CHAPTER I.

THE PATROL.

Clement the Clerk stuck his pen behind his ear and recited to himself the elegant verses which he had just composed, two hundred strophes in all, almost every line of which ended in _fuerat_, with a sporadic _fuisset_ in between.

Michael Apafi used regularly to repent whenever he had offended any one, and he therefore could not rest till he had compensated the itinerant scholar Clement for the snub he had administered to him, and this he did by making the unsophisticated poet his----Patrol-officer.

In those days many agreeable duties were connected with this office--duties which Clement simply left alone, devoting himself instead to the composition of epics and chronicles, which he manufactured in great abundance.

At that moment he was casting his eyes over a great epic, in which he recorded how his Highness, Prince Michael Apafi, had gone out against Érsekújvár to besiege it; how with splendid valour he had arrived there; how, on beholding the foe, he had drawn his sword; how, after mature deliberation, he had turned back again; and how, finally, he and all his heroes had returned home again safe and sound.

Poetic distraction had so completely absorbed the faculties of Clement the Clerk, that a week had already elapsed since his servant had made off with his master's spurred jack-boots, without the latter, in his capacity of Patrol-officer, thinking of pursuing the runaway; but in fact he was confined within a vicious circle, inasmuch as every time he thought of inquiring for his boots, it occurred to him that his servant had stolen them; and every time he thought of going out and inquiring for his servant, it occurred to him that he had no boots. What could he do then under such circumstances but sit down again, and write poems in absolutely endless quantities?

His room had not been swept out for weeks, naturally therefore there was no lack of dust and cobwebs; but, by way of contrast, the deal floor all around the solitary table was mottled with ink-blots. The table itself had only two legs, the place of the others being supplied by layers of bricks.

The poet scribbles, erases, and nibbles at his pen; on the window-sill lies a piece of bread and some cheese; it occurs to the poet that it has been put there for him to eat; but first he must use up the ink still remaining in his pen, and in doing so another idea occurs to him, and after that a third, and then a fourth; meanwhile mice come skipping out of a hole beneath the window-sill, frisk about the bread and cheese, nibble away at it till not a morsel remains, and then skip back into their holes again. The poet having wearied out his Pegasus, starts up, looks for his bread and cheese, and perceiving that only the crumbs remain on the window-sill, concludes that he has already eaten his fill, so sits him down again and goes on writing.

While he is thus plaguing himself for the benefit of posterity, somebody begins scratching at the door, and after groping about the door-hinge in search of the door-latch, finds it at last, and shakes it to and fro as if he does not know what to do with it. This disturbance disagreeably awakens Clement the Clerk out of his poetic reveries, who, after vainly exclaiming in a loud and angry voice that the door is not bolted, finds himself at last obliged to rise from his seat and open the door himself, lest the importunate visitor should break off the latch or lift the door bodily from its hinges.

Before him, with a sealed letter in his hand, stands a gaping Wallach peasant, who appears extraordinarily terrified to see the door open, though that was the very thing he had been aiming at all along.

"Well, what is it?" snapped Clement the Clerk, horribly angry. "Why don't you speak?"

The Wallach raised his round eyebrows, which looked, for all the world, like a charcoal smear extending from his nostrils to his temples, and which also served him as a kind of propeller for shoving backwards and forwards the lamb's-wool cap that he wore half over his face, looked at the poet with wide-open eyes, and asked him--

"Are you he whom they pay to tell lies?"

The Wallach meant no offence by this terminology. It was only his roundabout way of describing Clement the Clerk's sphere of activity.

The poet was almost choking with rage.

"And whose ox are you?" he exclaimed furiously.

"The ox of his Excellency who sent this letter," he answered with perfect simplicity.

"What is your master's name?" cried Clement, angrily snatching the letter out of the Wallach's hand.

"They call him Excellency."

Clement tore open the letter and read as follows--"I want a word or two with you; follow the bearer whithersoever he leads you."

Clement was wroth enough already, but the reflection that he was summoned away on important business, and had no boots to go in, was the last straw. He was quite beside himself.

"Go," cried he to the Wallach, "and tell your master, whoever he may be, that he is as near to me as I am to him; if he wants to speak to me, let him take the trouble to come hither. Do you understand?"

"I understand, Dumni Macska" (Mister Pussy), returned the Wallach, involuntarily using in his fright the nickname secretly given by the Roumanian peasants to the Patrol-officer when he is making his rounds; and with that he slouched out of the room.

Meanwhile Clement, with a great muscular effort, had climbed on to his high-backed chair again, and placed two huge folios upright on the floor in front of him, so that his coming visitor might not see that he was bare-footed.

