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And even those who defended Gregorics decided that after all there must have been some friendship between him and the nine ladies at some time or other, or why should he have remembered them in his will; but his behavior was not gentlemanly in any case, even if they were to believe the worst. In fact, in that case it was even more tactless.
They used to put the masons' eyes out, so that even they could not find the place again, but of course they got a hundred times as much as we do." "Ah, that was in the good old times," sighed the other. Gregorics troubled his head no more about them, but closed the heavy oaken door of the house, and went home to bed.
Well, perhaps it was true. The other members of the Gregorics family looked with little favor on the small boy in the Gregorics's household, and never rested till they had looked through all the baptismal registers they could lay hands on. At last they came upon the entry they wanted, "György Wibra, illegitimate; mother, Anna Wibra."
To his other nephews and nieces he sent lots of presents, so that the Gregorics family, who had never liked the younger brother, came at last to the conclusion that he was not such a bad fellow after all, only something of a fool. Little Gyuri himself was sent away to school after a time; to Kolozsvár and then to Szeged, as far away as possible, so as to be out of reach of the family.
As the dead man had no lawyer to defend him, he lost the lawsuit, for it was certain he had played the trick on his relations, and thus brought about the lawsuit, which only ended when it was all the same which side lost or won it, for the seventy-three pounds of paper and the six lawyers had eaten up the whole of the Gregorics and Panyóki fortunes.
A weight had fallen from his heart at these words, for he had begun to fear Gregorics had given them some thousands to buy their silence, and that would have been a great pity, as it would have diminished the sum he hoped to possess before long. For he had decided to buy "Lebanon," with its caldron and its orchard. He would go to-morrow to that boy's guardian and make an offer for it.
His mother, who now walked on crutches, often spoke of the good old times, sitting in her arm-chair by the fire. And at length she owned that old Gregorics had wanted to telegraph for Gyuri on his deathbed. "He seemed as though he could not die till he had seen you," she said. "But it was my fault you came too late." "And why did he so much want to see me?"
Now that was Matykó's weak point, but if he had not been told to hold his tongue he might have managed to do so later on, when the opportunity for speaking came. "Off you go, and mind you are back in double quick time!" Before dark the masons had arrived, and the caldron too. Gregorics took the two men into his room, and carefully shut the door. "Can you keep silence?" he asked.
Old Gregorics's father used to call it the "Life-giver," and often said: "If a man intending to commit suicide were to drink a thimbleful of it beforehand, he would, if unmarried, go and look up a 'best man, or, if married, would go and sue for a divorce; but kill himself he would not." The two friends drank to each other's health, and Gregorics smacked his lips. "It's devilish good," he said.
Anna jumped off the chair, and ran into the next room. There all was still; on the bed were large spots of blood, and Gregorics lay there dead, his face white, his eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. One hand hung down by his side, the other firmly held the umbrella. Thus died poor Pál Gregorics, and the news of his death soon spread among his relations and his neighbors.
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