“We are homeless fugitives,” sobbed Sophia, sinking on her father’s breast. “They have taken from us our Hungarian possessions; my husband has been driven from his castle, and a price set on his head.”
Beldi became very serious. This unexpected ill-tidings pricked him to the heart. Within, Tököli’s thundering voice was raising a perfect tempest of indignation, but Beldi no longer made haste back to quell it.
“Remain with me,” said he, with a troubled countenance; “here you can dwell in peace till things improve.”
“Too late!” said Wesselenyi. “I have already enlisted under the flag of the French General, Count Boham, as a common soldier.”
“You a common soldier! You, the descendant of the Palatine Wesselenyi! And what in the meantime is to become of my daughter?”
“She will remain behind with you—till Hungary has been won back again!” and with these words he placed his wife in Beldi’s arms, kissed her on the forehead, and departed with dry eyes.
Within raged the tumult. Beldi heard his daughter sobbing, and a bitter feeling began to fill his breast, a feeling not unlike a nascent desire of vengeance. He felt almost pleased that war was being demanded within there; and he, the leader of the peace party, was also just about to draw his sword, rush into the Diet, and exclaim—“War! war! and retribution!” when the pages led into the lobby an old man as pale as death, who, recognizing Beldi, staggered up to him and addressed him in a trembling voice—
“My lord, are you not the Captain-General of the Szeklers, Paul Beldi of Uzoni?”
“Yes. What do you want with me?”
“I am the last inhabitant of Benfalva!” stammered the dying man. “War, famine, and pestilence have carried off all the others. I alone remain, and feeling that I too am on the point of death, I have brought you the official seal of the place and the church bell. Give them to the Diet. Preserve them in the archives, and write over them—‘These are the bell and the seal of what was once Benfalva, the inhabitants of which utterly perished.’ ”
Beldi’s nerveless arm dropped the hilt of his sword, and he tore himself from his daughter’s embrace.
“Go to your mother at Bodola, and learn to bear your fate with a stout heart!”
Then he took the seal and the bell from the dying man, and hastened back to the hall of the Diet, where Tököli had just finished his speech, which had produced a terrible effect on the Assembly. The French ministers were shaking hands with him.
Beldi stepped up to the president’s table, and placed upon it the seal which had just been handed to him.
Everyone looked at him, and seeing that he was about to speak, became silent.
“Look!” cried he, with a voice broken by emotion. “A desolated town sends its official seal to the Diet by its last inhabitant. There are already enough of such towns in Transylvania, and in time there may be more. War and famine have wasted the fairest portions of our land. You should not forget, gentlemen, to place this seal among your other—trophies!”
At these last words Beldi’s voice sank almost to a whisper, yet so deep was the silence, that he was heard distinctly in every part of the hall. A thrill of horror passed through everyone present.
“Outside that door I hear someone weeping,” continued Beldi, with quivering lips. “It is my own dear daughter, the wife of Paul Wesselenyi, who, driven from her fatherland, on her knees implored me, as I loved her, to let the lex talionis assert its rights. But I say, let my child weep, let her perish, may I also perish with my whole family if need be, but let not the curse of war fall on Transylvania! May no one in Transylvania have cause to weep because I suffer. No! I would declare against war though everyone here present were for it. … Gentlemen! … this seal … and the other relic too … forget not to preserve them among your trophies!”
Beldi sat down. Long after his words had ceased to sound, a deathlike silence continued to prevail.
Teleki, ascribing this silence to indignation against Beldi, very confidently arose, and bade the Estates give their votes. But for once he had wrongly felt the pulse of public opinion, for the majority of the Diet, deeply touched by the foregoing scene, voted for peace. So great was still the influence of Banfi and Beldi in the land.
Teleki looked with some confusion at his future son-in-law, who clenched his fists, and murmured bitterly with tears in his eyes—
“Flectere si nequeo Superos, Acheronta movebo!”
As the Assembly broke up, Forval and Nicholas Bethlen again met together.
“So our hope that Transylvania will take up arms has been dashed,” observed the crestfallen Frenchman.
“On the contrary, our hope only now begins,” returned Bethlen, tapping his friend on the shoulder. “Did you hear that young man Tököli speak?”
“Yes; he spoke very prettily.”
“Prettily or not, it strikes me that he is just the man you seek.”
“A King of Hungary, eh?”53
“Either that or an outlaw. Fate will decide.”
VII
The Jus Ligatum54
’Tis a good old custom which requires that every ceremony should end with a feast, and so the boisterous Diet was succeeded by a still more boisterous banquet, whereat Michael Apafi also presided; and here he was in his proper place, for the chronicles tell us that a skin of wine at a sitting was a mere nothing to his Highness.
Wine inflames hate as well as love. When ladies are at table, we must look to our hearts; but when only men sit down together, our heads are often in danger.
After dinner, according to Transylvanian custom, the guests stood up to drink. Conversation flows more easily thus, and the Prince, going the round of his
