The Diet, hastily summoned to Fehervár, strongly disapproved of the secret proceedings against Banfi. Paul Beldi was the first to declare that even if Banfi could be arrested by means of a league, a Diet was the only tribunal which could try him, and insisted that he should have every opportunity of defending himself. The Prince came to the Diet with red eyes, an aching head, and a very irritable temper--the usual witnesses of a drunken debauch. Teleki, finding the Diet beyond his control, got Apafi to dissolve it, by persuading him that if Banfi were brought before it he would escape altogether, and even turn the two-edged sword of justice against the Prince himself. In the Privy Council itself, Kozma Horvath's opposition to the extra-judicial prosecution was all in vain. The league drew up thirty-seven articles of accusation against Banfi, and the magnate was impeached. Most of these articles were so utterly frivolous as to need no reply. Banfi's real offence was his pretension to the throne, and this they dared not bring forward at all. Banfi manfully replied on every count. In vain. Defend himself as he might, his adversaries knew only too well how much they had offended him: they could not afford to let him live. The matter came to the vote. Banfi was condemned to death. On the day when this took place, no one could get at the Prince except the members of the league, who were constantly going in and out of Apafi's apartments with hasty steps and eager faces. Towards evening they succeeded in bringing the besotted Prince to sign the sentence. It was no longer possible to recognize in the spectre-haunted drunkard the mild and gentle Prince, who had had a tear for the sorrows of the meanest of his servants. Saddled horses and long rows of carriages had been standing before the castle gates since midday. Suddenly Ladislaus Csaky came very hastily out of the castle with a document hidden in the folds of his pelisse, and calling for his horse, mounted, nodded significantly to the other gentlemen who had followed him out, and galloped away. The other gentlemen thereupon leapt into their carriages, or on to their horses, with as much expedition as if some one was pursuing them, and exchanging hurried whispers, decamped so swiftly that in a few moments the Prince was left entirely alone. Teleki was the last who quitted him. The Prince accompanied the minister to the very end of the ante-chamber. Black care was written in his face. He would hardly let Teleki go. Teleki coldly withdrew his hand from the Prince's grasp. "You have no need to brood over it, sir. It is not a question of the life of a man, but of the welfare of a state. If my own neck had stood in the way, I would have said, Hew it off! I say the same when it is another's." With that he took his leave.