Petitioners, homagers, and visitors of every description kept coming and going one by one. By Apafi's side stood Nalaczi, Daczo, Stephen Apafi, and John Cserey, whom his Highness urged repeatedly to be seated. After receiving the oaths of allegiance, on which occasion the commandants of the fortresses placed the keys of their strongholds in the Prince's hands, it was the turn of the petitioners to be introduced. First came Master Martin Pok, the jailer of Fogaros, with the humble petition that he might be appointed the governor of that fortress, inasmuch as the former governor had fled to Simon Kemeny. Apafi promised to bear him in mind. Next came Master John Szasy, the chief magistrate of Hermannstadt, complaining, with tears in his eyes, that his fellow-citizens were persecuting him, and throwing himself on the Prince's protection. Apafi at once took him under his wing. Then followed Master Moses Zagoni, who begged the Prince to let him off a certain balance in his accounts which had been outstanding from Kemeny's time. Him too Apafi sent away comforted. Last of all came a thick-set, sturdy Szekler, in a short sheep-skin jacket, who called himself the representative of Olahfalva; did homage to Apafi in the name of his district, and preferred two very peculiar petitions, to wit: that from henceforth Olahfalva should be declared to be only _two_ miles from Klausenburg (the real distance between the two places is, as we all know, more than twenty); and secondly, that it should be legally enacted that he who had no horse should go on foot. The Prince laughingly complied with both of these extraordinarily ludicrous requests, which put him into such a good humour that an itinerant scholar, Clement by name, a crooked-nosed, long-legged individual, wrapped from head to foot in a fox-skin mantle, made bold to approach Apafi, and present him on his knees with a huge parchment roll which he had been holding in his hand for some time, and which the Prince, not without extraneous help, now took and unfolded. Inside it he read the whole genealogical record of the Apafis, painted on a green-leaved family-tree, whereby his family was brought into connection with the illustrious Bethlen and Bathory families; traced back to King Samuel Aba, from him again to Huba, one of the seven original leaders of the Magyars, and thence ascending still further, first to Attila's youngest son Csaka, and from him in the female line to the daughter of the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, but in the male line to Nimrod, the first recorded earthly king. This fulsome piece of flattery seemed to somewhat annoy Apafi; but as he could not quite make up his mind to kick the impertinent poet out of the tent, he resolved to be quit of him with a handful of ducats, and placed the genealogical tree behind him by way of a prop.