"Yet strip from off her her costly pearls and diamonds, and you will see that in regard to beauty and majesty she is not fit to lace the shoes of her Highness the Princess Apafi." "Go on! go on!" "Well, one fine day this same Kapi came to me, and told me that your Highness had been commanded by the Palatine to arrest and deliver me over to him." "I receive a command! I know absolutely nothing about it." "Unfortunately I believed his words, and imagining myself caught between two fires, I made over my Transylvanian property to Kapi to save it from confiscation, he at the same time delivering to me an undertaking to re-transfer the estates as soon as possible. Meanwhile I resolved to fly to Poland, and stay there till the storm blew over. Kapi gave me two guides, who were to conduct me through the mountain-passes to the frontier; but at the same time he secretly informed the frontier sentinels that I was a spy sent by the Emperor to explore Transylvania, and was now desirous of returning unobserved. So the rogues waylaid me, robbed me of all my money and papers, and dragged me to Fehervar, where my innocence came to light, but my money and papers were of course hopelessly lost. And now this Kapi actually maintains that I sold him all my property, and I've nothing in the world but this leather knapsack round my neck, with which I must now beg my way about." "Be of good cheer. I will give you the most exemplary satisfaction," returned the enraged Prince. "It is a matter which also concerns your Highness's own dignity," replied Balassa. "These great lords behave in as high-handed a fashion as if they had absolutely no superior." "Be easy. I will very soon show them who is the real Prince of Transylvania." Apafi, full of indignation, then left the audience-chamber. A storm was gathering over the heads of two great men who stood in Teleki's way. BOOK II. THE DEVIL'S GARDEN. CHAPTER I. THE PATROL. Clement the Clerk stuck his pen behind his ear and recited to himself the elegant verses which he had just composed, two hundred strophes in all, almost every line of which ended in _fuerat_, with a sporadic _fuisset_ in between. Michael Apafi used regularly to repent whenever he had offended any one, and he therefore could not rest till he had compensated the itinerant scholar Clement for the snub he had administered to him, and this he did by making the unsophisticated poet his----Patrol-officer. In those days many agreeable duties were connected with this office--duties which Clement simply left alone, devoting himself instead to the composition of epics and chronicles, which he manufactured in great abundance.