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Updated: June 24, 2025
We Magyars are very liberal in the distribution of nicknames, in this respect, indeed, our fancy outruns that of the Princes of the Orient, and the titles we bestow are even more appropriate than theirs. In Hétfalu "Leather-bell" was the nickname of a peculiar man, whose real name had quite slipped out of everybody's memory.
The Leather-bell was such a good fellow that he was never able to resist the slightest command. He accepted the commission, although he knew very well that the dogs would be poisoned. He consoled himself with the reflection, however, that nobody had told him so beforehand.
"If the people in the castle hear a noise, and guess our subterfuge, they will shoot Mekipiros, for we will send him on in front. Why, even with a couple of bullets in his body the fellow will be able to scramble up the wall. He's like a toad." Meanwhile the Leather-bell returned and announced that the dogs had gobbled up all the meat thrown to them. "Oh, they made no bones about it," cried he.
On this particular momentous evening, the Leather-bell, all hurry-scurry, rushed into the porch of the castle, where the old lord of the manor was nursing his invalided limbs in an ample easy chair, having so disposed himself as to be able to command a view of the western sky, still lit up by the faint hues of sunset.
The Leather-bell hastened forthwith to the chaise in order to take out the doctor's things, and as it was his ambition to load himself with as many boxes and packages as he could seize upon before the arrival of the domestic heydukes, he managed in his excess of zeal to drop three of the parcels on to the ground, one of which immediately burst asunder, and a stream of whitish powder poured forth upon the marble floor.
"You only want to find out whether there is poison in the castle or not, don't you?" "Yes, yes. Devil take the fellow! Be off, or I'll knock some of your teeth down your throat." And the poor Leather-bell scuttled off. "And now bring Mekipiros hither!" They dragged the poor half-idiotic creature into the room. His thick, bristly hair hung right over his eyes.
Martin Csicseri was so far moved by the piteous lamentations of the Leather-bell as to promise not to cast him into irons and send him to the county jail as a fomenter of sedition. "But you shall, at any rate, sit in the stocks till morning, my friend!" added he. "Hie, you sworn jurymen, come forward and convey him thither."
The doctor turned upon him furiously. "Am I not always telling you not to load yourself so much? You see the result, all my bismuth powder wasted." "I'll soon pick it all up again," said the Leather-bell submissively, and going down on his hambones he began sweeping into the palm of his hand what had been spilt and putting it back with the rest.
And when the hail destroyed your crops, did I not give you the corn on which you and your whole family lived comfortably during the winter?" But at this mild reproach, stubbly Hanák only wiped his bloody mouth, and bellowed with bestial pride: "There's no Hanák here! I'm Hanák no longer. I'm a rebel patriot, that's what I am!" The poor Leather-bell was quite unable to help his master.
"Well, you will have plenty of time to think it over when you are sitting in the county jail." The Leather-bell begged and prayed that he might not be sent there, rather shove him in the stocks alongside Hamza. He admitted that he deserved it; but if they liked to give him twenty or thirty blows with a stick instead, he would take it kindly of them.
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