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 a.s.sert 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 const.i.tuent 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 cla.s.sical 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 Abrudbanya. 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 a.s.sistance 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 aleik.u.m!_" when he came close up to them, as if he only then perceived them for the first time, pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sailants 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 G.o.dless 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."