Mór Jókai

“ In a few moments he was sitting on the back of the copper dolphin, delighted to have found a steed in a monster similar to himself, and from thence he shouted: "Hu, hu, hu!" like an owl.
"Will you shut up!" called Ivan, in a voice of suppressed fury. "The beast will betray us! Haul up, can't you?"
Ivan clutched hold of the rope with both hands.
Mekipiros with vigorous tugs hoisted him upwards, hauling up the rope with his short arms as easily as if there were no weight attached to it.
"How I wish he would let him fall," murmured Dame Zudár to herself. ”

“ It was poor Mekipiros. It was his mauled and bruised shape, his half-bestial face that they were torturing and tormenting. There is no sight more terrible than that of a tortured beast that cannot speak.
One of those who had brought him thither was the headsman's apprentice.
This fellow whispered some words in the ear of the rector, and then placed himself behind the back of the fettered monster. His face assumed an expression of cold pitilessness, he bit his lips as if he wanted blood, and screwed up his eyes. ”

“ The bystanders thronged around and gaped curiously at him, expecting every moment to see him drop down dead.
"Look how green his face is!" said Bodza, working with evil intent on the excited imagination of the mob. "Look how his eyes are staring, and how ghastly pale he is!"
"It is not my eyes that are staring, my worthy master, but your own," replied the doctor calmly. "Your face is pale, you are trembling. I tell you death comes from above and not from my powders."
Thomas Bodza felt so dizzy that he had to clutch hold of the arm of shaggy Hanák, who was standing by his side. ”

“ They have come for me. They want to kill me. They are bringing little Emma. Oh, do not let them in! Tell them that I am not here! Lock the door!—--Father, father, don't leave me."
It was hideous to see the expression of despair on the round childish face all covered with sweat. They are wont to paint little children in the shape of angels. If it should ever occur to a painter to paint a four-year-old child as a devil, as a fallen accursed spirit, it might be such a face as his was.
"Oh, God, have mercy upon him, and take him to Thee," sobbed the grandfather, hiding his face on the table. ”

“ From village to village the rumour will fly that his own son has risen against his poisoner of a father at the head of the people, has cut to pieces every member of his family, and levelled his ancestral halls to the ground. He will be looked upon as a public avenger. Horribly black rumours will be noised abroad all over the kingdom, and at the tidings thereof the people will run downright mad with savage fury, and the gentry will not know which way to turn to escape the unforeseen danger which will suddenly break out at their very doors. ”

“ The worthy Leather-bell had not another word to say, but he cast himself at full length upon the prostrate gentleman, and, tightly embracing his frail figure, defended him with his own body from the first onset of the raging mob.
In vain they pummelled, in vain they kicked him, his self-sacrificing back endured everything, and patiently received the beating intended for his master.
The poor fellow, after all, would really have been a very good man if only he had not been so very simple.
"Clear out, will you!" cried Dame Zudár and Thomas Bodza simultaneously, "we must not kill him. ”

“ The cinder-grey sky reduced the nightly glare to ashes, and a dark grey column of smoke, standing out against the pale yellow horizon, was the only sign left of the conflagration.
On approaching the next csárda, Maria allowed Hanák to draw nearer to her; her escort had to explain to the mob of peasants drinking in front of the door on what errand they were speeding. He did so in his usual boisterous bombastic fashion.
"We are going to town," bawled he. "We are going to read the proclamation and collar the soldiers and the bigwigs, and bring back with us guns and gunpowder, and lots of money. ”

“ The people, who in that awful moment had seen his bright sword flash forth like Heaven's lightning, who had seen the monstrously mutilated body of the woman totter in their midst, and spurt blood on all the bystanders, who had seen the awe-inspiring figure of the headsman close to them all, him whom they had fancied dead and buried, him whom their own eyes had seen burnt to ashes—all these people stood for a moment as if turned to stone, as if their souls had left their bodies. ”

“ No help was possible. Those standing below cursed him for rousing the castle with his shouts. The narrow edge of the gutter was gradually slipping through his nerveless fingers. And now one hand relaxed its hold, and only by a last convulsive effort did he manage to hold on for a few seconds by the other.
"Hamamama!" screeched the monster, and then a yell, as of the lost, resounded from height to depth, and a huge round, black, writhing, coil came bounding rapidly to the ground, and there, the next instant, lay a mangled mass of flesh, in which perhaps at one time two souls had dwelt. ”

“ Look now, my darling! it is you who have taught me to consider myself an extraordinary fine fellow. Formerly, when people used to say: General Vértessy is such and such a man, I only used to hold my tongue and think to myself: Talk away! talk away! I happen to know that Vértessy is as timid as a child, there is one thing he is as much in dread of as any schoolgirl, and that is—unravelling a skein of thread. ”

