The Lord-Lieutenant himself sat in an open carriage, drawn by five black horses, with rose-coloured, gilded harness; both panels of the carriage door bore the Banfi crest, gorgeously painted on a gold ground; behind stood two hussars with silver-embroidered mantles and white heron plumes.
With haughty dignity Denis Banfi sits back on the velvet cushions of his coach; all the pomp and splendour which surrounds him suits him well. His glossy locks leave bare his high forehead, which, together with his fine, frank eyes, bespeaks infinite good-nature, while the bold curve of the bushy eyebrows and the peculiar cut of the thin lips indicate a violent temper. The whole face seems to be constantly under the influence of these hostile emotions. At one moment it is mild, smiling, rosy; at another savage, grim, and suffused by a dark purple flush. The traces of noble enthusiasm and of unbridled fury are impressed upon his face side by side just as they are in his heart.
The martial squadrons present arms; the schoolchildren chant hymns; the vassals wave their hats; the music resounds from the battlements; the clergymen deliver addresses; and all the guests flutter their kerchiefs and their kalpags at him from the windows, and Banfi receives all these demonstrations of respect with his usual majestic dignity and condescension, with the air of a man who feels that all this sort of thing belongs to him of right. Meanwhile his eyes glance up at those three windows concealed behind the fragrant jasmines and the quivering mimosas, and his face grows graver and sadder when he perceives no one behind them.
From the window of another room there looks down a very tall old man in a long clerical surtout with small buttons. Since losing his teeth his chin has moved closer to his nose, which makes his nose look a long way from his eyes. He seems to be taking no part whatever in the general rejoicings. By his side leans a lady in mourning, wearing a black velvet haube; rage and contempt are unmistakably visible in her countenance. Near these two stands Master Stephen Nalaczi with folded arms, surveying the whole procession with a droll, sarcastic smile.
“Just look, your Reverence,” says the lady in widow’s weeds to the grey-headed clergyman. “Did ever prince lord it with the pomp and splendour of this simple Baron? I have been at coronations, installations, inaugurations, triumphal ovations, but never, never have I seen anything like the homage paid to this private man. If they rendered it to a prince it might pass, but who, forsooth, is this Denis Banfi? Why, a simple nobleman—just such a one as we are, except that he is full of arrogance and pretence. All this princely splendour does not belong to him de jure. Oh! well do I know the meaning of the word jus; for I have all my life been before the courts against greater lords than he.”
“How my reverend colleagues press forward to kiss his hand,” murmured Martin Kuncz (for that was the clergyman’s name). “Ei! ei! Look now, at my learned colleague Gabriel Csekalusi, how radiantly he hastens forward to assist his Excellency out of his carriage!—and he is right, for Denis Banfi is the visible providence of the Calvinists. But for poor, vagabond Unitarian ministers like me, the place behind the door is good enough.”
“But just look! just look! how the worthy armalists37 raise him on high and carry him on their shoulders to the door. ’Tis well they do not set him on a litter like a sovereign prince—as if, forsooth, feeding them at his table made him their lord and master!”
“Nay, but, Madame Saint Pauli, pray let the good people do him homage if they like,” interrupted Nalaczi with a sneer. “Wait a bit. The greeting I have in reserve for him will add salt to the soup! It will bring my lord to his senses, I warrant you!”
Meanwhile Banfi is mounting the steps, and the crowd, pouring after him, forces its way in at the same time, and carries the Baron on its shoulders right up to the dais at the end of the room. The clergymen squeeze their way through the surging mob into their proper places, not without being mercilessly mauled on the way; while George Veer, with respect-inspiring elbows, carves a road for himself through the mob up to the very seat of the Lord-Lieutenant. The room is already crammed full with as many of the gentry as it will hold, the remainder block the corridors. The vassals remain, perforce, in the courtyard, and hear nothing of what is going on but the hubbub which reaches them through the windows, and seems to delight them amazingly.
“My noble friends,” said Banfi, when there was at last something like silence, and his eye had taken in everyone present, “it was not without good cause that I invited you to come to my house armed. You know right well from the past history of our poor fatherland, how much our nation has suffered because our Princes, either discontented with what they already had, or unable to guard it, have perpetually called in foreign troops. The historians have only recorded what has redounded to the glory of our Princes—victories, battles, conquests; but they have forgotten to mention that in the year 1617, in consequence of the horrors of war, not a single child was born in the whole of Transylvania, for famine and flight killed them all in their mothers’ wombs. But we know it, for we have suffered with and for the people. Now, thank heaven! we are masters in our own
