Lady Banfi, terrified by these mysterious words, the meaning of which Pataky"s face so ill concealed, asked in mortal fear what was the matter.
"Nothing, my darling! nothing!" said Banfi, embracing her with a tender smile. "A pressing message which I must attend to at once. I"ll be back again soon! Lie down and sleep gently!"
With these words he persuaded his wife to fall back upon her pillow, kissed her repeatedly with great tenderness, and soothed her caressingly between each kiss--"My soul! my delight! my love! my heaven!"
The wife little suspected that this was the parting kiss of a man about to meet his doom; Banfi looked at her so smilingly, feigning a joyful countenance as he stood on the threshold of death.
Then the castle horn again sounded. The Princess"s first messenger had arrived, and demanded admittance in her Highness"s name.
Csaky rushed hastily up-stairs, and just as Banfi, after half rea.s.suring his consort, was about to quit her, suddenly burst open the door, and cried--
"Why so long a leave-taking? Get ready! The sentence stays for execution!"
Lady Banfi with a piercing scream rose from her couch, and stretching out both her arms towards Banfi, gazed speechlessly at him for a moment, then, clutching at her heart, fell back dead upon her pillow with wide-open eyes.
Banfi looked at his enemy with the bitterness of death, his streaming eyes hurled more curses at him than any lip could have uttered.
"Base, cowardly wretch!" he moaned, "was it then part of your mandate to murder my wife also?"
Csaky turned his head away, and said in a hoa.r.s.e voice--
"Hasten! the time is short!"
"Short for me, but it shall be long for you! For a time is coming when you will curse the day of your birth, and will not be able to die as calmly as I do!--Leave me!--I would fain pray; but I cannot call upon my G.o.d while you are nigh!"
Csaky, overcome despite himself, quitted the room.
Banfi laid his hand on his forehead and prayed.
Outside the heavens were thundering.
"O G.o.d! who dost thunder on high, take my blood as a sacrifice for my sins, but let not a drop of it fall on the heads of those who shed it!
Suffer not my native land to pay the price of my blood! Guard this poor land from every ill! Visit not this people in Thy anger, but be their refuge and their sure defence in the evil day! Forgive my enemies my death, as I forgive them!"
The thunder roared terribly. G.o.d was wroth that day. He would not hearken to such a prayer.
"Is your Excellency ready?" inquired Csaky impatiently, whilst the Princess"s messengers hammered furiously at the gates, and demanded instant admission.
Banfi stepped up to his lifeless consort and kissed her cold, pale face for the last time; then, turning calmly to Csaky, he said--
"Yes; I am ready now!"
A quarter of an hour later Csaky admitted the messengers.
"What do you bring?" he asked the pantler.
"The Prince"s pardon for the prisoner."
"You are too late!--And you?"
"A cere-cloth for the corpse!"
"You have brought it very opportunely."
The highest head of the Transylvanian n.o.bility had already fallen in the dust.
The tragedy ends with the hero"s death.
The tide of history brings other shapes and other leaders to the surface. The fate, the fashion, and the history of Transylvania are no longer the same.[59] The sword-stroke which slew Banfi cut short an epoch only half begun. The body of that dominating form reposes in the crypt of the church at Bethlen, and no one has inherited his spirit.
[Footnote 59: The subsequent fortunes of Apafi, Csaky, Teleki, Tokoli, Azrael, and Feriz are related in Jokai"s second historical novel, _Torokvilag Magyarorzagban_ (_The Turks in Hungary_), which is a sequel to the present story, and ends with the collapse of the Turkish power in Hungary.]
But the chronicles say that whenever danger threatens Transylvania, the blood of the buried patriot flows from his simple tomb, a terror to the people, and a wonder to the world.
THE END.