“ Whenever that woman speaks of the Hétfalusies, her downy lips swell out, her cheeks flush, her black eyes cast forth sparks like a crackling fire, and if at such times she has a knife in her hands, it is not well to approach her. She longs to taste the blood of her enemy, and smack her lips over it; she longs to see his haughty castle in a blaze. ”

“ Terror and exertion had bathed every limb of the headsman with sweat; the glare of the iron windows was merging into a dazzling white, and radiated a heat that burnt the eye that looked upon it. There was no time to be lost.
Zudár hastily broke up the floor with his axe, it would not be difficult for him to find the key-stone of the cellar beneath it.
Nevertheless, he had to be careful lest he should stave in the whole vault, and thus open a way therein after himself for the fire. He must cautiously pick out the mortar from the interstices with a knife, and lift up the bricks one by one. ”

“ Why, haven't the gentry got the Jews to put poison in the brandy! Why, everyone knows that."
Maria was so dumfounded that she had not a word to say in reply.
"Look! how he pretends to know nothing about it. But we are up to them. They may weave their plans as artfully as they like, we've got eyes in our heads all the same. All is betrayed. Come, thou Jew! confess that there is poison in that cask!" ”

“ And long, long after that, when the flames were towering upwards in each other's embrace above the ruins of the house, it seemed to many as if they heard, arising from the deepest depths of this furnace of blazing embers, the half-smothered sound of a deep sonorous voice intoning the vesper hymn. Perchance it was only imagination, only a delusion of the senses. Nobody could be singing there now, except it were the soul of the headsman. ”

“ Martin Csicseri was so far moved by the piteous lamentations of the Leather-bell as to promise not to cast him into irons and send him to the county jail as a fomenter of sedition.
"But you shall, at any rate, sit in the stocks till morning, my friend!" added he. "Hie, you sworn jurymen, come forward and convey him thither."
"Nay, not that man!" cried a voice from the crowd, and the magistrate beheld Thomas Bodza advancing towards him—by the side of the long table.
"Whom then?" cried he.
"Whom but yourself!" exclaimed Numa Pompilius, accompanying his words with the gesture of a Roman Senator. ”

“ In her horror and disgust Maria had been on the point of betraying herself.
"Oh! I see. You read out forged letters to the illiterate people. A very judicious expedient, I must say. Village folks can be got to believe anything. But how about the townsfolk?"
"Oh! in the towns there is even more fear than in the country, and more terrifying rumours too. But one loud cry and the walls of Jericho will fall down—fall down where nobody expected it."
An idea suddenly flashed like lightning through Maria's brain. ”

“ The voice of the headsman's wife frequently arose in anger.
"Let him go to hell!" he heard her exclaim.
"Hush! hush!" murmured the young 'prentice, "somebody might overhear us."
"Pooh! God and men both slumber now."
What could they be talking about? Whom did they want to harm? Such folks had it not in them to love anyone. Woe to those whom they had cause to remember!
So he crept softly to the spot and listened.
"If these people should rise they will not leave one stone upon another," the headsman's apprentice was saying. ”

“ At such times the street door is kept wide open. Let the country folks come in and look upon the dead, let them learn from the sight that Death is the judge of the gentry as well as of the serfs; let them see how the rich can be splendid even after death, how they embellish their coffins, how they fasten them with golden nails, how they embroider their palls with patterns of roses and gold filagree, how they spread the bed of death itself with the [Pg 63] finest white watered silk and perfume it with the most fragrant balm. ”

“ And now tell me, you seditious idiot, what might not have happened if these honest men here had not had their wits about them? What if they had believed the horrible accusation spread by you and a few more vagabond busybodies of the same kidney? What if in their mad terror they had fallen foul of your young landlord, who has done you so much good, and shot him dead before your eyes? What if they had dragged his father, the old squire, out of bed in his nightshirt, and burnt him to death? ”

“ The greater part of the mob shared this good opinion, and began to show their respect for firearms by clearing out of the courtyard.
But Numa Pompilius, full of the fury of despair, barred the way against his retreating host.
"Miserable, cowardly deserters! What! a single blank shot is sufficient to turn you back! Holus-bolus, 'sicut examen apum,' ye decamp at the word of a single foe! Fie, fie upon you, ye dregs, ye sweepings of humanity!"
The bellicose commander spat in his disgust at the fugitives again and again, and overwhelmed them with all sorts of choice epithets. ”

“ The mob, swarming in the courtyard, were carrying about on their shoulders the dead bodies of the two peasants that had been shot, two or three men with bloody faces were exhibiting their wounds, the widow of one of the fallen held up her weeping children in her arms, and hounded the mob on to vengeance with her frantic bitterness.
The room to be defended had a window looking out upon the courtyard, and a door opening upon the passage. Maria was to be the defender of the window, Imré the defender of the door. ”