The Village Notary: A Romance of Hungarian Life. Eötvös József
to shine in a more elevated sphere. If I were in your place, I would devote myself wholly to politics. As it is, you lose your cases; your labours are not only unprofitable, but useless. Hungary wants a thorough reform; you are the man to regenerate the country. Besides, you can be an advocate and a politician too, if you will stick to the bar." Tengelyi resisted; but flattery is too persuasive, especially for youthful minds; and he set about seriously to prepare a speech for the next Sessions.
The day came. Tengelyi made his speech, which astonished the whole assembly, not solely by its classic Latin and its most modern sentiments. No! The astonishment of the meeting was chiefly caused by the unheard-of fact that a young advocate, scarcely twenty-four years of age, – and a man who was not even an assessor, and much less a landowner, – dared to speak at all. Such effrontery was so marvellous, so unaccountable, so unheard-of, that the noble members of the meeting were utterly at a loss to express their disgust. But they did express it somehow; and the sheriff, and the notary, and the recorder of the county overwhelmed the young intruder with a torrent of words, of which we will only say that they were rather sincere than elegant. Tengelyi, nothing daunted, replied to each of them, and carried the matter so far that every man in the room cried "Actio!"4 whereupon the discomfited reformer was obliged to pay the usual fine of five-and-twenty florins into the recorder's hands.
The loss of this sum was a severe blow to Tengelyi, who had not another florin left. Besides this, he lost the fiscalship and the briefs of Kalihazy's family; for that gentleman was among his opponents, and Tengelyi had not spared his future patron's arguments or feelings. The Kalihazy briefs were that very evening made over to his friend, Mr. Paul Hajto.
To make a man a martyr is the surest means of making him popular, at least with one party. Every sheriff, recorder, or notary has at least one enemy, namely, the man who wishes to oust him in the next election. The truth of these great political axioms was tested in Tengelyi's case. His attack upon the magistrates of the county, and his subsequent martyrdom, gained him some friends. Konkolyi, in particular, who thought of opposing Rety at the next election, was loud in his praises of the young man's courage and common sense. The smaller nobles were not fond of Konkolyi, for they thought him proud; but they idolised Rety, who had an amiable way of calling them his cousins, and of taking a vast interest in the health of their wives and children. Konkolyi had not, therefore, any chance of prevailing against Rety, though he, too, exerted himself to the utmost, by means of bounties, drinking-bouts, and dinners, to convince his fellow nobles of his merits. Hajto was Konkolyi's fiscal. He was aware that his patron possessed large domains, a fine castle, and on income of twenty thousand florins a year, and that a man of such transcendent merits wanted but one thing for the shrievalty, namely, a trifling majority of votes. But so great was Rety's popularity, that Hajto had lost all hopes of carrying his patron's election, when Tengelyi's quarrel with Rety opened a fresh field for intrigue.
Hajto came that very evening to see the poor young man; he praised his speech, censured Rety's tyranny, protested that the county magistrates must go out at the next election, and finally persuaded him to come to Konkolyi's house.
Konkolyi was a courtier, and chamberlain to his Majesty the Emperor. The great man received Tengelyi with unwonted condescension; and, corroborating every one of Hajto's words, he protested that poor Jonas must allow his friends to elect him to the justiceship of the district, as the only means of giving his opinions the weight which they deserved. Jonas pleaded his youth, his poverty, his being a stranger to the county; but his objections were overruled.
"We know you, my dear Sir, we know you," said the chamberlain, with his kindest smile. "You have made a speech; that's enough. 'Ex ungue leonem.' We have put our hearts upon making you a justice. You are noble; and a nobleman, however poor and unknown he may be, is entitled to the highest place in the kingdom."
