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My pheasants, too, have not yet been fattened up; and as for my crabs, they have all been drowned in this great deluge, as you may see for yourself. And I suppose your lordship will not give me for my kitchen the two crabs I see here?" This last sally was directed at the scarlet uniforms of the heydukes, and diverted his lordship's attention.
Then they placed him on the table with a circle of burning candles round him like one laid out for burial, and the heydukes had to sing dirges over him, as over a corpse, while the poet was obliged to stand upon a chair and pronounce his funeral oration. And the Nabob laughed till he got blue in the face.
A couple of favourite dogs were also accommodated with a place there. But when the carriages stopped in front of the verandah, every one instantly quitted this favourite sun-lit resting place and rushed down to meet them host, guests, heydukes, and dogs. The first to reach the carriage door was a peculiar looking man, a more repulsively mutilated creature it was impossible to imagine.
Meanwhile the heydukes had begun carrying round szilvorium and öszibaraczk liqueur, ten years old, with wheat-bread sippets, which signified that dinner-time was drawing near, and it became every one to have a good appetite. Half an hour later the bell rang, which told that dinner was actually on the table.
Thrice it was repeated, to recall any guest who might, perhaps, have strayed away too far, and then the heydukes threw wide open the large folding doors which led into the banqueting hall. The vast and splendid room was filled from end to end with long tables, which as usual were spread for as many guests again as there were people actually present, so that any late comers might easily find room.
At the end of twelve months your Whitsun Kingship will be over, you will doff your genteel mummery, and become the leader of my heydukes. You shall then don the red mente, and wait upon those very gentlemen with whom you have been drinking and dicing for a whole year; you shall help into their carriages the same little wenches with whom you used to make merry. I consider that a very good joke.
He filched the clergyman's book; he rubbed pitch on the cantor's seat, that he might stick fast there; he substituted gunpowder for poppy-meal in the kitchen, and filled the powder-flasks of the heydukes with poppy-meal instead of gunpowder, so that when they prepared to fire salvoes in honour of their master, on his return from chapel, not a gun would go off, while the poppy-cakes intended for the banquet all exploded on the hearth.
Peter Bús threw open a large barn-like room for his guests, the heydukes had unpacked the waggon, and dragged into the light of day cushions, curtains, camp-stools, and tables; and in a few moments the empty, resonant room was changed as if by magic into a sumptuous apartment.
My old friend ate with a good appetite and wanted me to take a bit too; but my throat felt as cramped as if they had already taken my measure round it with the gallows rope. He gave each of the two heydukes who accompanied him in the felon's car, one on his right, the other on his left, a silver coin apiece.
Gyárfás, the poet, and Vidra, the jester, stood before him; a little further off the heydukes; the greyhound was under the bed. And thus, surrounded by gipsy, heydukes, jester, peasant-girls, and greyhound, lay one of the wealthiest magnates of Hungary! Meanwhile, the mouse was a-roasting.
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