"Strict inquiry shall be made as to whether there be any real ground of suspicion against King Kuthen; and if there is, he and his people shall be punished! But we must let the law take its course, and my dear citizens of Pest may wait quietly and confidently while it does. From this day forth the Kun King will not leave his residence, a guard shall be placed at his gate, and we will have the matter regularly investigated without delay." There was a burst of "Eljens" (vivas) as the King concluded. The people appeared to be thoroughly satisfied, and when Barkó, after a low reverence, turned to leave the hall, his followers made a way for him through their midst, and cleared out after him, quickly at all events, if not with much dignity. History tells us that the King's Council was satisfied also, no less than the people, who had, indeed, been purposely excited by some of the nobles, and used more or less as a cat's paw. The order that Kuthen should be guarded was, as we have seen, given and executed forthwith. Béla had given it most unwillingly, only, in fact, to appease the excitement, and in the hope of avoiding still worse evils; and though some were still dissatisfied, this was the case with but few of the cooler heads. And the Russian Dukes, when they were able to speak to the King in private, admitted that numbers of Kunok had indeed been forced by Batu Khan to serve in his army; but they added that these recruits were only waiting the first favourable opportunity to desert and join with their kinsmen, and with the Hungarians, in exterminating the common enemy. And what they feared was that, if the Kunok heard that their King, whom they worshipped, was being kept under restraint, they would actually do what the majority and so many of the chief nobles now without reason suspected them of. Béla understood human nature, and to him it seemed that to throw some sort of sop to Cerberus was wiser than to risk the exciting of greater discontent. But again the King made a mistake! CHAPTER VII. AT THE VERY DOORS. The time of which we are writing was a critical one in Hungary's history. "She was sick, very sick, and the remedy for her disease was bitter in proportion to the gravity of her condition." (Jókai Mór.) The power and prestige of the sovereign had lost much under Béla's predecessors, first his uncle and then his father; for the latter had rebelled against his brother, and the civil war had increased the importance of the magnates, while it diminished that of the sovereign. Béla's father András had succeeded his brother, and had shown himself as weak, as vain, and as untrustworthy, as king, as he had done as subject. Béla had inherited many difficulties, and in his eagerness to set matters right, had been over-hasty, over-arbitrary, and had made enemies of many of the great nobles by curtailing their extorted privileges.