What could Tengelyi do? He consented, and became a distinguished member of Konkolyi's party. It was Hajto's task to make him friends among the lesser nobility. Nothing could be better adapted for this purpose than the speech which had caused Jonas to be fined at the Sessions. Hajto took possession of that speech, and translated it, – of course with a few unimportant alterations. Wherever Tengelyi mentioned the poor, his translator inserted the words "poor noblemen;" and the blame which Tengelyi bestowed upon the undue length of criminal prosecutions and the ill-treatment of the prisoners, was artfully changed into denunciations of the unseemly despatch which was used in criminal proceedings against noblemen, and the unjustifiable tyranny of the county magistrates who refused to bail certain incarcerated noblemen for the election. If the author had seen his production in its altered state, the chances are that he would have disapproved of it; but certain it is that Hajto's edition of the speech insured its popularity. The noble constituents of the parishes at Ratsh and Palfalva were in raptures with their new advocate; and though Rety's party endeavoured to disenchant them by publishing the original text of the speech, they found it impossible to undermine Tengelyi's popularity, confirmed as it was by the martyrdom of an "actio." Whenever the noblemen came to Dustbury, they made a point of paying their respects to their tribune; whenever he accompanied Konkolyi to some neighbouring seat, he was received with deafening cheers. His popularity brought him some more substantial benefits, in the shape of briefs and fees, for his professional advice; in short, he had every reason to be satisfied with the progress he had made. His future promotion was all but certain. But suddenly a compromise was talked of. Rety was willing to withdraw from the contest under the condition that his son was accepted as justice. Konkolyi's party opposed, because that very place was promised to Tengelyi; but Hajto interfered, and, as usual, succeeded in arranging matters to the satisfaction of all parties concerned. Tengelyi was at that generous time of life when men are prone to make sacrifices. He, therefore, was prevailed upon to withdraw his claims to the justiceship, and to solicit the votes of the county for the inferior post of deputy-justice. The election commenced in due course, and Konkolyi and the younger Rety were returned. Tengelyi was pleased with the triumph of his friend, and not the less because that triumph was obtained at his own expense; but who can picture his dismay when the election of the deputy came on, and another man, a friend of Konkolyi's, was chosen to fill that place? His heart was crushed within him, for he, the proud man, saw too late that he had been the tool of a party which cast him off the very moment that his services could be dispensed with. His popularity passed away like a dream. The part which young Rety had acted in the election was, to say the least, suspicious; and that brotherly attachment, which distingushed the two young men at college, received a serious shock. But this was not all. Jonas loved for the first time in his life; he loved as only those can love who are alone in the world, for whom there is no other being on the face of the earth whom they place their trust in, whom they hope for, and to whom they cling. Erzsi, the object of Tengelyi's attachment, was fully deserving of his love; but she was poor: nevertheless our hero married her. He was consequently still more imperatively called upon to resign his early dreams of glory, and to devote his energies to gain a livelihood.
Tengelyi and his wife left Dustbury; but they returned two years later poorer than ever, and the more disappointed from the very humbleness of their wishes and plans. In the course of those two years he had tried to keep a village school, to be tutor in a rich man's family, and to act as steward on another rich man's lands; but he signally failed in each. His return to Dustbury marked the saddest period of his life. Up to that time he had undergone privations; now he suffered from want; his struggles with the world had been full of disappointments, but now he was borne down by utter hopelessness. Thus he passed three years of misery; and although Rety had by this time succeeded to his father's estate, and to the almost hereditary dignity of sheriff of the county, he never assisted his old friend. He respected Tengelyi too much to relieve the poor man's necessities by a gift of money: his principles were too rigorous to allow him to use his influence and his patronage in behalf of his friend. Nevertheless, after three years of unutterable wretchedness, Tengelyi was surprised to see Rety enter his little house. The sheriff came to tell his old friend that the notary of Tissaret was just dead; and offering that place to Tengelyi, he assured him, with a generosity which did honour to his heart, that the new notary should have the same immunity from local and parish burdens which had been from time immemorial enjoyed by all his predecessors in office.
Jonas thanked Rety for this unexpected favour. That very week he went to Tissaret, where we found
See Note III.