Debts of Honor Part 14

"Why, certainly you can help it. The painter who prepared that picture, upon being cross-questioned, confessed and publicly affirmed that, in consideration of a certain sum of money paid by you, he had painted the latter inscription in oils, and over it, in water-colours, the former: so that the first shower washed off the upper surface from the picture, making the honest, zealous fellow an object of ridicule and contempt in his own house. Do you believe, sir, that such practical jokes are not punished by the hand of justice?"

"I am not in the habit of believing much."

"Among other things, however, you are bound to believe that justice will condemn you, first to pay a fine for blackmail; secondly, to pay for the repairs your tricks have made necessary."

"I don't see an atom of plaintiff's counsel here."

"Because plaintiff left the amount due him to the pleasure of the Court, to be devoted to charitable purposes."

"Good: then please break into the granaries."

"That we shall not do," interrupted the lawyer: "later on we shall take it out of the 'regalia.'"

Topandy laughed.

"My dear, good magistrate. Do you believe all that is in the Bible?"

"I am a true Christian."

"Then I appeal to your faith. In one place it stands that some invisible hand wrote, in the room of some pagan king--Belshazzar, if the story be true,--the following words,'Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.' If that hand could write then, why could it not now have written that second saying? And if it was the rain that washed away the righteous fellow's words, you must accuse the rain, for the fault lies there."

"These are indeed very weighty counter-charges: and you might have declared them all before the Court, to which you were summoned: you might have appealed even to the septemvirate, but as you did not appear then, you must bear the consequences of your obstinacy."

"Good; I shall pay the price," said Topandy laughing:--"But it was a good joke on my part after all, wasn't it?"

The magistrate showed an angry countenance.

"There will be other good jokes, too. Kindly wait until the end."

"Is the list of crimes still longer?"

"A severe enquiry into the sources would never find an end. The gravest charge against you is the profanation of holy places."

"I profane some holy place? Why, for twenty years I have not been in the precincts even of a church steeple."

"You desecrated a place used long ago for holy ceremonies by riotous revels."

"Oh, you mean that, do you? Let us make distinctions, if you please.

Great is the difference between place and place. Do you mean the convent of the Red Brothers? That is no church. The late Emperor Joseph drove them out, and their property was put up to auction by the State, together with all the buildings situate thereon. Thus it was that I came into possession of the convent garden: I was there at the auction; I bid and it was knocked down to me. There were buildings on it, but whether any kind of church had been there I do not know, for they took away all the movables, and I found only bare walls. No kind of 'servitus'

(engagement), as to what I would use the building for, had been included in the agreement of purchase. In this matter I know of others who were no more scrupulous. I know of a convent at Maria-Eich,[30] where in place of the ancient altar stands the peasant-chimney, and here the Swabian, into whose hands this honorable antiquity pa.s.sed, keeps his maize; why, in a town beside the Danube may be seen what was once a convent, the 'aerarium' of which has been turned into a hospital."

[Footnote 30: A place in Austria where sacred relics exist.]

"Examples cannot help you. If the Swabian peasant keeps 'the blessing of G.o.d' in that place, from which they had once prayed for it, that is not profanity: the 'aerarium' too is pursuing an office of righteousness, in nursing bodily sufferings in the place where once mental sufferings gained comfort; but you have had disgusting pictures painted all over the walls that have come into your possession."

"I beg your pardon, the subjects are all chosen from cla.s.sical literature: ill.u.s.trations to the poems of Beranger and Lafontaine--'Mon Cure,' 'Les Clefs Du Paradis,' 'Les Capulier,' 'Les Cordeliers Du Catalogue,' etc. Every subject a pious one."

"I know: I am acquainted with the originals of them. You may cover the walls of your own rooms with them, if you please: but I have brought four stone-workers with me, who, according to the judgment of the Court, are to erase all those pictures."

"Genuine iconoclasm!" guffawed Topandy, who found great amus.e.m.e.nt in arousing a whole county against him by his caprices. "Iconoclasts!

Picture-destroyers!"

"There is something else we are going to destroy!" continued the magistrate. "In that place there was a crypt. What has become of it?"

"It is a crypt still."

"What is in it?"

"What is usually in a crypt: dead men of hallowed memory, who are lying in wooden coffins and waiting for the great awakening."

The magistrate made a face of doubt. He did not know whether to believe or not.

"And when you and your revelling companions hold your Baccha.n.a.lia there?"

"I object to the word 'Baccha.n.a.lia.'"

"True, it is still more. I should have used a stronger expression for that riot, when in scandalous undress, carrying in front a steak on a spit, the whole company sings low songs such as 'Megalljon Kend'[31]

and 'Hetes, nyloczas,'[32] and in this guise makes scandalous processions from castle to cloister."

[Footnote 31: "Stop (you)," "Kend" being the pleasant abbreviation for "Kegyed," one method of addressing (literally "your grace"), corresponding to our "you."]

[Footnote 32: "Seven and eight," referring to the number on the playing cards: the Austrian National Hymn is sung by great patriots to these words: the "king" and "ace" being the highest two cards, come together; and this is in Magyar kiraly (king), diszno (ace); is also "swein."]

"The authorities must indeed be greatly embittered against me, if they see anything scandalous in the fact that a body of good-humored men undress to the skin, when they are warm. As far as the so-called low songs are concerned, they have such innocent words, they might be printed in a book, while the melodies are very pious."

"The scandal is just that, that you parody pious songs, setting them to trivial words. Tell me what is the good of singing the eight cards of the pack[33] as a hymn. And if you are in a good humor, why do you go with it to the crypt?"

[Footnote 33: In Magyar cards the pack begins with the 7.]

"You know we go there for a little mumony feast."

"Yes, for a little 'Mumon,'" interrupted the lawyer.

"That's just what I meant," said the atheist, laughing.

"What?" roared the magistrate, who now began to understand the enigma of the dead lying in their wooden coffins: "perhaps that is a cellar?"

"Of course: I never had a better cellar than that."

"And the dead, and the coffins?"

"Twenty-five round coffins, full of wine. Come, my dear sir, taste them all. I a.s.sure you you won't regret it."

The magistrate was now really in a fury: fury made a lion of him, so that he was quite capable of tearing his wrists by sheer force out of the imprisoning hands.

"An end to all familiarity! You stand before the authority of the law, with whom you cannot trifle. Give me the keys of the cloister, that I may clean the profaned place."

"Please break open the door."