notable events beyond Tengelyi's acquiring a small freehold in the parish of Tissaret, and the birth of two children, a daughter and a son, the former of whom grew up to be the prettiest girl in the county. Perhaps we might add, that Mrs. Ershebet had lately lost part of that sweetness of temper which formerly warranted the name of "_good_ Erzsi," which Tengelyi was pleased to give her, and that his friendship with Rety had ever since the last election fallen into the seer and yellow leaf. But this is all. Years had pa.s.sed over his head without changing his character; his sufferings had, in a manner, soured his temper, but his love of justice was the same, and his courage in behalf of the oppressed remained undaunted. Mrs. Ershebet had a right to say, as indeed she did, that her husband would never come to be prudent and make his way in the world.

Tengelyi had but one friend, viz. Balthasar Vandory, the whole tenour of whose mind was in the strangest contrast with his own. Where Tengelyi condemned, Vandory was sure to excuse; and whenever the perpetration of some great wrong turned all Tengelyi's blood to gall, his strictures upon the cruelty and injustice of mankind failed to move Vandory to any more determined sentiment than deep grief. The notary was at war with the world; the curate was reconciled to it.

Little was known of Vandory's previous history. He never made any allusion to his family, but his accent gave unmistakeable proof of his Magyar origin. His parishioners adored him, and even the Retys made no exception to the general rule.

My readers are now informed of all that can be said of the character and the history of the notary and his friend. I will therefore leave them alone to improve their acquaintance with Tengelyi, who, after parting with the curate, proceeded to the gate of his house, which he was prevented from entering by his daughter Vilma.