"Be it so! Lead me thither!" cried the Patrol-officer; and the whole a.s.sembly proceeded towards the mortuary, which stood at the extreme end of the village.
This end of Marisel is so far distant from the church, that night had fallen before the crowd had reached it.
The moon came from behind the mountains. Round about the house stood pine trees, through the sombre foliage of which the evening star shimmered faintly. In the distance sounded the melancholy notes of some pastoral flute. In front of the little white house the hired mourner was sobbing loudly. The wind agitated the c.r.a.pe-hung branches of the _armindenu_. Inside the house lay the corpse of the beautiful young maiden awaiting her truant lover. The moonbeams fell upon her pale countenance.
The mob surrounded the mortuary, crept stealthily on tip-toe into the courtyard, peeped through the window, and whispered--
"Look! There he is! there he is!"
The Patrol-officer, the priest, the magistrate, and Sange Moarte"s mother entered the room.
Right across the threshold lay the girl"s father dead drunk; he got so tipsy yesterday from sheer sorrow that he will need all to-day and all to-morrow to sleep it off. In the middle of the room stood the pine-wood coffin, bedaubed with glaring roses fresh from the brush of a rural artist; within it lay the girl (she was only sixteen), her beautiful forehead encircled by a funereal wreath. A wax taper had been placed in one of her hands, in the other she held a small coin. At the head of the coffin burned two handsome wax candles stuck into a jar containing gingerbreads; at the foot of the coffin, in a gaudily-painted, high-backed chair, staring blankly at the girl"s face, sat Sange Moarte.
The pious superst.i.tion of the priest and the magistrate would not let them cross the threshold; but Clement stepped up to the lad, and immediately recognized in him the man on the rock who would not tell him the way.
"Hi, young man! So you are he who has the bad habit of never replying to people when they address you, eh?"
The person thus addressed justified the question by not answering it.
"Now hearken and answer my question. I am the Patrol-officer. D"ye hear?"
Sange Moarte remained speechless, with his eyes fixed all the time on Floriza. He was as motionless as the corpse itself, and scarcely seemed to breathe. His good old mother tenderly took him by the hand and called him by his proper name.
"Jova, my son! answer the gentleman. Look at me, I am your mother."
"In the name of my master, the Prince, I command you to answer me!"
cried the Patrol-officer, raising his voice.
The Wallach still remained silent.
"I ask you if, in the course of your sylvan ramblings, you have seen any sort of foreign wild beast, to wit a yellow, speckled monster, which the learned call a panther?"
Sange Moarte gave a start, as if suddenly aroused out of a deep sleep.
His gla.s.sy eyes flashed and sparkled as he looked at his interrogator, a feverish scarlet flushed his cheeks, and he stammered tremulously--
"I have seen it, seen it, seen it."
And with that he covered his eyes, so as not to look upon the dead body.
"Where have you seen it?" asked the Patrol-officer.
"Far, far away," whispered the Wallach; then he became dumb once more and buried his forehead in his hands.
"Name the place. Where is it?"
The Wallach looked timidly around. A cold shudder ran through him, and with fearful, rolling eyes he whispered to the Patrol-officer--
"In the Gradina Dracului."[36]
[Footnote 36: _Gradina Dracului_. Garden of the Devil (Roumanian).]
The priest and the magistrate immediately crossed themselves thrice, and the latter gazed devoutly on a mural St. Peter, as if to invoke his help on this occasion.
"You seem to me a plucky lad, to venture to approach the Devil"s Garden," said the Patrol-officer. "Will you guide me thither?"
The Wallach nodded, with a joyful look.
"In the name of St. Michael and all the Archangels I implore you, sir, not to go," interrupted the priest. "Of all who have visited the Devil"s Garden, not one has ever been known to come back. A truly devout person would turn his back upon it. It is only this man"s sinfulness that has led him thither."
Clement scratched his head.
"I don"t go there for the pleasure of the thing," said he. "Not that I fear the name of the place, but because I object to scaling mountains.
In my official capacity, however, I have no choice."
"Then at least stick a consecrated willow-twig in your cap," urged the anxious pastor, "or take with you a picture of St. Michael, that the devil may not come near you."
"Thank you, my brothers; but it would be much more to the point if you provided me with a pair of sandals, for I cannot go clambering over the mountains in these spurred boots. I regret too that your amulets are thrown away upon me, for I am a Unitarian."
The priest crossed himself once more, and said with a sigh--
"I fancied you were orthodox, because you were so zealous about the hags and witches."
"I only did that officially. Send my Turk hither."
As he went out the priest murmured to himself--
"Birds of a feather! A nice pair of heretics!"
"Comrade Zulfikar," cried Clement to the Turk, as he tied on his sandals, "you can find the rest of your way by yourself, for I must take a side spring into the mountains."
"If you spring, I will spring too," replied the distrustful renegade.
"Whithersoever you go, thither will I go also."
"My dear fellow, there is nothing to be pocketed on the road that I am about to take, except perhaps the devil, for man has never set his foot there."
"What do I care! My orders are to go along with you till I return to the point from whence I started."
"So much the better, then; I shall have the pleasure of your company.
But pray help me to draw my sword, so that I may be able to defend myself in case of need."
"So you carry a sword which requires two men to draw it! Well, let"s look at it," and with that the two men planted their legs one against the other, grasped the sword with both hands, and tugged away at it for a long time, till at last it flew out of its sheath so suddenly that Clement the Clerk nearly fell sprawling.
Clement then called for a jar of honey, rubbed the rusty blade all over with the viscid stuff, and stuck it back into its sheath.
"And now let us be off, young man," said he to the Wallach, who hastily took his cap and a small axe from the ground, and went out without once looking behind him.
His mother seized him by the hand--