A great light had suddenly sprung up in the sky.

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Barbara Pirka, "that certainly would be a crazy sun which rose in the west! What you see there is the morning sheen of h.e.l.l. The house of the headsman is burning. A pretty dawn that certainly!"

The fire threw a frightful blood-red glare over mountain and forest, and gilded the white rocks in the distance as if they too were flaming. The stars twinkled faintly through the ruddy glow.

"Now you may sleep in peace, my children," said Barbara Pirka. "By the time the young vihodar returns, he will find only the ruins of his house, and will fancy that his wife has been burnt likewise. He will seek her no more on this earth."

"And even if he should seek her," cried Valentine defiantly, "I would not give her up to him though heaven and earth commanded it. I would rather get together a band of robbers and wage war against all humanity, than allow my beloved to be ever torn from me again.

Whoever would take my Michal away from me must tear her from my arms on the very scaffold."

And he smote the b.u.t.t-end of his musket so violently on the ground, that both the witches leaped up to the very ceiling for joy.

But Michal fell upon Valentine's neck and stammered:

"With thee by my side, I'll go forth into the wild forest and face cold and tempest. With thee I'll brave death, yea, d.a.m.nation itself.

I crave no other death than the death by which thou diest. I desire no other eternity, be it bliss or woe, than the eternity which unites our soul in one, my angel, my king, my sun!"

And Simplex thrust his trumpet through the window and sounded a wedding march, which awoke the echoes in the neighboring hills.

CHAPTER XXV.

Man cannot fathom the wiles which witches imagine when they unite in wedlock lovers whom they have clandestinely brought together.

The kopanitschar's wife now brought in the supper, and all five of them straightway sat down and made merry in honor of the festive occasion. This done, the witches began to feel frisky, and called to Simplex to bring out his trumpet into the courtyard and play them a jig. He very complaisantly complied with this request, sat him down on the edge of the well and made music for the ladies, while they, taking each other by the hand, danced a dance which looked for all the world as if they were possessed. Their wooden shoes rattled and clattered, their disheveled tresses floated in the wind, and the terrified bats flitted over their heads. The flames of the headsman's house lit up this dance of witches, and the wild figures, leaping in the blood-red glare, cast long, spasmodic shadows on the whitewashed walls of the inn, just as if Beelzebub himself were leading the frolic.

"Blow, blow, trumpeter!" they cried, and Simplex blew and blew till his breast was nigh to bursting, and yet he was so bewitched that he could not take the trumpet from his mouth, nay! he even felt constrained to drum all the time with both his heels on the sides of the well. If a good, honest Christian had come upon this spectacle unawares, he would have been rooted to the ground with terror.

Meanwhile the lovers were left to themselves. They had quite enough to tell each other. First, Valentine made Michal tell him of all the horrors she had gone through, and what desperate suffering she had endured, and then he related to her the many contrarieties which had befallen himself. Of course, too, they did not forget to richly indemnify each other for their past woes by a liberal exchange of caresses. In particular, when Valentine recounted the history of Jigerdilla, Michal did not grudge him an ample compensation for the kisses which, for her sake, he had refused the Turkish lady. At the same time Valentine treated his beloved as his bride indeed, but not as his affianced wife.

At the first c.o.c.kcrow the witches ceased to dance. Simplex they sent into the loft to sleep of his fatigue. The kopanitschar's wife set about preparing breakfast; but Pirka went into the room of the lovers to ask them what they had been dreaming about. Then she sent Valentine out, but whispered in his ear as she pa.s.sed, that he might peep through the window if he liked, and then she helped Michal on with the cornflower-blue dress. After that she called the young man in again.

Valentine was enchanted at the sight of the beautiful lady, and protested that if she had looked in the first dress like a bride, she looked in the second one like a saint on an altar screen. Pirka thereupon pulled a very wry face, for she did not like to hear tell of saints and altars. So she drove Valentine out again, and bade him go wake his friend who had been dozing all night, and yet was as heavy as ever. While Valentine was wrangling in the loft with Simplex, who swore by hook and by crook that he had been trumpeting all night long for the benefit of the witches, and had scarcely had more than forty winks, Pirka took off Michal's blue dress which made her look like a saint, and arrayed her in the purple one. When Valentine saw her in this he declared that she now looked just like a queen.

But the witches tried to persuade Simplex that he had only dreamt that he had been playing all night, and that it was not from overmuch blowing of trumpets but from excessive mastication at supper the night before, that his jaws were so sore.

The lovers, too, protested that they had heard nothing of the whole entertainment. They had been so much occupied with each other that they had been unconscious of all else. They had not only not heard the trumpet of Simplex, they had not even heard the clarion of the Archangel Uriel who (according to the ancient formula: "Michal on my right, Gabriel on my left, Raphael behind me, Israel before me, Uriel above my head") flies above the head of each one of us, and blows his clarion whenever we are about to plunge into some dreadful danger. Well for us if we heed the warning!

But the lovers had heard nothing.

When Annie served the breakfast (goat's milk, cheese, and brandy mixed with honey and sugar), Valentine's spirits rose so high that he vowed over again what he had already vowed the night before, viz.: that if anyone tore away his Michal from him, he would turn highwayman and gather a robber band around him.

But women have, generally speaking, more common sense in the broad light of day than they have at dead of night; so Michal now said that it need not come to that. Valentine must take her back to her father's house. There she would bring a divorce suit against her husband on the plea that he had married her in a wrong name and under false pretenses, and that his marriage with her was consequently invalid. As soon then as the marriage was dissolved, Valentine must come forward and woo her, when she certainly would not send him away with a flea in his ear.

