The Turkish standard-bearer then suddenly pressed his steed with his knees, making it rear up beneath him, so that the Turk stood now a head and shoulder higher than Rákóczy, and threatened either to oust him from his saddle or tear the standard from his hand.
At that moment the white figure of a girl appeared on the summit of the rampart of the tower, her black locks streaming in the wind, her face aglow with enthusiasm.
“Heaven help thee, Ladislaus!” cried the girl from the battlement of the tower; and the youth, hearing from on high what sounded like a voice from heaven, recognised it, looked up and saw his bride—a superhuman strength arose in his heart and in his arm, and when the Turkish standard-bearer made his charger rear, Rákóczy suddenly let the flagpole go, and seizing the bridle of the snorting steed with both hands, with one Herculean thrust, flung back steed, rider, and banner through the palisade into the deep moat below.
“There is no hope save with God!” cried Ali in despair, for his terrified people at the sight of this prodigy had dragged him along with them against his will.
“Ladislaus! Ladislaus! My darling!” resounded from above. The youth was fighting with the strength of ten men; three horses had already been shot under him, and a third sword was flashing in his hand. Already he was standing on the drawbridge; his sweetheart threw down a white handkerchief to him, and he was already waving it above his head in triumph, when a well-directed bullet pierced the young hero’s heart, and he collapsed a corpse on the very threshold of his success, in the very gate of the captured fortress at the feet of his beloved.
At that same instant a heartrending shriek resounded, and from the top of the tower a white shape fell down upon the bridge; the beautiful bride, from a height of thirty feet, had cast herself down on the dead body of her beloved, and died at the same instant as he, mingling their blood together; and if their arms did not, at least their souls could, embrace each other.
This spectacle so stupefied the besiegers, that Ali Pasha had just time enough swiftly to raise the drawbridge and save the fortress and a fragment of his host. Of those who remained outside, not a single soul survived. Kökényesdi massacred without mercy everything which distantly resembled a Turk, together with the camels and mules, sparing nothing but the horses, and when every house had been well plundered, he set the town on fire in twelve places, so that the flames in half an hour consumed everything, and the whole city blazed away like a gigantic bonfire, the rising wind whirling the smoke and flame over the ditch towards the fortress.
“Ali Pasha may put that in his pipe and smoke it,” said Kökényesdi, rejoicing at the magnificent conflagration.
But the bodies of Ladislaus Rákóczy and his sweetheart they bore away, and buried them side by side in the family vault at Rákás.
VI
The Monk of the Holy Spring
About a day’s journey from Klausenburg there used to be a famous monastery, whose ruined tower remains to this day.
Formerly the ample courtyard was surrounded by a stone wall, massive and strong, within which crowds of pilgrims, coming from every direction, found a convenient resting-place. For at the foot of this monastery was a famous miraculous spring, which entirely disappeared throughout the winter and spring, but on certain days in the summer and autumn was wont to trickle through the crevices of the rocks, and, for a couple of weeks or so, to bubble forth abundantly, whereupon it gradually subsided again.
During this season whole hosts of suffering humanity, the lame, the paralytic, the aged, the mentally infirm, and the childless mothers, would come from the most distant regions; and the Lord of Nature gave a wondrous virtue to the waters, and the sufferers quitted the blessed spring crutchless and edified, both in body and mind. There could be seen, hung up on the walls of the church, votive crutches which the cripples had left behind them; and more than one great nobleman, out of gratitude to the holy spring, enriched the altar with gold and silver plate.
The larger part of the building was reserved for noble guests, the common people encamped in the courtyard beneath tents; and behind the building a splendid garden was laid out, which the worthy monks always magnificently maintained. Even to this day, in the grassy patches round about the spot, it is possible to discover the savage descendants of many rare and precious flowers.
At the period in which our history falls, the convent of the holy well was represented by a single reverend father, whom the common tongue simply called Friar Gregory, and there was scarce a soul in Transylvania who did not know him well. He was a big man, six feet in height, with a flowing black beard, swarthy, lean, with a bony frame, and with hands so big that he could cover a six-pound cannon ball with each palm. A simple habit covered his limbs, headdress he had none, and his broad shining forehead was without a wrinkle. His droning voice was so powerful that when he sang his psalms he made more noise than a whole congregation.
At the times when the holy spring was flowing, the cellar and pantry of the good friar stood wide open to rich and poor alike, for whatever he earned in one year he never put by for the next, and whatever the wealthy paid to him the needy had the benefit of; and whenever any clerical colleague happened to come his way, whether he were Orthodox, Armenian, Calvinist, or Unitarian, he could not make too much of him; all such guests, during their stay, regularly swam in milk and butter, and remembered it to the very day of their death.
Just at this very time the Right
