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In the evening they met a mounted countryman carrying maize to be ground at the mill, him they took along with them as guide. After that they travelled all night long, passing through Skeritora and Nyigsa, till they came to the cataract of Vidra, which they reached at dawn of day.
"To him I leave my old servant Paul, and old Vidra the jester, and the Lapayi property. May he live there happily with my two faithful servants. "All my agents now employed upon the estate are to go on receiving their usual salaries, and they are not to lose their pay if they have to be discharged from old age or infirmity.
Other troops under General von Eichhorn advanced to the northeast of Olita in the direction of Vilna, while still other forces farther south stormed the city of Lipsk, less than twenty miles west of Grodno, after having forced a crossing over the Vidra River, a tributary of the Sukelka. The fighting around Friedrichstadt continued throughout the last days of August, 1915.
On the fourth day, of all his good friends, officials, domestics, and buffoons, Mike Kis, Martin the former Whitsun King, Master Varga the estate agent, Palko the old heyduke, and Vidra the gipsy, were the only persons who remained with John Kárpáthy as he stood at Death's ferry. Even the poet Gyárfás had deserted him, and hastened to congratulate the new patron.
They sewed his pocket-handkerchief fast to the pocket of his toga, so that he could not pull it out when his nose required its help; they made him believe that the gipsy Vidra was the cantor; and finally contrived to substitute a book on veterinary surgery for his prayer-book.
For Master Jock had hit upon the joke of dressing the gipsy Vidra in a splendid costume of cloth of gold, and making him sit in the family state-carriage drawn by four horses, while he himself came huddled up in a common peasant-cart immediately afterwards, and the honest country-folks loudly applauded the gold-bedizened costume till they perceived that there was only a gipsy inside it, whereupon the laughter grew louder still, which greatly amused the good gentleman.
Then it came to the poet's turn. "Pardon, gratia, your Excellency! I am composing verses on him who eats it." "Well, you then, Vidra! Come, down with it, quick!" "I, your Excellency?" said Vidra, as if he did not quite catch the words. "Yes, you. What are you afraid of? While you were living in tents, one of my oxen went mad, and yet you and your people ate him!"
"Well, take your hundred florins," said the frightened Nabob, who could scarcely contain himself for terror, and wished to comfort and compensate the gipsy on his return from Charon's ferry-boat. "Thank you," sobbed the latter, "but there's no need of it now. It is all up with Vidra; Vidra is dying. If only it had been a wolf that had killed poor Vidra; but a mouse oh, oh!" "Don't be a fool, man!
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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