Banfi would have hastened to his wife’s assistance, but Dame Apafi waved him back.
“Go!” cried she; “I’ll take care of her!”
“Then you mean to remain here?” said the Prince to his consort, in a voice trembling between wrath and compassion.
“My sister has need of me—and you, I see, can do without me.”
Apafi, ever since his wife had begun to speak, had plainly lowered his crest, and fearing lest she might rout him altogether, he hastily quitted the battlefield with a half triumph. He could not fail to be very much discontented with the result of his investigation. He felt that he had wounded Banfi in a sore place, but he also felt that the wound was not mortal. The great nobleman had been affronted rather than humbled. So much the worse for him! What will not bend must be broken.
VI
The Diet of Karoly-Fehervár
It is the fate of many a town, as of many a nation, to rise from the dead.
One people perishes there. The walls fall to pieces. The name of the town passes into oblivion. And again there comes another people, which builds upon the ruins, gives the place a new name; and while the old stones, cast one upon another, seem to bewail the past, the city, radiant with new palaces, rejoices in its youth like a flattered beauty.
The hill on which Transylvania’s only fortress stands was once covered with massive buildings by Diurban’s race. Who now remembers so much as its name? The Roman legions subjected the nation, threw down the shapeless walls, and instead of the altar dedicated to the Blood-God, and stained with human sacrifices, there arose a temple of Vesta; the wooden palace of the Dacian duke vanished, and the marble halls of the propraetor took its place, with their Corinthian columns, their white mosaic floor, their artistically carved divinities. The place was then called Colonia Apulensis.
Again the town grew old, fell down, and died.
A new and mightier race came into it; the former inhabitants were buried beneath the ruins of their palaces and temples, and instead of the propraetor’s palace, the gilded and enamelled dwelling of Duke Gyula,41 with its skittle-shaped roof, towered up like an enchanted castle from the Thousand and One Nights, and on the ruins of the temple of Vesta the pagan forefathers of the Magyars built altars under the open sky, where they worshipped the sun, the stars, and a naked sword. Then the town was called Gyula-Fehervár.42
A century passed, and Stephen, saint and king, cast down the altars of the fire-worshippers, and built a vast church on the spot where so many false gods had been adored. The sun-worshippers disappeared, and the Christian world called the church after the name of the Archangel Michael.
What sort of church was it?—Nobody can now tell! Two centuries later the Tartars came, levelled town and church with the ground, and put the population to the sword. On their departure they gave to the town the scornful nickname Nigra-Julia.43
Our nation’s greatest man, John Hunniady, rebuilt it. Traces of his huge Gothic arches may still be found there. In the crypt, built at the same time, all the Princes of Transylvania were buried in richly-carved sarcophagi. Here rested Hunniady himself and his headless son Ladislaus.44 They rested here, but only for a time. Robber-hordes came and scattered the sacred relics, and devastated the church, and the succeeding princes who patched it up again during the Turkish dominion, added to the Gothic groundwork the peculiarities of Arab architecture, serpentine columns, and Moorish arabesques.
And last of all came the renovations and restorations of modern times—four-cornered towers, with little low windows and shapeless portals. The arabesques were all whitewashed, and where here and there the mortar falls from the walls, you may catch a glimpse of the stones with which the church was originally built, relics of every age which has visited the place and vanished tracklessly. Here sculptured fragments of the old Mythra cultus; there mutilated Vestals. Below, the top of an ancient altar with the broken symbol of a sun upon it; above, florid and fantastic arabesques.
And again the town lost its name.
They call it now Karoly-Fehervár.45
At the time in which our story is laid, this town was the place where the Princes of Transylvania used to be consecrated and the Diets to be held. Where the episcopal palace now stands stood then the Prince’s residence, restored by John Sigismund,46 with marble inlaid chambers, and walls covered with battle-pieces in fresco. The great hall where the Diet met was separated from the surrounding chambers by a balustrade of tinted marble. Round about the walls hung the busts of princes and woywodes interspersed with trophies. In front stood the throne covered with purple, and round about it a triumphal baldachin made of banners, shields, and morning-stars.
The rest of the town was scarcely in keeping with the pomp of the Prince’s residence, for in 1618 the Diet had been obliged to command the inhabitants to cease dwelling in tents, and build up their ruinous houses again.
The Estates of the Realm have already assembled. Everyone is in his place. Only the seat of the Prince is still vacant.
There they sit in order of precedence—the Transylvanian patricians, the heads of the Hungarian nobility, the most eminent in wit, wealth, and valour—the Bethlens, the Csakys, the Lazars, the Kemenys, the Mikeses, the Banfis!—those medieval clans whose will is the nation’s, whose deeds form its history, whose ancestors, grandfathers and fathers, have either perished on the battlefield in defence of their princes, or on the scaffold for defying them. And their descendants loyally follow their examples. A new prince comes to the throne, and they take up again the swords which have fallen from their fathers’ hands—to wield it for or against him, as Fate may decree.
The Szekler deputies with their homely
