“Truly your Excellency will find far better company awaiting you than any my poor self can offer.”
Banfi, not knowing what to say to this, only shrugged his shoulders and hastened towards the door of his prison, but remained standing on the threshold transfixed with astonishment. In the room was a lady in deep mourning, who turned very pale on perceiving him, and clung to the table unable to utter a word.
Banfi felt all his blood rush to his heart. The next moment he darted impetuously forward and cried—
“My wife! Margaret!”
The lady threw herself upon her husband’s breast and sobbed aloud.
“What! have they not released you?” inquired Banfi anxiously.
“I would not be released,” answered Margaret. “How could I forsake you in your prison?”
The tears came to Banfi’s eyes. Speechless he sank to the ground, and covered her hands with glowing kisses.
“While we were what the world calls happy we might avoid each other,” said Margaret, with a choking voice, “but misfortune has brought us together again,” and she bowed her head to kiss her husband’s forehead.
Banfi fell senseless at her feet. It was more than even his strong soul could bear.
X
The Sentence
The Diet, hastily summoned to Fehervár, strongly disapproved of the secret proceedings against Banfi. Paul Beldi was the first to declare that even if Banfi could be arrested by means of a league, a Diet was the only tribunal which could try him, and insisted that he should have every opportunity of defending himself.
The Prince came to the Diet with red eyes, an aching head, and a very irritable temper—the usual witnesses of a drunken debauch.
Teleki, finding the Diet beyond his control, got Apafi to dissolve it, by persuading him that if Banfi were brought before it he would escape altogether, and even turn the two-edged sword of justice against the Prince himself.
In the Privy Council itself, Kozma Horvath’s opposition to the extrajudicial prosecution was all in vain. The league drew up thirty-seven articles of accusation against Banfi, and the magnate was impeached.
Most of these articles were so utterly frivolous as to need no reply. Banfi’s real offence was his pretension to the throne, and this they dared not bring forward at all.
Banfi manfully replied on every count. In vain. Defend himself as he might, his adversaries knew only too well how much they had offended him: they could not afford to let him live.
The matter came to the vote.
Banfi was condemned to death.
On the day when this took place, no one could get at the Prince except the members of the league, who were constantly going in and out of Apafi’s apartments with hasty steps and eager faces.
Towards evening they succeeded in bringing the besotted Prince to sign the sentence. It was no longer possible to recognize in the spectre-haunted drunkard the mild and gentle Prince, who had had a tear for the sorrows of the meanest of his servants.
Saddled horses and long rows of carriages had been standing before the castle gates since midday. Suddenly Ladislaus Csaky came very hastily out of the castle with a document hidden in the folds of his pelisse, and calling for his horse, mounted, nodded significantly to the other gentlemen who had followed him out, and galloped away. The other gentlemen thereupon leapt into their carriages, or on to their horses, with as much expedition as if someone was pursuing them, and exchanging hurried whispers, decamped so swiftly that in a few moments the Prince was left entirely alone.
Teleki was the last who quitted him. The Prince accompanied the minister to the very end of the antechamber. Black care was written in his face. He would hardly let Teleki go.
Teleki coldly withdrew his hand from the Prince’s grasp.
“You have no need to brood over it, sir. It is not a question of the life of a man, but of the welfare of a state. If my own neck had stood in the way, I would have said, Hew it off! I say the same when it is another’s.”
With that he took his leave.
Apafi could not remain in his room. He was obliged to go out into the fresh open air. Inside something seemed to choke him, the air was so oppressive—or was it his own conscience? He went into the garden. The cool night air soothed his throbbing head; the sight of the starry heaven did good to his darkened soul. Leaning over the balcony, he looked amazedly out into the quiet night, as if he expected a star larger than all the rest to fall from heaven, or someone miles and miles away to call him by name.
Suddenly a scream fell on his ear.
He looked around with a shudder, and terror made him speechless—before him stood his consort, whom his counsellors had kept away from him for weeks.
The moment the last magnate had departed, her own faithful servants told her that the Prince had signed the death-warrant, and the terrified woman, breaking through the castle guards, rushed after Apafi, found him in the garden, seized him roughly, and shrieking rather than speaking in her agitation, exclaimed—
“Oh, accursed, accursed wretch! Thou hast shed innocent blood!”
Apafi tried to avoid his wife. He feared her.
“What do you want with me?” he asked in a hollow voice. “What do you mean?”
“You have signed Banfi’s death-warrant.”
“I!” cried Apafi feebly, trying to catch hold of his wife’s hand.
“Away with that hand, monster! It is stained with my kinsman’s blood.”
“Then you don’t consent to it?” stammered the abject creature. “Neither did I, but the magnates constrained me.”
The Princess smote her hands together, and looked at her consort despairingly.
“You have brought blood on our family! You have brought a curse on the land and on me! Oh, why did I not let you perish in the hands of the Tartars? Where you are concerned virtue itself becomes a sin.”
Apafi was crushed. Alone with his wife, he was something less than a man.
“I did not wish to kill him,”