In a short time strident, energetic footsteps were audible outside, and Clement the Clerk, peeping out of the window, perceived to his no small confusion that his visitor was none other than his Excellency, Count Ladislaus Csaky, accompanied by two gold-laced heydukes.

"Clement," thought the clerk to himself, "now's the time to assert your dignity! No doubt his lordship is a great man and a high; but, on the other hand, he is in the Prince's bad books, while you, my boy, are in high favour at court, and a public officer to boot." So he hid his feet behind his books, stuck his pen between his lips, and when Csaky came in did not so much as offer him a seat.

Csaky seemed much put out by this reception.

"You have a very high opinion of your official dignity," said he to Clement.

"I am what I am thanks to the favour of the Prince," returned Clement haughtily, crossing his arms with an air of importance.

"I too have come hither by the Prince's command. His Highness has just entrusted me with a very delicate errand, in which I need your help; but the affair must be managed with the utmost secrecy, and that was why I wanted you to come out to me."

At this explanation Clement the Clerk forgot his dignity altogether.

"I beg you a thousand pardons," stammered he in great confusion, and with meekly-bowed head. "I did not know--pray be seated!" As however there was no other chair in the room but that on which he sat, he sprang down from it to give place to the Count, thereby revealing the fact that his feet were minus their legitimate coverings, at which Csaky laughed till his jaws ached.

"Why, deuce take it, Mr. Officer, is it from a feeling of excessive reverence that you take off your boots like the Turks do?"

"I beg your pardon! I have not taken them off; but my servant ran away with them while I slept, and that was the sole reason why I was forced to send your lordship that churlish message, which I hope your lordship has long since forgotten."

At this Csaky's mirth became downright uproarious.

"Well, if that is all, we will soon find a remedy," said he to Clement; and calling the heydukes, bade them fetch at once his own parade boots out of his carriage.

Clement instantly began to raise objections: he could not think of it; the honour was too great. But when his eyes fell upon the boots, they took his fancy immediately, for they were made of the finest green morocco, sewn with gold thread, trimmed on both sides with galloon, and provided with enamelled spurs.

"Quick! on with them!" cried Csaky to the Patrol-officer; "for you must set out upon your journey without delay."

So Clement the Clerk seized one of the boots by the tags, and after bestowing a smile upon it, proceeded to pull it on. But this of itself was no light labour, for Csaky wore very small, tight-fitting, gentlemanlike boots, whereas Clement the Clerk was a very large-footed animal; so that it was not till after three desperate struggles had completely exhausted him that he managed to get one foot half-way down the leg of the first boot, and all the time he made such grimaces that Ladislaus Csaky had to put his head out of the window to hide his merriment. When he got as far as the heel, he stuck fast again, so that he had to seize the straps with both hands and stamp his way down, hopping round the room all the while, with his body forming a complete curve, and groaning aloud at every forward shove; so that by the time he had wriggled into one boot, the eyes of the poor poet were almost starting from their sockets, and the sweat trickled from his cheeks.

Similar difficulties awaited the good Patrol-officer with the second foot; but after working with six-horse power to force his foot into a receptacle never intended for it, he was at last able, with the ruddiness of satisfaction on his cheeks, to take a smiling survey of his gorgeous, tight-fitting boots, which harmonized so delightfully with the other dusty, greasy, ink-bespattered constituent parts of his dress.

"Now, mark what I say!" said Csaky, sitting down with a lordly air on the solitary chair, whilst the clerk, standing before him, raised first one and then the other leg aloft, at the same time uttering a peculiar hissing sound, and turning a livid green and blue in his agony, for the boots had now begun to play havoc with his corns. "When did you last go your rounds?"

"I really don't know."

"But you ought to know. Why don't you make a note of it? The Prince wishes you to go your rounds at once, and you must look particularly sharp after all the places between Toroczko, Banfi-Hunyad, and Bonczhida. Besides the usual questions, you must ask the people whether they have seen any foreign wild beast in the surrounding woods."

"Foreign wild beast?" mechanically repeated the wretched Patrol-officer.

"And if at any place they tell you they have seen such beast, you must go personally into the districts indicated, and search till you come upon its track."

"I cry your Excellency's pardon! but what manner of beast may it be?" asked the student timidly.

"Come, come! don't be afraid! It is neither a seven-headed dragon nor yet a minotaur, but only a young panther."

"A panther!" stammered the terrified Clement.

"You are not expected to catch it," said Csaky cheerily. "You have only to discover its hiding-place and let me know."

