by Mór Jókai
CHAPTER X.
A LEADER OF THE PEOPLE.
The other rector, Mr. Thomas Bodza, had read a lot of things in thecourse of his life.
He had read the history of Themistocles who, with a handful of Greeks,converted millions of Persians into rubbish heaps; he had read of theexploits of the valiant Marahas, who, when one of their warriors flunghis sandal into the air and uttered thrice the word: "Marha, Marha,Marha!" swept the Roman legions from the face of Pannonia; he had learntfrom the Spanish historian all about Ferdinand VII., who chased theMoors from the Alhambra where they had held sway for hundreds of years;he had read of the Scythian Bertezena, who, starting in life as a simplesmith had delivered his race from the grinding yoke of the Geougs;--andfinally he had not only read but learnt by heart all the great works ofour savants in which it is demonstrated with the most exact scholarshipand the most inflexible logic, that the Greeks, the Marahas, theSpaniards, the Scythians, and, in fact, all the most famous nations ofthe earth have originated from a single powerful race which numbersamong its chiefest branches, such noble nations as the Russians, thePoles, the Bohemians, and the Croats, &c., inasmuch as the languages ofall these various nations are so crammed with original Slavonic words,that if these words were suddenly demanded back from them by theirrightful owners, any sort of verbal intercourse amongst the nations inquestion would be henceforth impossible.
All this Thomas Bodza had read and crammed into his head. Once he hadeven written a dissertation in which, with astonishing profundity andingenuity, he had demonstrated the striking resemblance and theidentical significance of the Greek {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} and the Slavonic _tiszi_, whichdissertation was received with general applause in the local mutualimprovement society where he recited it.
In his library were to be found all those learned tomes which do ourdear native land the honour of only noticing her in order to disparageher, attributing _inter alia_ a Slavonic origin to all our chief towns,and forcing upon us the crushing conviction that we Hungarians cannoteven call a single water-course our own, inasmuch as all our rivers risein other countries--certainly a most depressing, poverty-stricken stateof things, especially as regards our cattle dealers and boatmen, who, ofcourse, can do so little without water.
After long-continued scientific investigations, materially assisted by avigorous imagination, Thomas Bodza had constructed a map of his own, inwhich the various countries appeared in a shape diverging essentiallyfrom that which they actually occupy, and indeed only the figure of thevirgin Europa, and the outlines of the unchangeable water-courses madeone suspect that it was a representation of the old world at all. Notonly did the boundaries of the realm suffer strange permutations, butthe classical termination "grad,"[5] unusual and unnatural as it seemedto all but the initiated, was tacked on pretty frequently to the namesof purely Hungarian towns both small and great; and there was alsonoticeable this slight and fanciful deviation from the strict truth, towit, that whereas cities of unappropriatable Asiatic origin likeDebreczen, Kecskemet, Nagy-Koeros, and others, appeared degraded intoinsignificant villages by being marked with tiny points, every littletwopenny-halfpenny Slavonic village in the Carpathians was magnifiedinto a cathedral city, or starred to represent a formidable fortress.
[Footnote 5: The Slavonic word for "town," thus Constantinople isTsargrad.]
The worthy paedagogue used to sit brooding over this map for hours. Hewould draw his boundaries with a pair of compasses, construct imaginaryroads from town to town, and reconstruct a fortress from the imposingruins in the bed of the River Waag. Nay, he even ventured upon theaudacious experiment of cutting through the mountain chain separatingthe River Hernad from the River Poprad, and uniting these two rivers (ina state of nature they flow in diametrically opposite directions) intoone broad continuous water-course, thus bringing together all thevarious branches of that scattered family of kindred nations whichdwells between the White Sea and the Black.
In those days very little was known among us of railways beyond therumour (the newspapers mentioned it as a sort of curiosity) that acertain Englishman, called William Griffiths, wanted to make awheel-track of iron. Thomas Bodza's idea therefore of a continuousEuropean waterway almost deserved to be called sublime.
Such exaltation is innocent enough in itself. It is found, more or less,in every race, and is especially vigorous wherever an impoverished,orphaned stock is aware of the existence of a powerful, dominating,gigantic kinsman beyond a mountain range.[6] Unfortunately, however,this exaltation did not remain an empty poetical dream in the bosom ofour village paedagogue.
