“Oh, my letter is not nearly so pretty, I am ashamed to show it to you.”
Flora looked at her friend with gentle bashfulness as Aranka handed over her letter, and blushed like a red rose all the time she was perusing it.
“Noble-hearted Feriz!
“When we were both children you maintained that you loved me (here she inserted within brackets: ‘like a sister,’ and a good thing for her that she did put these three words in brackets). If you still recollect what you said, now is the time to prove it. My dearest friend, Mariska Sturdza, is at Buda, a prisoner in the hands of Hassan Pasha. My only hope of her deliverance depends on you. I have heard such splendid things of you. If you see her, for whom I now implore you, with a sad face and tearful eyes, think how I should look if I were there, and if you give her back to me, and I can embrace her again, and look into her smiling eyes, then I will think of you, too.
The girls entrusted these letters to faithful servants, sending the first letter to Temesvár, where Tököly was then residing, and the second to Feriz Beg, who, as we know, lay ill at Buda.
The news first reached Tököly at suppertime. On receiving the letter and reading it through, he at once put down his glass, girded on his sword, and telling his comrades that he was about to take a little stroll, he mounted his horse and vanished from the town.
Feriz was lying half-delirious on his carpet. His health mended but slowly, as is often the case with men of strong constitutions, and the tidings of the smallest disaster which befell the Turks threw him into such a state of excitement that a relapse was incessantly to be feared, so that at last they would not allow any messages at all to be brought to him, for even when they brought good news to him he always managed to look at them from the worst side, so that news of any kind was absolute poison to him. At last his Greek physician made it a rule to read every letter addressed to his patient beforehand; and if it contained the least disturbing element, he let Feriz know nothing at all about it. What especially annoyed Feriz were any letters from women, and these were simply sent back.
Thus Aranka’s letter might very easily have had the fate of being suppressed altogether had it not been entrusted to Master Gregory Biró, a shrewd and famous Szekler courier, whose honourable peculiarity it was to go wherever he was sent, and do whatsoever he was told, be the obstacles in the way what they might. If he had been told to give something to the Sultan of Turkey, he would have wormed his way to him somehow—all inquiries, all threats would have been in vain; he would have insisted on seeing and speaking to him if his head had to be cut off the next moment.
One day, then, worthy Gregory Biró appeared before the kiosk of Feriz Beg and asked to be admitted.
At these words a Moor popped out, and, seizing him by the collar, conducted him to a room where a half-dressed man was standing before a fire cooking black potions in all sorts of queer-shaped crooked glasses. The Moor presented Gregory to the doctor as another messenger.
“What is your name?” he asked, venomously regarding him from over his shoulder, and treating him to the most terrifying grimace he could think of.
“Gregory Biró,” replied the Szekler, nodding his head twice as was his custom.
“Gregory, Gregory, what do you want here?”
“I want to see Feriz Beg.”
“I am he; what have you brought?”
Gregory twisted his mug derisively at these words, and immediately reflected that the business was beginning badly, for the person before him did not in the least resemble Feriz Beg as described to him.
“I have brought a letter—from a pretty girl.”
“Give it to me quickly, and be off.”
Gregory twisted round his short jacket that he might get at his knapsack; but while he was fumbling inside it he was cute enough to extract the contents of the letter from its cover, and only handed the empty envelope to the doctor.
“ ’Tis well, Gregory, now you may go,” said he gently, and without so much as opening the envelope he thrust it into the fire and held the blazing paper under a retort which he wanted to warm.
“Is that the way they read letters here?” asked Gregory, scratching his head, and he crept to the door; but there he stopped, and while half his body remained outside he thrust his arm up to the elbow into the long pocket of his szüre,17 drew from thence a diamond-clasp, and holding it between two fingers cried: “Look! I found this ring on the road not far from here, perchance Feriz Beg has lost it.”
The doctor took the splendid jewel, and feeling convinced that only a nobleman could have lost such a thing, he said he would show it to Feriz Beg immediately.
“Ho! then you are not Feriz Beg after all!” cried the humorist.
The doctor burst out laughing.
“Gregory! Gregory! don’t jest with me. I am the cook, and if I like you I will let you stay to dinner.”
Gregory pulled a wry face at the sight of the doctor’s stews.
The doctor thereupon took in the diamond-clasp to Feriz Beg, after bidding the Moor, whom he left behind him, not to drink anything out of the glasses standing there, or it would make him ill.
Shortly afterwards the doctor returned in great astonishment, planted himself in front of Gregory with frowning eyebrows and roared at him in a voice which alarmed even the Szekler:
“Where did you get that jewel from?”
“Where did I get it from?” said Gregory, shrugging his shoulders; he was very pleased they wanted to frighten him.
“Come,
