“I thank you, gracious sir, for your offer, but I cannot accept it. A sacred oath binds me to the present Prince of Transylvania, and if he has forgotten the oath which he swore to the nation it is no answer to say that we should also violate ours, nay, rather should we remind him of his. I have raised my head to ask for justice, not to pile one injustice upon another. Transylvania needs not a new Prince, but its old liberties; and if I had only wanted to make war upon the Prince, the country would rise at a sign from me, the whole of the Szeklers would draw their swords for me, but it was I who made them sheath their swords again. I do not come to the Porte for vengeance, but for judgment; not my own fate, but the fate of my country I submit to your Excellencies. I do not want the office of Prince. I do not want to drive out one usurper only to bring in a hundred more. I will not set all Transylvania in a blaze for the sake of roasting Master Michael Teleki, nor for the sake of freeing a dozen people from a shameful dungeon will I have ten thousand dragged into captivity. May I suffer injustice rather than all Transylvania. Accursed should I be, and all my posterity with me, if I were to sell my oppressed nation for a few pence and bring armies against my native land. As to your threats—I am prepared for anything, for prison, for death. I came to you for justice, slay me if you will.”
Kiuprile, disgusted, flung himself back on his divan; he did not count upon such opposition, he was not prepared for such strength of mind. The other gentlemen who, from time to time, had fled to the Porte from Transylvania had been wont to beg and pray for the very favour which this man so nobly rejected.
The Grand Vizier, perceiving from the faces of those present the impression made on them by Béldi’s speech, turned now to the right and now to the left for an explanation, and dismay gradually spread over his pallid face as he began to understand. Béldi’s colleagues, pale and utterly crushed, awaited the result of his alarming reply; while Ladislaus Csaky, unable to restrain his dismay, rushed up to Béldi, flung himself on his neck in his despair, and implored him by heaven and earth to accept the offer of the Grand Vizier.
If the offer had been made to him he would most certainly have accepted it.
“Never, never,” replied Béldi, as cold as marble.
The other gentlemen knelt down before him, and with clasped hands besought him not to make himself, his children, and themselves forever miserable.
“Arise, I am not God!” said Béldi, turning from his tearful colleagues.
The Grand Vizier, on understanding what it was all about, leaped furiously from his place, and tearing off his turban, hurled it in uncontrollable rage to the ground, exclaiming with foaming mouth: “Hither, cavasses!”
“Put that accursed dog in chains!” he screeched, pointing with bloodshot eyes at Béldi, who quietly permitted them to load him with fetters weighing half-a-hundredweight each, which the army of slaves always had in readiness.
“Wouldst thou speak, puppy of a giaour?” cried the Vizier, when he was already chained.
“What I have said I stand to,” solemnly replied the patriot, raising his chained hand to Heaven. “God is my refuge.”
“To the dungeon with him!” yelled Kara Mustafa, beckoning to the drabants to drag Béldi away.
Just as a hard stone emits sparks when it is struck, so Béldi turned suddenly upon the Vizier and said, shaking his chains, “Thine hour will also strike!”
Then he suffered them to lead him away to prison.
Immediately afterwards, the Grand Vizier sent for the envoys of the Prince, and commending them and those who sent them, gave each of them a new caftan, and with the most gracious assurances sent them back to their native land, where nevertheless Master Farkas Bethlen had never been accounted a very great orator.
In the gates of the Seraglio the dismissed envoys encountered Master Ladislaus Csaky. The worthy gentleman at once perceived from their self-satisfied smiles and the new caftans they were wearing that they had been sent away with a favourable reply; whereupon, notwithstanding that he had already agreed with Paul Béldi to render homage to the French and German Ministers, he did not consider it superfluous to pay his court to Master Farkas Bethlen also, and offer to surrender himself body and soul if the Prince would agree to pardon him and restore his estates.
Farkas Bethlen accepted the proposal and not only promised Csaky an amnesty, but high office to boot if he would separate from Béldi; nay, he rewarded on the spot that gentleman who had thus very wisely fastened the threads of his fate to four several places at the same time, so that if one of them broke he could still hold on to the other three.
“Béldi has ruined his affairs utterly,” said Kucsuk Pasha to his son, as they retired from the Divan; “I give up every idea of saving him.”
“I don’t,” sighed Feriz. “I’ll either save or perish with him.”
“Let us go to Maurocordato, he may perhaps advise us.”
After an hour’s interview with Maurocordato, Feriz Beg, with fifty armed Albanian horsemen, took the road towards Grosswardein.
XXIII
The Turkish Death
In the gate of the Pasha of Grosswardein, amidst the gaping throng of armed retainers there, could be seen a pale wizened Muslim idly sprawling on the threshold, apparently regardless of everything, but sometimes looking up, catlike, with half-shut, dreamy eyes, and at such times he would smile craftily to himself.
Suddenly a handsome, chivalrous youth galloped out of the gate before whom the soldiers bowed down to the earth; this was the Pasha’s favourite horseman, Feriz Beg,