[Footnote 6: _E.g._, The Slovaks in north Hungary, who know that Russialies beyond the Carpathians.]
Even as a student his heart was full of a bitter hatred of everythingHungarian. He went to school at Pressburg, that peculiar town where thetraders are German, the gentry Hungarian, and the poor Slavonic. Thetraders pick holes in the gentry and the poor folks hate them both. Hesaw the heady young squires of the _Alfoeld_[7] idle away their time atschool in unedifying contrast to the diligent sober conduct of himselfand his friends, and yet the masters treated them with the greatestdistinction. Some of them scarcely attended the lectures at all, and yetthey sat on the front benches. They were able to have private lessons,and thus easily outstripped the poor scholars who had to slave night andday to keep pace with them. They marched about in fine clothes and gottheir poorer fellow-students to copy out their exercises for them. Atthe public examinations they declaimed Hungarian verses with suchemphasis, with such a fire of enthusiasm, that even that portion of theaudience which did not understand a word of their fulminating periodscheered them vociferously, whereas he, Thomas Bodza, recited theaffected, pedestrian, poetic effusions of the Slavonic School ofself-improvement without the slightest effect. Even in the rude arena ofmaterial strength the Asiatic race showed a determination to beparamount. The youths of the _Alfoeld_ were the better wrestlers, moreskilful in gymnastic exercises, and in all serious encounters assertedthemselves with more self-confidence and greater enthusiasm; theyboasted ostentatiously of their nationality, and scornfully looked downupon his.
[Footnote 7: The great Hungarian plain.]
And then, too, during the sessions of the Diet, when the haughtyHungarian gentry flocked to the capital from every quarter of the realmwith extraordinary pomp and splendour, a new and clamorous life filledall the streets, and the brilliant visitors monopolized every yard offree space. It frequently happened, in the evenings, that a dozen or soof high-spirited _jurati_ would join hand to hand, occupy the wholeroad, and squeeze against the wall any shabby-coated alienist whohappened to come in their way. The poor devil might be carrying home hismeagre _jusculum_[8] under his mantle in a coarse unvarnished pot, witha piece of brown bread stuck into it, revolving in his mind the wholetime the story of another poor scholar in days gone by who, once upon atime, used, in the same way, to carry home his humble mess of pottage injust such another coarse earthenware pot, and who, nevertheless, came tobe one of the princes, one of the great men of Hungary, with a great bigcoat of arms, and castles to dwell in. He forgot, however, to reflectthat he, with whom he compared his own fate, was gifted at the outsetwith intellect and virile courage, qualities with which he himself hadonly been very modestly equipped by nature; their common misery in earlylife was the sole point of resemblance between them.
[Footnote 8: Pottage.]
These first bitter impressions never left his mind. He registered thedisfavour of fortune and the fruits of his own limited capacity amongthe grievances of the oppressed nationality to which he belonged. Yearsof want, his little dilapidated dwelling--granted him in his capacity ofvillage teacher but shoved away into an obscure corner of Hetfalu--hismeagre barley-bread, his sordid frock-coat--all these things aggravatedthe anguish of his soul.
His occasional intercourse with the lord of the manor, the arrogant andpretentious Hetfalusy, was not calculated to reconcile him with hisdestiny. Hetfalusy regarded
as a profitless loafer every man who did notseek his bread with spade and hoe, unless, of course, he happened to bea gentleman by birth. He applied this theory to the schoolmaster raceespecially, whom he conceived to have been invented for the expresspurpose of eternally hounding on the common folks against their lawfulmasters, the gentry. As if the world could not go on comfortably withoutthe peasant learning his letters! What he heard in church was quiteenough for him surely! On one occasion, when mention was made in hispresence of a village shepherd who had forged a bank-note, he observedthat if the fellow had not learnt to write he would never have goneastray. The national school teachers, he said, were the naturalattorneys of the agricultural population as against the landlords. AndHetfalusy gave practical expression to his belief whenever he had thechance. The corn he was bound to supply to the schoolmaster was alwaysmeasured out to him from the bottom of the sieve; he seized thecourtyard of the school for his threshers, so that during school-timenot a word of the lessons could be heard for the racket; he neverrepaired the building set apart for the cultivation of the muses, butlooked on while the schoolmaster himself patched up the holes in hiswall with balls of clay borrowed from his own garden, and re-thatchedthe dilapidated rush-roof with his own hand. Frequently he would ratethe schoolmaster in the public thoroughfare, in the presence of thegaping rustics, on the flimsiest pretext, and bully him as if he werethe lowest of his menials.
