The Strange Story of Rab Ráby. Mór Jókai
at most, has shorn his subjects: the Magyar landlord has fairly plucked his, but the Szent-Endre council flay their victims of hide and hair alike. So that's my third word!"
"All right, just give me more precise details over all this, and come and look me up at my lodgings; there we can talk it over; I shall be at home the whole evening."
So at the appointed time, Abraham went to discuss matters with Ráby, and did not get home till morning. He literally talked the whole night long.
Yet when he at last took leave, he bound his friend on his honour:
"That you never betray how you knew all these things. The Spanish Inquisition was mere child's play compared to what those good people would do to me, if they knew that it was I who had made it so hot for them."
CHAPTER VIII.
Mr. John Leányfalvy was a narrow-minded man. He was the postmaster of Szent-Endre. He neither paid nor received visits; he had but one hobby, and that was gardening. This he rode with a persistency worthy of a Dutchman. He grew flowers of which no one had ever heard before—exotic blooms almost extinct, but for the fostering shelter his garden walls afforded.
He was specially celebrated for his melons. At the time of the melon-harvest, two great mastiffs guarded the melon-plot over which his bedroom window looked. In this garden all his spare time was spent. He was so busy one afternoon over his melon-beds, that he did not observe how his mastiff, who by day was chained up, was growling at a man who stood before the garden gate. He only became aware of the new-comer when the latter wished him good day. He looked round and saw a stranger dressed in the latest modish costume of Vienna, and finally, he recognised in the apparition his nephew, young Matyi.
"Why bless me if it isn't my nephew Matyi. I hardly recognised you in this fashionable coat, I declare. But very welcome you are all the same."
And the old man embraced his nephew heartily.
"Ay, but you've become a man since I saw you last. You only want a moustache," and he looked at Ráby's smooth-shaven face critically. "But you are not in a hurry to be back in Vienna, I hope?"
"Well, unless you want to send me away, I needn't be in a hurry to go back, as I could stay here all the winter," answered Ráby.
"Well, don't talk to me about sending you off. I know well enough you are under someone else's orders."
"Yes, uncle, under orders to stay here for some time."
"Oh! I take it, you are here then for the taxation commission?"
It was an office which had at that time but an unenviable reputation in Hungary.
"More pressing business still," answered the young man with a smile, as he whispered something in the old gentleman's ear, which was evidently an important disclosure.
The features of the old man relaxed.
"Now that's something like; that's capital! Now I can reckon you a man. Only don't neglect the work."
"Trust me!"
"And then don't begin among the lesser folk, but get hold of the great people. Go straight to the prefect himself; he's the one to tackle. Ay, I could give you some good advice. Hear all, see all, and hold your tongue, as the saying goes. But you know all about that, and have no need of a plaster over your mouth."
"Yet if I find the guilty, I shall not spare them, I warn you, whoever they be."
"You will see, my boy," said the old gentleman, rubbing his hands, "if you tackle the prefect properly, you will be court judge of Visegrád, year in and year out." And he clapped his nephew on the shoulder.
"What kind of a berth is it in Visegrád?"
"Ay, my boy, that's the fattest plum in the neighbourhood; it's worth more than a hundred county court magistracies, and it happens to be just vacant."
"How could I hope to get it?"
"What a stiff-necked man it is to be sure! Didn't you get to Vienna? You don't surely reckon yourself among those people who let themselves be cajoled by the gift of a fine horse or a roll of ducats: a man like you is worthy a bigger bribe."
The young man became suddenly crimson.
"But, my uncle, I don't come for that—for the sake of a horse or money, or even a court magistracy, not to be bribed by the great, but rather to redress the grievances of the folk who are oppressed, and to rectify abuses."
At this speech Mr. Leányfalvy shifted his zouave from the left to the right shoulder.
"Don't you know, my dear boy, that out of the mouth of the poor, complaints are not heard. There must be a God who hears them, nevertheless. Yet the government is a power against which one man can avail nothing. How can you protect the sown fields from the marmots? Man is just such a marmot. Dismiss him who is now in office, and put another in his place; you only change for the worse. As long as there are fools and knaves in the world, so long will the one always rob the other."
"Now if you reckon abuses of office among social ills, I can but tell you that if you have a will, you can amend them. And this will have I."
"Yes, but have you likewise the power? 'Whoso is wanting in strength is powerless in wrath.' Besides, who stands behind you?"
"The Emperor himself."
"And who else?"
"Isn't he enough?"
"That doesn't suffice; you must have the presiding judge as a patron, or the lord chancellor, or at least the district commissioner. If you can only ensure the Emperor's favour, that doesn't go far. What can you say to our Emperor, except 'May it please his Majesty,' and that he is lampooned daily. Every day there come some such scurrilous pamphlets to my notice."
"The Kaiser believes in unlimited freedom of opinion."
"Hang freedom of opinion! If I were Emperor, and anyone printed such things about me, I would take my axe and play such a tune on the writer's head with it, that he would not ask for a second one. And then if the Hungarians see that the Austrians dare thus to insult the Kaiser, what liberties will the Hungarian not allow himself?"
"Yes, indeed. All those who are shocked at his novelties, murmur against him. They abuse him because the freedom hitherto only accorded to a certain class and creed, will now be extended to all his subjects indiscriminately."
"Let us talk about the melons, my dear boy. Look at this one with the mottled rind. When it's ready you can eat it without harm. But take a bite, before it is ripe, and you get a horribly sore mouth. Now it's just the same with liberty. When it is ripe, the grower can present it to the people on a pewter plate. But cut it before it is ready, and the melon and he who eats it, alike are done for. I know you will maintain that one can force the melon to get ripe, if you have hot-beds and green-houses. Now you and your friends, the philosophers and philanthropists, are just such growers at the present time. Who could get enough hot-beds and forcing-houses for the whole world? Wait till the dog-days come, and the heat of the sun will let each one ripen in its proper measure."
"Good, uncle. I accept the melon allegory, and will answer you in your own gardening terms: If you want melons, you must sow the seeds. Some sprout, others lay dormant. Then comes the worm to devour them, and the mildew and the frosts to blast the young shoots, yet, in spite of all, your true gardener tends them to the end. Such a sower am I, who plant what is entrusted to me in the ground, that others may reap the harvest."
The simile pleased the old gentleman much; he stroked his moustache thoughtfully.
"You are the right sort, my boy. And if you feel equal to the task, undertake it. But I fear you won't succeed! But you have not come here to stir up a hornet's nest, have you?"
"No, uncle.