“Comfort yourself with the thought that you loved me, and were worthy of me, if you can suffer as I do and for the same reason.”
“You would plunge your children into eternal captivity?”
“Tell them that their father lived honourably and died honourably, and teach them to live and die like him.”
“Think of your girl, Aranka; your favourite, your dearest child.”
“Rather may she fade away than Transylvania be plunged in the flames of war.”
“Béldi! drive me not to despair!” cried the wife trembling violently. “I am afraid, horribly afraid, of my dungeon. Twice have I had fever from the close, damp air. There was none to care for me in my sickness; I was calling your name continually, and you were far from me; I saw your image, and was unable to embrace you. Oh, Béldi! I shall die without you! The most terrible form of death—despair—will kill me!”
Béldi knelt down by the side of his wife and embraced and kissed her. The woman fainted in his arms as the Turks entered his prison. Béldi beckoned Kucsuk Pasha to him. A sort of leaden, deathlike hue had begun to spread over his face; he could scarce see with whom he was conversing. He laid his swooning wife in the arms of the Pasha, and stammered with barely intelligible words: “I thank you for your good will. Here is my wife—take her—back to her dungeon!”
The Turks, in speechless astonishment, lifted up the fainting woman, and left the dungeon without plaguing Béldi with any more questions.
Béldi stood stonily there as they went out, with open lips and a dull light in his eyes. When the last Turk had gone, and he saw his wife no longer, his head began to nod and droop down, and suddenly he fell prone upon the floor.
Körtövely, the old hound, began sorrowfully, bitterly, to whine.
At that moment Zülfikar entered the dungeon with the poisoned letter.
He was too late. Paul Béldi had already departed from this world.
When Ladislaus Székely heard of Béldi’s death he gave a magnificent banquet, and when the company was at its merriest Zülfikar came rushing in.
“Come! out with those hundred ducats!” he whispered in the ear of Master Ladislaus Székely.
“What do you mean?” cried Székely in a voice flushed with wine. “Paul Béldi had a stroke; be content with what you have had already.”
“Thou faithless dog of a giaour!” cried the renegade at the top of his voice so that everyone could hear him, “is this the way thou dost deceive me? Thou didst bargain with me for the death of Paul Béldi for two hundred ducats, and now thou wouldst beat me down by one half. Thou art a rogue meet for the hangman’s hands. Is it thus thou dost treat an honest man? I’ll not kill a man for thee another time until thou pay me in advance, thou faithless robber!”
The company laughed aloud at this scene, but Master Ladislaus Székely seemed very much put out by the joke. “What are you talking about, you crazy fellow?” said he. “Who asked you to do anything? I never saw you in my life before!”
“What!” cried Zülfikar. “I suppose thou wilt deny next that thou didst write this letter to Paul Béldi!” and with that he gave Ladislaus Székely the poisoned letter. He seized it, broke the seal, brushed away the dust, and ran his eye over it, whereupon he flung it at the feet of Zülfikar, exclaiming: “I never wrote that.”
Then he beckoned to the servants to seize Zülfikar by the collar and pitch him into the street. But the renegade stood outside in front of the windows and began to curse Székely before the assembled crowd for not paying him the price of the poison.
Inside the house the guests laughed more heartily than ever, and at last Székely himself began to look upon the matter in the light of a joke, and laughed like the rest; but when he returned home to Transylvania he felt a pain in his stomach, and did not know what was the matter. He became deaf, could neither eat nor drink, and his bowels began to rot.
Nobody could cure him of his terrible malady, till at last he fell in with a German leech, who persuaded him that he could cure him with the dust of genuine diamonds and sapphires. Ladislaus Székely handed to the charlatan his collection of precious stones. He abstracted the stones from their settings, but ground up common stones instead of them in his medical mortar, and stampeded himself with the real stones, leaving Ladislaus Székely to die the terrible death by poison which he had intended for Paul Béldi.
Paul Béldi they buried in foreign soil; none visited his grave. Only his faithful dog sat beside it. For eight days it neither ate nor drank. On the ninth day it died on the deserted grave of its master.
XXVI
The Fading of Flowers
And now let us see what became of Aranka and Feriz.
At last they were beneath one roof together—this roof was a little better than the roof of a tomb, but not much, for it was the roof of a dungeon. They could only see each other through a narrow little window, but even this did them good. They were able to press each other’s hands through the iron bars, console each other, and talk of their coming joys and boundless happiness. The walls of the prison were so narrow, so damp, the narrow opening scarce admitted the light of day; but when the youth began to talk of his native land, Damascus, rich in roses, of palm-trees waving in the breeze, of warm sunny skies, where the