Thomas Bodza totted up all these outrages on the back of his map, andwhenever he was immersed in that odd production, his eyes alwaysfastened themselves on three red crosses which he had marked over thelittle town which indicated Hetfalu; and at all such times he wouldheave a deep sigh, as if he found this long waiting for the day ofretribution almost too much for his patience.
For that a day of retribution would arrive sooner or later was hisstrong belief.
Frequently, on popular festivals, you might notice on his index-finger arude iron ring (the handiwork of a blacksmith rather than of a jeweller,from the look of it), the seal of which was engraved with the threeletters: U. S. S. On such occasions, anyone observing him closely couldhave remarked that he carried his head higher than usual, and wheneverhe was asked what these initial letters signified, he would simply shrughis shoulders and say that he had got the ring from a comrade in hisstudent days, and really did not know _what_ the letters meant.
During vacation time he would regularly undertake long journeys on footinto distant parts of the land, traversing no end of mountains andvalleys, and always returning home more surlily disposed towards thelord of the manor than ever, at the same time dropping mysterious hintsin the presence of his confidants, and talking darkly of oldexpectations being realised, of extraordinary forthcoming events, and ofimportant changes in the general order of things here below.
Nowadays people will scarcely believe that there are men whose wholecourse of life is determined by such baseless and centrifugal ideas.Such a species of human ambition is certainly a great rarity. Itresembles that cryptogram which goes by the name of "star-ashes," whosetremulous spray-like masses only appear in rare seasons and odd placesafter the warm summer rains. No ordinary soil is good enough for them.
At any rate, Mr. Thomas Bodza would have acted more wisely if he hadendeavoured to inoculate the minds of the faithful committed to hischarge with a little reading, a little writing, and some slightknowledge of geography, ethnology, natural history, and fruitcultivation, instead of assembling round him all the loafers of thedistrict in the pot-house, the meeting-house, at the hut of the forestrangers, or in some underground cellar outside the village, and thereputting into their heads ideas which, interpreted by their ignorantfanaticism, could only be productive of infinite mischief.
He had in all the villages round about personal acquaintances, whom hewas wont to visit successively in the course of every year, and whosefantastic aspirations he constantly did his best to keep alive.
And at last the opportunity had presented itself for beginning his greatwork.
Being a very well-read man himself, he had been the first to learn fromthe newspapers of the approach of that dangerous contagious sickness,the antidotes against which were still unknown.
Suddenly a mysterious rumour began to spread through the villages that apowerful foreign nation was about to invade the kingdom for the purposeof reconquering for the descendants of the Quadi and the Marahanas thePannonian provinces that they had held centuries before.
The country folk could see for themselves the soldiery hastening on itsway through the land to the frontiers; every carter, tramp, andtraveller, brought news of the military cordons which were drawn far andwide, from town to town, and required every person passing to and fro toshow his passport, a very unusual institution in those days.
The wiser and better informed persons quieted the whisperers byexplaining that these measures were not adopted against any foreign foe,but were simply taken to prevent the spread of the terrible pestilencewhich was already raging beyond the limits of the kingdom.
And then a still more terrible rumour began to raise aloft itsdragon-like head.
It was generally said, muttered, whispered, and at last proclaimedaloud, that it was no pestilence the people had to fear, but that thegentry themselves who had resolved to exterminate the common-folks!
They had determined to exterminate them in an execrable horrible way--bypoison! They were casting into the barns, the wells, and the vats of thepot-house a deadly poison of swift operation-_that_ was the way in whichthey meant to destroy the people.
