The magnate now gave himself up for lost, but the Prince approached him, and tapping him on the shoulder, said:
“If I were the man your Excellency is pleased to believe me and make other people believe too—that is to say, a coward yielding to every sort of compulsion—in an hour’s time your Excellency would not have a head remaining on your shoulders. But everyone shall see that they have been deceived in me.”
Then, turning towards the defterdar, he said to him in a firm, determined voice:
“Go back to your master, and say to him that Michael Teleki is the generalissimo of my armies and under my protection, and at the present moment I have him in my tent. Let anyone therefore who has any complaint against him, notify the same to me, and I will sit in judgment over him. But let none dare to lay a hand upon him within the walls of my tent, for I swear by the most Holy Trinity that I will break open the head of any such person with my cudgel. I would be ready to go over to the enemy with my whole army at once rather than permit so much as a mouse belonging to my household to be caught within my tent by a foreign cat, let alone the disgrace of handing over my generalissimo!”
The defterdar duly delivered the message of the enraged Prince to the Grand Vizier. Emeric Tököly was with him at the time, and the two gentlemen on hearing the vigorous assertion of the Prince agreed that after all Michael Apafi was really a very worthy man, and sending back the defterdar, instructed him to say with the utmost politeness and all due regard for the Prince that so long as Michael Teleki remained in the Prince’s tent not a hair of his head should be crumpled; but he was to look to it that he did not step out of the tent, for in that case the cavasses who were looking out for him would pounce upon him at once and treat him as never a Transylvanian generalissimo was treated before; and now, too, he had only the Prince to thank for his life.
Teleki was annihilated. Nothing could have wounded his ambitious soul so deeply as the consciousness that the Prince was protecting him. To think that this man, whom the whole kingdom regarded as cowardly and incapable, could be great when he himself had suddenly become so very small! His nimbus of wisdom, power, and valour had vanished, and he saw that the man whom he had only consulted for the sake of obtaining his signature to prearranged plans was wiser and more powerful and more valiant than he.
Peering through the folds of the tent he could see that, faithful to the threatening message, the cavasses were prowling around the tent and telling the loutish soldiers that if Teleki stepped out they would seize him forthwith. The Szeklers laughed and shouted with joy thereat.
Then the magnate began to reflect whether it would not be best if he drew his sword, and rushing out, slash away at them till he himself were cut to pieces.
What a ridiculous ending that would be!
Towards evening Emeric Tököly paid a visit to the Prince. He approached the old man with the respect of a child, did obeisance, and would have kissed his hand, but Apafi would not permit it, but embraced him, kissed him on the forehead repeatedly, and made him sit down beside him on the bearskin of his camp-bed.
The young leader feelingly begged the old man’s pardon for all the trouble that he had caused him and Transylvania.
“It is I who ought to beg pardon of your Excellency,” said Apafi in a submissive voice.
“Not at all, your Highness and dear Father. I know that you have always loved me, but evil counsellors have whispered such scandalous things to you about me that you were bound to hate me—but God requite them for it if I cannot.”
“Be magnanimous towards them, my dear son; forgive them, for my sake.”
Tököly was silent. He knew that Teleki was in the tent, he saw him, but he would not take any notice of him. At last, without even looking towards him, he said, in the most passionate, threatening voice:
“Look, ye, Teleki, you have practised all sorts of devices against me, but if you put your nose outside the tent of the Prince you will eat his bread no more. You would be in my power now, and here your head would lie, but for his Highness whom I look upon as a father.”
Michael Teleki was silent, but future events were to prove that he had heard very well what was now spoken.
After surrendering the fortress of Fülek to the Turks, the Transylvanian gentlemen returned home with their army; and Michael Teleki, when he got home, paid a visit to the church where lay the ashes of Denis Banfi, and hiding his face on the tomb, he wept bitterly over the noble patriot whom he had sacrificed to his ambitious plans.
XXX
A Man Abandoned by His Guardian-Angel
One blow followed hard upon another.
In the following year the Sultan assembled a formidable host against Vienna, and the Transylvanian bands also had to go. Teleki would have avoided the war, but his representations and pretexts fell not upon listening ears. They asked him why he, who had hitherto urged on the campaign, wanted to withdraw from it now that it was in full swing? If he had liked the beginning, the end also should please him.
But the end was exceedingly bitter.
The formidable host surrounding Vienna was scattered in a single night by the heroic sword of Sobieski, the gigantic military enterprise was ruined.
The Transylvanian forces took no part in these operations. During the siege of Vienna they had been left at
