Similar difficulties awaited the good Patrol-officer with the second foot; but after working with six-horse power to force his foot into a receptacle never intended for it, he was at last able, with the ruddiness of satisfaction on his cheeks, to take a smiling survey of his gorgeous, tight-fitting boots, which harmonized so delightfully with the other dusty, greasy, ink-bespattered constituent parts of his dress.
“Now, mark what I say!” said Csaky, sitting down with a lordly air on the solitary chair, whilst the clerk, standing before him, raised first one and then the other leg aloft, at the same time uttering a peculiar hissing sound, and turning a livid green and blue in his agony, for the boots had now begun to play havoc with his corns. “When did you last go your rounds?”
“I really don’t know.”
“But you ought to know. Why don’t you make a note of it? The Prince wishes you to go your rounds at once, and you must look particularly sharp after all the places between Toroczko, Banfi-Hunyad, and Bonczhida. Besides the usual questions, you must ask the people whether they have seen any foreign wild beast in the surrounding woods.”
“Foreign wild beast?” mechanically repeated the wretched Patrol-officer.
“And if at any place they tell you they have seen such beast, you must go personally into the districts indicated, and search till you come upon its track.”
“I cry your Excellency’s pardon! but what manner of beast may it be?” asked the student timidly.
“Come, come! don’t be afraid! It is neither a seven-headed dragon nor yet a minotaur, but only a young panther.”
“A panther!” stammered the terrified Clement.
“You are not expected to catch it,” said Csaky cheerily. “You have only to discover its hiding-place and let me know.”
“And if this wild beast—whose existence indeed in Transylvania I very much doubt—should stray into the territory of Denis Banfi,” asked Clement, “what am I to do then?”
“You must go after it.”
“I cry your Excellency’s pardon, but his property is a liber baronatus, where my jurisdiction ceases.”
“Don’t be so stupid, Clement,” said Csaky. “I never said you were to repair thither vi et armis: the whole expedition must remain a secret. You have only to follow the wild beast’s track. We have it, on the best authority, that the beast is somewhere in the neighbourhood, and we trust to your dexterity to spot it. The rest will be done by more enterprising people than yourself.”
Clement regarded the mission as altogether odd and risky, but he dared not raise any objection, so he simply bowed low and sighed deeply.
“Above all things we must have dexterity, expedition, and secrecy. Keep that constantly in mind.”
“I will go at once,” cried Clement desperately; “but first I must borrow me a horse from someone or other, for I should not like to utterly ruin these beautiful boots by walking in them.”
“That too would be a little too slow for our purpose. But don’t bother your head about a horse. One of my heydukes will give you his, which you must mount at once. Remember however to give him oats occasionally, as I don’t want him to come back all skin and bone.”
Clement the Clerk, quite confounded by so much graciousness, hastily shouldered his shabby knapsack, fastened his rusty sword to his side, and after placing in his knapsack a roll of parchment, a goose-quill, and a wooden inkhorn, declared himself ready to depart.
“You have a very light equipment,” remarked Csaky.
“Integer vitae, scelerisque purus, non eget Mauri jaculis neque arcu,” returned the philosopher with a classical flourish, and when the reins had been placed in his hands, he prepared to mount. But the aristocratic charger, as soon as he perceived that the clerk had one foot in the stirrups, began to plunge, buck, and run round and round, thereby compelling the aspiring poet to hop along with him on one foot, till the laughing heydukes seized the horse by the bridle, and helped the unpractised horseman into the saddle. As however he had very long legs, and the wicked heydukes had lashed the stirrups up very high, he was obliged to squat upon the horse as if it had been a camel.
Ladislaus Csaky bawled after him once more not to forget what he had told him, whereupon the poet, quite unintentionally, gave his horse the spur, and dashed madly off at full tilt over stock and stone. Mantle, sabre, and knapsack flew about the ears of the unfortunate horseman, who held on to his saddle with both hands in mortal agony, to the intense delight of the whole population of Toroczko, who were sitting in groups outside their houses on their beard-driers, as the benches used to be called in those days.
First of all the Patrol-officer took the road to Abrudbánya. Formerly, while he still had a servant, Clement used to leave all the pioneering to him; but now he was forced to find his way from village to village himself, with the occasional assistance of the country magistrates.
He had just quitted the narrow mountain path, and was ambling slowly over a dilapidated bridge, which spanned a brawling stream, when he perceived in the thicket a group of dirty-looking men crouching over a large fire. At first he took them for gypsies, but, approaching nearer, was horrified to discover that they were Tartars, who had dismounted from their horses, and were sitting round an ox which they had roasted whole.
To turn back was scarcely advisable; but the road he was following went straight past the diners. Clement was in a fix; but he determined at