The doctors, apothecaries, and innkeepers had all been corrupted;everyone with short cropped hair; everyone who wore a cloth coat was tobe regarded as an enemy; nobody was to be trusted!
Who spread this terrible rumour?--spread it first of all in secret, inmysterious whispers from house to house, but presently proclaimed it inthe public thoroughfares with a loud voice and amidst the clash of arms?Ah! who can say? So much only is certain that the tissues of thisnetwork of calumny spread far and wide. It is possible to make humanweakness, ignorance, and rustic stupidity believe almost anything. Theseverity of the gentry in the past had, no doubt, contributed somethingto this end; but certainly not much, for, as a matter of fact, thecommon people raged most furiously against those of the gentry who haddone them most good; it was their benefactors they treated the mostsavagely. And then, too, the usual vices of every community, the love ofloot, the thirst for vengeance, blind fury, anger of heart, low greed,were so many additional predisposing causes of the horrors thatfollowed.
Yet a red thread ran all through this woof of sorrow and mourning;"blind destiny," upon whom man so cheerfully casts the burden of hissins, had but little to do with it at all.
* * * * *
It was after vespers, and Thomas Bodza was taking a walk across thefields. This was his usual promenade. Sometimes he went as far as theboundaries of the neighbouring village with a little book under his armwhich he perused with philosophic tranquility.
It was the works of Horace, all of whose verses he knew by heart; for,inasmuch as it had once been very wisely observed in his presence bysome distinguished scholar that no other human lute-strummer had eversung so beautifully and so grandly as Horace, it thenceforth became apoint of honour with Mr. Bodza to read nothing else; so he nevertroubled his head about any other poet or poets, whatever language theywrote in. He made an exception in favour of himself indeed, for he alsohad his moments of inspiration, but even his poems were not _quite_ asgood as those of Horace.
And now also he was reading over again those lines he already knew sowell. He had sat down to rest beneath a large poplar tree on a big roundstone that had often served him as a seat before, and he had just cometo the verses, beginning with the beautiful words:
"Nunc est bibendum! Nunc pede libero, Pulsando tellus...."
when the sound of approaching footsteps disturbed his tranquil enjoyment.
"I have been awaiting you, Ivan," said the ma
ster, thrusting his littlebook beneath his arm again, but not before he had carefully turned downthe leaf at the place where he had stopped reading, lest he shouldforget where he had left off.
"I could only get off late. The old man would not let me go tillvespers."
"Ivan, the long expected signal has at last been given."
"How so?" inquired the fellow, amazed.
"It has been announced in every church, in every school; it has beennailed in printed form on every wall, on every post. The county itselfhas given the signal. That about which the people were still in doubt,that which it refused to believe, it believes now, for it has beenofficially proclaimed. Death is approaching, and woe to him who fearsit. I fear it not. Do you?"
The fellow shuddered, yet he replied,
"Not I."
"The plague will break out suddenly in various places, and whereverthere are dead bodies, there the living will fly to arms, and seek outthose on whom they would wreak their vengeance."
Ivan's face turned a pale green, but he stifled his inward terror. Itwas indeed a terrible time that was coming.
"In the town there is a great commotion, but that does not amount tomuch. I know the Hetfalu folks. They are cowards and only half ours sofar. There are many strangers, many traitors among them. Even when theirfury is at the highest point, a gentleman with silver buttons has onlyto come among them with honied words, or a heyduke has only to appearamong them with a stick, or, at the most, a couple of gamekeepers withloaded muskets, and they scatter and fly in all directions like startledgame. It is useless; they are a race of cowards. They are a mongrel setafter all. Yet here must be our starting point. We must compel the folkshere to tackle to the business--a petty village cannot take theinitiative without some stimulus from without."
Ivan listened to the master's words admiringly; he began to have thestrong conviction that Bodza possessed the qualifications of a greatgeneral.
"We must bring in the folks from some neighbouring village just to stirthem up. The people of the Tribo district are best suited for that Ishould think. Many of them are shepherds and herdsmen; men who lie inthe fields, who can be brought together in the night time, withoutanyone observing it. There is a distillery in the village too, and hewho says that poison is concocted there does not lie in the least. Ingeneral, every village should choose its leaders from some othervillage, so that the local gentry may not recognise the strange faces.Some men are easily put out if people, when they begin to supplicate,call them by their name."