"And if this wild beast--whose existence indeed in Transylvania I very much doubt--should stray into the territory of Denis Banfi," asked Clement, "what am I to do then?"

"You must go after it."

"I cry your Excellency's pardon, but his property is a _liber baronatus_, where my jurisdiction ceases."

"Don't be so stupid, Clement," said Csaky. "I never said you were to repair thither _vi et armis_: the whole expedition must remain a secret. You have only to follow the wild beast's track. We have it, on the best authority, that the beast is somewhere in the neighbourhood, and we trust to your dexterity to spot it. The rest will be done by more enterprising people than yourself."

Clement regarded the mission as altogether odd and risky, but he dared not raise any objection, so he simply bowed low and sighed deeply.

"Above all things we must have dexterity, expedition, and secrecy. Keep that constantly in mind."

"I will go at once," cried Clement desperately; "but first I must borrow me a horse from some one or other, for I should not like to utterly ruin these beautiful boots by walking in them."

"That too would be a little too slow for our purpose. But don't bother your head about a horse. One of my heydukes will give you his, which you must mount at once. Remember however to give him oats occasionally, as I don't want him to come back all skin and bone."

Clement the Clerk, quite confounded by so much graciousness, hastily shouldered his shabby knapsack, fastened his rusty sword to his side, and after placing in his knapsack a roll of parchment, a goose-quill, and a wooden ink-horn, declared himself ready to depart.

"You have a very light equipment," remarked Csaky.

"_Integer vitae, scelerisque purus, non eget Mauri jaculis neque arcu_," returned the philosopher with a classical flourish, and when the reins had been placed in his hands, he prepared to mount. But the aristocratic charger, as soon as he perceived that the clerk had one foot in the stirrups, began to plunge, buck, and run round and round, thereby compelling the aspiring poet to hop along with him on one foot, till the laughing heydukes seized the horse by the bridle, and helped the unpractised horseman into the saddle. As however he had very long legs, and the wicked heydukes had lashed the stirrups up very high, he was obliged to squat upon the horse as if it had been a camel.

Ladislaus Csaky bawled after him once more not to forget what he had told him, whereupon the poet, quite unintentionally, gave his horse the spur, and dashed madly off at full tilt over stock and stone. Mantle, sabre, and knapsack flew about the ears of the unfortunate horseman, who held on to his saddle with both hands in mortal agony, to the intense delight of the whole population of Toroczko, who were sitting in groups outside their houses on their _beard-driers_, as the benches used to be called in those days.

* * * * *

First of all the Patrol-officer took the road to Abrudbánya. Formerly, while he still had a servant, Clement used to leave all the pioneering to him; but now he was forced to find his way from village to village himself, with the occasional assistance of the country magistrates.

He had just quitted the narrow mountain path, and was ambling slowly over a dilapidated bridge, which spanned a brawling stream, when he perceived in the thicket a group of dirty-looking men crouching over a large fire. At first he took them for gipsies, but, approaching nearer, was horrified to discover that they were Tartars, who had dismounted from their horses, and were sitting round an ox which they had roasted whole.

To turn back was scarcely advisable; but the road he was following went straight past the diners. Clement was in a fix; but he determined at last to put a bold face on the matter, so he trotted by the gaping group with affected nonchalance, pretending to be intent all the while on calculating the exact number of acorns on the wayside oaks, and merely raised his hat to the Tartars with a brief "_Salem aleikum!_" when he came close up to them, as if he only then perceived them for the first time, passing quickly on without looking once behind him.

So far all was well, but at that very moment two of the Tartars sprang up from the fire and called to the rider to stop. Clement, perceiving that they were both unarmed, argued therefrom that they had no murderous designs upon him, and therefore halted and awaited them.

No sooner had the two dog-headed figures come up to him, one on each side, than they caught hold of his legs and displayed no less an intention than to rob him of his beautiful boots.

"Would you? ye sons of Belial!" cried Clement, beside himself with rage, and grasping the hilt of his sword he tried to pull it from its leather sheath, in order to cut off the ears of his assailants forthwith. But the good blade, which had not quitted its sheath for ten years, had grown so rusty that Clement, despite all his endeavours, could not pluck it forth, and in the meantime the two Tartars pulled the wriggling rider hither and thither by the legs, naturally without succeeding in loosening the tight-fitting boots in the least. The Tartars reviled Clement, and Clement reviled the Tartars: their language was perfectly horrible.

The noise brought the Aga to the spot--an ourang-outang-like object whose mahogany features were framed by a white beard--and he asked in a hoarse whisper what was the matter.

