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Simplex accepted the commission, went straight to the sheriff, and informed him that Valentine Kalondai desired to challenge Ignatius Zwirina to fight him with lances, according to ancient law and custom.
The members of the council took their places on the dais beneath the baldachin, and in the midst of them sat Augustus Zwirina. When they reached the scaffold, Valentine would have supported Michal as she ascended the steps, but she needed no assistance. It was with an easy heart and a light step that she mounted up.
Thus provided with the official authorization, Simplex, accompanied by the town trumpeter, next proceeded to the house of the Zwirina family, and finding the door closed, bade the trumpeter blow a flourish three times, and then proclaimed the challenge before the crowd, which had in the meantime assembled in the streets: "Ignatius Zwirina!
The Turk Ali had exchanged rôles with Valentine in the gates of the cloister. The Lenten penance succeeds the carnival revels. When they brought the news to Augustus Zwirina that Valentine Kalondai had happily escaped, the big fat man suddenly grew blue in the face, and was struck down with apoplexy on the spot. So swiftly did death overtake him that he had not even time to make his will.
The fugitive mounted and was instantly off again, while his pursuers thought it best to slowly ride their jaded nags back to town. The new superrector, young Ignatius Zwirina, calculated thus: Valentine Kalondai will one of these days come back of his own accord to the neighborhood of Kassa.
When evening came, and it was no longer to be expected that the defaulter would either appear in person or send people to excuse his absence, Valentine was authorized to take his lance in his hand, having at the end of it a lantern made of a bladder with a lighted candle inside it, and a pair of ragged old drawers hanging over it, and then to ride through the town and proclaim at the corner of every street: "Noble gentlemen, burgesses, and honest inhabitants of this town! which of you has seen, which of you knows that cowardly knave Ignatius Zwirina?
Valentine actually believed that there was still some human feeling left in Henry Catsrider! When all this had been done he arose from his seat of honor. The whole town council bowed before him. The conrector, Ignatius Zwirina the younger, expressed the satisfaction felt by all the burgesses at having a sheriff whose wise and firm administration would serve as an example to all his successors.
To think that I should be looking everywhere for a foe, when he is under my nose all the time. It is just like the man who went in search of the horse on which he was actually riding. Here! take my glove and this gulden, and notify to the sheriff that I challenge Ignatius Zwirina to break a lance with me."
If you want such a one, know that you have no greater enemy than young Ignatius Fürmender, or Zwirina. You have been insulted by his mother; the son must now pay for the mother's rudeness." "You've hit it," cried Valentine, giving Simplex a mighty blow on the back from sheer friendship. "Not in vain do they call you knowing. He never once occurred to me.
But now he was suddenly assailed on all sides. Most earnestly of all Mr. Zwirina implored him not to forsake the town at such a crisis. Was he not so very much wiser than they all? Without him the concord of the town would become sheer anarchy; it was just at such times as these that they needed a strong hand like his to guide them, for where could they find such another?
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