“Pray tell your tidings to the company, that they may know what is going on,” cried he to Haller, in a loud voice.
Haller hesitated.
“Come! Out with it. You could not, if you tried, invent anything half so entertaining. Stop playing up there, will you! This is something like a joke.”
The company urged Haller to lose no time in passing the joke on.
“There is not much to tell,” said Haller, shrugging his shoulders. “It is only that Ali Pasha has proclaimed Michael Apafi Prince of Transylvania.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” resounded on all sides. The Prince, with comic affectation, turned first to one and then to the other.
“Who is the individual? Does anyone know him? Has anybody ever heard of him?”
Lady Banfi turned pale and clung tightly to her husband’s arm, who leaned his elbow on the table and replied with sublime indifference—
“The poor devil is, I believe, a very distant connection of mine. He has married some relation or other of my wife’s. He was for a long time a slave among the Tartars, and the Turks (being wroth with us just now) have no doubt only released him on condition that he allows himself to be made Prince. He must be clean out of his senses.”
At this all the gentlemen laughed still more loudly than before.
“Well, we’ll go and inaugurate him,” said Kemeny sarcastically, throwing back his head.
“That has already been done, your Highness,” put in Haller.
“Where? By whom?” asked the good-humoured Prince, with arched eyebrows.
“At Kis-Selyk, by the Diet!”
Kemeny intimated by a wave of his hand and a contraction of his eyebrows that this explanation was not quite clear to him.
“Who then were present? Where were the Estates? All the men of any importance in the land are here with us.”
“There were Stephen Apafi, Nalaczi, Kun, Daczo, and some two hundred Szeklers.”
“Well, we’ll go and count them as soon as we have disposed of our other affairs,” said the Prince contemptuously. “Pray give Master Haller a chair!”
“But they are not awaiting us there. They are marching against us. By this time they must be at Segesvar.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Kemeny. “I suppose, then, Master Michael Apafi thinks to drive us out of the country with his couple of hundred Szeklers.”
But now Wenzinger rose from his chair, and remarked with soldierly precision—
“Does your Highness wish me to concentrate the army? We have eight thousand armed men, and, if it please your Highness, we will disperse this mob of nondescripts so effectually that not a couple of them shall remain together.”
“Keep your seat!” commanded Kemeny, who treated the whole affair with the most sovereign contempt. “Sit down again and drink! Let them come a little nearer! Why should we inconvenience ourselves by going out against them? We can then take the whole lot together bag and baggage. I much regret, my lord Denis Banfi, that this fellow is a kinsman of yours; but, out of regard for you, I will take care that he is not broken on the wheel—I will simply have him stuffed!”
Kemeny’s witticism was received with uproarious laughter.
“Give Master Haller a glass. And you up there! go on playing where you left off.”
And once more the music resounded. The gipsy band now played a csárdás.11 The gentlemen clinked glasses and sang in unison. The guards outside joined in the song. The glasses flew against the wall. Everyone was ready to dash his glass into a thousand pieces except Gabriel Haller, who, being the last comer and therefore tolerably sober, was ashamed to destroy the expensive Venetian crystals so recklessly.
“Come! down with it! Let the splinters fly!” roared the Prince at him, and to please his Highness Haller dutifully but gingerly rapped his glass against the table till it broke off clean at the neck, quite decently and respectably, whereupon he bowed low to his Highness with obsequious humility.
Dame Banfi sighed at the thought of her kinswoman; but Banfi, to show how very little he cared about the matter, leaped from his chair, and with the wild music of the csárdás ringing in his ears, invited the lovely Lady Beldi to a dance.
The merry siren did not require twice bidding. Banfi passed his arm around her slender waist, pressed her tightly to his breast, and whirled away with her. The fiery beauty hung with elfin airiness on her partner’s arm.
Then all the other gentlemen present, carried away by Banfi’s example, also leaped from their seats and whirled away with their fair neighbours, till the whole company resolved itself into a maze of fantastically revolving figures, everyone dancing, applauding, and huzzahing to his heart’s content.
Banfi was an impetuous, hot-blooded man who loved pretty women in general and at all times. Now, moreover, he was heated with wine, and thus it came about that as his lovely partner was dangling on his arm and her glowing cheeks came very near to his, he suddenly so far forgot himself as to press the bewitching dame to his breast and imprint a burning kiss upon her lips.
Lady Beldi shrieked aloud, and instantly repulsed the self-forgetful Lothario. Banfi, much confused, cast a glance around him; but apparently everyone was so taken up with his own amusement, that neither the shriek nor the kiss had been observed.
Nevertheless, Lady Beldi, very much offended, left off dancing, and when Banfi began stammering some sort of an apology, she sharply told him to be off and leave her.
Banfi will one day have to pay very dearly for that kiss!
Nobody had observed it, however, save him whom it most concerned—the husband. Beldi’s eyes had seen it. Oh! you must not imagine that an uxorious husband is never jealous. Even though he makes as though he hears and sees nothing, he sees and