At this Barbara Pirka burst into a peal of laughter.

"Trust to parsons, and you'll soon see what a pretty dance they'll lead you! The parsons have many creases in their surplices, and they shake a fresh ordinance out of every crease. Do what you say, by all means! Bring your action against Henry Vihodar, formerly clerk in holy orders, and now headsman, and you'll find that justice is on the side of the longest purse. It is true that the vihodar's house is merrily burning, but his treasures in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the tower cannot be burnt, and he will be a very rich man. He'll confront you with a dozen witnesses who will testify that the Keszmar professor knew very well what his son-in-law's trade was. He will manufacture forged letters with false seals, and what will be the end of it all?

Why, Squire Valentine will be found guilty of abduction and put out of the way. No, no! don't go to law. You'll get no good by it.

Besides, I've a much better plan."

"Let's hear it then. But mind! I mean to be my Valentine's wife, not his mistress," said Michal.

"Yes, the pretty lady shall become her Valentine's wife, but she must listen to me. She knows now that my cards always speak the truth. So hearken to me, my children! You go out, Annie! We don't want you prying here. You, Simplex, can stay where you are, for you know how to hold your tongue."

So Annie went away, and as soon as she was out of hearing, Pirka, in a low whisper, began to expound her crafty scheme.

"Listen now! Not far from here is a town called Bartfa. Every town, as you know, has its peculiar laws and customs. At Ka.s.sa, for instance, clandestine lovers caught together are beheaded. At Bartfa they are much more cruel. There, if a la.s.s accosts a lad in the streets after vespers, or if a lad is caught talking with a la.s.sie in a gateway, the watchman lays hands on the pair and claps them into jail. Next morning, without any of the usual preliminary fiddle-faddle, without even asking for their baptismal certificate or requiring the consent of their parents, or obtaining a special license or dispensation, the magistrates send for a parson and splice them straight off. Only as man and wife are they permitted to pa.s.s through the city gates. Hence the proverb:

If thou comest from Bartfa without a wife, Good luck will befriend thee the rest of thy life.

And a marriage contracted at Bartfa is valid everywhere."

"But," sagely objected Michal, "supposing one of the parties be already married?"

"Then both parties are publicly scourged to death. But I've taken precautions against that also. My late pretty mistress, the young vihodar's wife, is no more. Her father fancies that he has married her to the pastor of Great Leta; but his reverence also is no longer to be found on the face of the earth. The people of Great Leta have already provided themselves with another curer of souls, and his wife is an old woman with a hunch on her back. Henry Vihodar firmly believes that his wife has perished in his burning house, from which, indeed, no living soul could possibly have escaped when once the sulphur and the tar caught fire. Besides, the young headsman will soon marry again. So you two must come along with me to Bartfa, where I'll pretend that the pretty lady is my daughter, and will put her out to service. You, squire, must seek a farm laborer's place in the same town. The rest depends entirely on yourselves. If once you are caught together, you'll not be allowed to depart thence except as man and wife, and then you can go to---- Where did you say you lived?"

It was just on the tip of Valentine's tongue to say Ka.s.sa, when Simplex antic.i.p.ated him and said Klausenburg, which is in the opposite direction. For it is also the duty of a true friend when he sees that his comrade cannot lie, to lie for him. And here it was very necessary not to let the witch know where Valentine lived, lest she might take it into her head, at some future day, to pay him and his wife a visit when they least desired it.

"Very well," pursued the witch, "then you can go to Klausenburg and take your marriage certificate with you. No one will think of asking any further questions. People will say, they've been married at Bartfa, and no more will be said about it. Are you pleased with my plan?"

They were so pleased with it that they fell to kissing each other over and over again, and in their joy had almost wasted a kiss or two on Pirka herself, which would have been a useless piece of extravagance.

"But we cannot take service with all our silk clothes and gewgaws,"

said Pirka. "We must put on the rustic dress in which we came hither."

Michal readily consented to this change of raiment, and going into the adjoining room, she took off her dress, her earrings, and her necklace. Her three dresses and all her jewels she gave to Pirka, who had calculated on obtaining these perquisites all along.

"Do you think Valentine will like me in this dress?" asked the pretty young lady, as she put on her sober weeds again.

"It won't quite do yet," said Pirka. "Even through this rustic garb people might easily spy out the fine lady. We cannot take service with this rose and milk complexion, for everyone would immediately ask us out of what castle we had escaped. We must find a remedy against that also. We must make freckles on our cheeks and foreheads, so that we may not look so pretty."

"But will Valentine love me if I am ugly?"

"Sweetheart! he would love you even if you were as hideous as I am."

With that, the witch took freshly plucked wolf's milk flowers, the juice of which rubbed into the skin leaves behind spots resembling freckles which cannot be washed away by water, and only very gradually fade away. Pirka well rubbed Michal's face with the juice of the wolf's milk flowers till she was as speckled and as spotted as a pea hen. It was as well that there was no mirror at hand to tell pretty Michal what a fright she had become.

This done, Pirka led her back to Valentine, and said to him: "Well!

how does my serving wench please you?" But he, without troubling himself in the least about the freckles, embraced his beloved as fervently as before.

When, however, the kopanitschar's wife came in again and saw the ugly serving maid, she asked what had become of the wondrously beautiful lady who had lately been there.

Pirka replied that she had bestraddled a broomstick, flown out of the window, and left this wench behind in her stead.

Annie believed Pirka, and bawled to Michal to take herself off and feed the swine.