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Updated: August 18, 2024
Old Onucz and the watchman thereupon laughed heartily, and the same instant the iron door of the building opened and the girl exclaimed joyfully: "Fatia Negra!" Onucz and the watchman immediately tore their caps from their heads. It was, indeed, Fatia Negra. How could he get hither invisibly through all the ambushes set for him? Who could tell? Who had the courage to ask him? Not even Anicza.
"Dumnezu!" sighed old Onucz, "when I think that fifty years ago we did all this with only our hammers and chisels! We sweated two whole days over a piece of work which this marvel can do in an hour. And how many hands we employed too!" Then they went to another machine. This was a small table whose steel wheels notched the ducats before they passed beneath the stamping machine.
Onucz would very much have liked to say: "Neither have you any right to look there, Domnule, for you have not yet spoken to the priest about it" but this was the one thing he durst not say.
But now the assayer came up, bringing with him a nice elaborate calculation on a black slate, showing exactly how much pure gold Onucz had handed in to the coining department, how much it would be worth when coined and deducting three per cent for expenses, how much he was to receive in cash by way of exchange. "And now go and let the cashier pay you what is due to you, Onucz," said Fatia Negra.
Perpetually moving elastic springs pushed the gold pieces forward one after the other, turned them round and jerked them away. You saw no other motive power but a large wheel revolving under a broad strap; the strap disappeared through the floor, it was underneath there that the man who set it in motion lived. Old Onucz sighed aloud. "What things they do invent now-a-days," said he.
The girl burst out crying, and Fatia Negra could no longer soothe her with kisses, and then old Onucz poked his gray shaggy head through the doorway and said: "I have been paid already, Domnule, have you?" Fatia Negra stroked the girl's hair and face and whispered her not to take on so. The stitches of the old Roumanian's patience now, at last, gave way altogether.
"I was asking Fatia Negra which of the three I should take." Old Onucz scratched his nose pretty hard at this question. He would have liked to have said: "whichever you like, as long as it is the right one!" but he was afraid of offending Fatia Negra. "Well, Domnule," said he at last, "truth is truth, after all.
And he will swear to regard Anicza as his lawful bride from this day forth until such time as he can, without any mask or disguise, conduct her before a priest and solemnize his wedding in another place and before other people. For a long time this ceremony has been the pet idea of old Onucz and now Fatia Negra has agreed to it. Gradually all the partners have assembled in the cavern.
Onucz approached him obsequiously and kissed the hand of his mysterious leader with profound respect, whilst Anicza approached him with roguish archness, adroitly feigning a superstitious fear of her magician of a sweetheart. "I am not afraid of you, Fatia Negra! though you come and go unseen. I fear you come not in God's name." "That is true. We are nearer methinks to the Kingdom of the Devil."
Thus he made them form a long chain, the extreme end of which was brought up by old Onucz in whose hand he placed a slender conducting rod which hung down from the altar. Then he recited the fantastic oath before them all once more, whilst they repeated every syllable of it after him.
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