Clement the Clerk at once drew his credentials from the pocket of his mente, and shook it in the Aga's face--he was too wrathful to speak--while the Tartars, pointing with frantic gestures at the boots, jabbered something to the Aga.

"Who art thou, O bow-legged unbeliever!" asked the Aga, "that thou dost presume to wear on thy lowest extremities, on thy mud-wading feet, forsooth! the sacred colour of the Prophet, that radiant green which the faithful may only behold on the arches of their mosques and on the turban of the Padishah? Thou shalt be burned alive, thou godless Giaour!"

"I am the Patrol-officer of his Highness Prince Michael Apafi!" declaimed the ex-student, with terrified pathos. "My person is sacred and inviolable. I am he who provides the host of the sublime Sultan with meat and drink; I proclaim and collect the taxes, so let me go, for I am a very important personage."

This mode of defence pleased the Tartars. The Aga exchanged glances with his subalterns, as much as to say--"This is the very man we want!" and addressed him again in a more friendly tone.

"Dost thou indeed collect the taxes? Look now! my master, Ali Pasha of Grosswardein, has sent me hither to notify to the people a fresh imposition. Allah hath clearly brought us together. Thou wilt act discreetly then by proclaiming the new tax at once. It is no more than thy duty."

"I'll do so gladly," replied Clement, who made as if he were going.

"Stay, my son," said the Aga, beckoning to him. "Thou dost not even know yet the amount of the new tax. 'Tis a mere trifle, and only imposed by way of showing that we are the masters here. 'Tis only a farthing per head. That's not much, I'm sure."

"Nothing at all!" assented Clement, eager to be off.

"Not so fast! not so fast!" remonstrated the Aga. "I shall not be best pleased if thou dost disobey my orders; but as I know that thou dost not regard it as perjury to break promises made to us, I'll tell off one of my brave fellows here to accompany thee from village to village, and take care that thou dost duly proclaim the new tax whithersoever thou goest."

"It is well, gracious sir," said Clement meekly, with the mental reservation of ridding himself of the brave fellow at the very next village.

"Mount your horse, Zülfikar," cried the Aga to one of his servants.

The person addressed was an evil-looking fellow with a malignant squint. Although just as dirty as the others, it was clear from his physiognomy that he was not made of the same stuff, and if we condescended to bestow any thought at all upon such low people, it might even occur to us that we had seen him somewhere else before.

"As for thee," said the Aga to Clement, who was anxious to be off at any price, "take off thy boots as soon as thou gettest home, and if ever I meet thee with them on again, thou shalt receive from me five hundred strokes on the soles of thy feet, which thou wilt have cause to recollect even on thy wedding-day."

Clement the Clerk said "Yes" to everything, rejoiced that he had got off at last, and trotted off towards Abrudbánya. His Tartar escort rode faithfully by his side.

From time to time the Patrol-officer cast a sidelong glance at his companion, only quickly to avert his eyes again, for as the Tartar squinted horribly, Clement could never exactly make out which way he was looking. Clement was thinking all the while how easily he would give the Tartar the slip, smiled to himself at the thought, winked with both eyes, and nodded his head with a self-satisfied air.

"Mr. Patrol-officer, don't fancy you will circumvent me as you go your rounds!" exclaimed the Tartar suddenly, in the purest Hungarian, as if he could read Clement's thought from his face.

Clement was so aghast that he almost fell from his horse. How the deuce could the fellow snap up his very thoughts, and speak Hungarian despite his Tartardom?

"Don't bother your head about me any more," continued the Turk calmly. "I am an Hungarian renegade who was once in the service of Emerich Balassa. I had a hand in the capture and poisoning of Corsar Beg, and when the Hungarians began to persecute me on that account, I turned Turk. If the Prophet befriend me, I may yet rise to be Kapudan Pasha. Pray don't imagine you can bamboozle a wily old fox like me."

Clement, completely disconcerted, could only scratch his head, proceeded with his escort from village to village, and after accomplishing his regular official business, proclaimed the fresh imposition of a farthing per head, which the people everywhere received most favourably, in many cases even paying it down at once to his Tartar comrade.

But no one knew anything about the panther. Indeed, but for the respect inspired by his gallooned green boots, the Patrol-officer would have been laughed out of countenance.

Only one little Wallachian village up in the mountains, called Marisel, was yet to be visited, and beyond that place began the domains of Baron Banfi, where the jurisdiction of the Patrol-officer terminated.

Thither also the renegade followed him.