Ivan nodded his head approvingly at these sage suggestions. Bodza willcertainly deserve a plume of feathers in his cap, thought he.
"You will go at night to all the shepherds, one after the other, andbring them together in front of the lonely inn near the main-road. Iwill not tell you what you are to do, you must be guided by your owncommon-sense. You must not all remain on the high road however, some ofyou must march towards the village."
"The best hiding-place will be the headsman's dwelling."
"Will not the Zudar woman betray us?"
"Not till she has burnt down the castle of Hetfalusy, at any rate."
"Does she hate them then as much as her mother, the old crone?"
"As much! far more. The old crone is all talk."
"I have often heard her say that Hetfalusy seized her property, but onecan't go by what she says. She says that one wing of the castle is builtupon her land."
"It was like this. Dame Anna's husband was a poor gentleman who had alittle plot of land in the neighbourhood of the castle, which was theoccasion of an eternal squabble between him and the lord of the manor.One day, Hetfalusy--you know how overbearing these great gentlemenare!--suddenly fell upon this poor gentleman as he was walking on thislittle plot of land of his and gave him a sound drubbing. The result wasa great lawsuit. Hetfalusy questioned Dudoky's gentility, and thelatter could not make good his claim to be regarded as an _armiger_. Helost his case in the local court, and the suit dragged on for years. Theheavy law costs soon swallowed up all the appellant's means, till atlast his little property was put up to auction to defray his expenses.Hetfalusy acquired it for a mere song, and even while the suit wasproceeding, he revenged himself on his adversary by building a new wingto his house on the very plot of land the ownership of which was still amatter of dispute. Then Dudoky had an apoplectic stroke which carriedhim off. His orphan daughter took service for a time in town. Thence shegot into a house of no very extraordinary reputation where somebodysuddenly found her and offered her his hand in marriage. The wretchedwoman agreed and accepted him. And who, you will ask, was the lucklesscreature who sought out a wife in such a place? _She_ only discovered iton the wedding-day. It was the headsman of Hetfalusy. Thus BarbaraDudoky became the headsman's bride. If old Dame Anna became mad, herdaughter was partly the cause of it. This also they put down to theaccount of the Hetfalusies. Since then Dame Anna has frequently soughtopportunities for revenging herself on the Hetfalusy family--'thesnail-brood,' as Barbara is wont to call them. The old night-owl lovesto torment the souls of those who anger her; she loves to fill the innerrooms of the splendid Hetfalusy castle with tears and groaning; sheloves to see her haughty enemy grow grey beneath his load of sin andsorrow; she rejoices at the spectacle of his shame and remorse and agonyof mind, for the old hag knows how to concoct the sort of venom thatcorrodes the heart. Now Barbara is not like that. Whenever that womanspeaks of the Hetfalusies, her downy lips swell out, her cheeks flush,her black eyes cast forth sparks like a crackling fire, and if at suchtimes she has a knife in her hands, it is not well to approach her. Shelongs to taste the blood of her enemy, and smack her lips over it; shelongs to see his haughty castle in a blaze. I have often heard her sayso, and then add, 'After that they may kill me if they like, I don'tcare.' Oh! that is indeed a terrible woman, you ought to see her."
"A veritable Libussa!" cried Thomas rapturously. "If we win, a greatdestiny awaits her. Are you in love with her?"
"Perhaps it is more correct to say she loves me. I am very comfortablewith her, anyway. The old man does not mind a bit."
"He must be got out of the way."
"We'll take care of that."
"All the exits from the place must be seized after nightfall, and a bandof our bravest lads must make a dash for the town hall. Take care thatno close-cropped head[9] escapes from the place, even if he be dressedas a peasant. The rest shall be my care."
[Footnote 9: No gentleman.]
"All right, master."
"Then we must have Mekipiros ready in front of the forester's hut."
"Why that, master? The fellow is dumb and foolish. You know that he bitout his tongue under torture."
"So much the better. He cannot talk. He must have brandy, and lots ofit."
"When he drinks brandy he becomes like a wild beast. He can bite andscratch now, but when he is drunk you can make him worry people like adog."
"That is just what we want. There may be things to be done which a manwould willingly keep out of and yet have done all the same. Do you takeme?"
"Yes, perfectly, you are worthy of all admiration, master. We can letloose this wild beast in cases where we don't want our own hands to besoiled. When he has lots of brandy he would shoot his own father if youput a gun in his hands. And if anything goes wrong we can lay all theblame on him."
The master regarded his pupil with a look of solemn reproach.
"And you are capable," said he, "capable of saying in cold blood, 'ifanything goes wrong'? Ivan, you are not a true believer. Ivan, you are aworthless fellow."
The youth was greatly taken aback at these words, and made a feebleattempt to defend himself.
"Ivan, you are a worthless fellow, I say. I regret that I chose you outto take part in this great work."
Ivan grew angry.
"What! you chose me! Why, it was I who chose you! Am I not the head ofthe conspiracy?"
"And am I not its soul?"
"What! with those weak pipe-stem arms of yours! Look at
my arms! Look!"said Ivan, turning up his shirt sleeves and exposing his fleshy arms. "Icould do more with one of my arms than you could with your whole body."
"And yet you are a coward if you ask, shall we succeed?"
"I'll show what I am when I am on the spot," said Ivan, sticking out hisbrawny chest and boastfully thumping it with his clenched fist; at thatmoment he wore the expression of a savage proud of his bones and sinews.
"Till then, however, let there be peace between us," said Bodza,extending his dry and skinny hand towards Ivan in token ofreconciliation, and Ivan squeezed the hand with all his might, not somuch to convince the master of the firmness of his friendship as to givehim some idea of the expressive vigour of his grip.
Bodza did not move a muscle of his face during this violent tension;but, all at once, Ivan began writhing, his features contracted withpain, and he placed one hand on his stomach.
"Well, what is the matter?" inquired Bodza.
The fellow doubled up with pain.
"I have a sudden stitch, in the side."
"What! is that all? and you make so much fuss over it! I didn't flinchjust now, when you nearly crushed my fingers, did I?"
"But this is horrible--such spasms."
"Perchance, Ivan, you too have been poisoned."
"Oh, don't joke like that," said the fellow with a pale and agitatedface.
"Why you know the whole thing to be a fable."
Ivan gave a great sigh with an air of relief.
"It has gone now. I felt so odd. It is a fable, of course. But what apeculiar pain it was!"
"Drive the idea out of your head and swallow some comforting cordial.And now go and look after our confidants."
Ivan was still a little pale, and it seemed to him as if the master'sface also was of an odd yellow colour.
"How yellow the sky is!" said he, looking up, "not a speck of blueanywhere. And what a long black cloud is rising up from thehorizon--just like a large black bird."
"Gape not at the sky, Ivan, but make haste and have everything readyagainst the night."
"You can look right into the sun, there's not a bit of light in it whenit goes down," murmured he--and his head felt strangely dizzy.
"What have you got to do with the sky, or the sun, or the clouds?"inquired the master sarcastically.
"Nothing, I suppose, nor with what is beyond them either. Good night, mymaster," he cried after a pause, and turned truculently away.
"A happy and peaceful good night!" said the other with an ironicalsmile.
"Pleasant dreams."
"And a joyful awakening."
And with that they parted. The master returned towards the village,reading the immortal verses of Horace all the way along. But Ivanhastened towards the lonely forest hut, looking up from time to time atthe yellow sky, the faded sun, and the long black cloud, and thenglancing around him horror-stricken, to perceive that he cast no shadoweither before or behind.
That sombre yellow light, how odd it was!--and then, too, that brown,copper-coloured cloud, which was gradually covering the whole earth, andenveloping the whole horizon with its broad sluggish wings like somehuge bat-like monster of the Nether World! And the little black lettersin the master's open book seemed to be dancing together in long dizzyingrows, and this is what he read:
"... Pallida Mors Aequo pede pulsat Pauperum tabernas Regumnque turres..."