Hungary -- History -- Joseph II, 1780-1790 -- Fiction
And everything progressed smoothly, for while the music was going on, no
one could talk, and if one guest called to someone else at the other
table, he did not forget to address him as "noble friend." But at the
second round of wine the company began to sing with the music, and it
was not easy to stop their efforts. Finally, the two parties insisted on
singing different songs at the same time, the result being an uproar,
wherein cymbal, fiddle, bagpipe, and cornet strove for precedence in a
very rivalry of tumultuous discord.
The Velencze leader could not stand such an annoyance, and he promptly
hurled an empty bottle at the wall just above the head of the Bicske
chief, so that the fragments fell on the latter's head. He then seized
his axe, struck the beam with it, and cried out defiantly, "Let's see
who is the better man?"
The valorous Bicske men and their ten Velencze companions, were equally
ready to join in the fray thus begun. So they seized their axes and
clubs, and began to brandish these in a highly menacing fashion. For
there is no fighter like your Magyar when his blood is up.
At this perilous juncture appeared the representatives of peace and
arbitration, in the person of Sir Stephen Keö, the "Knight of Kadarcs,"
and his companion, Mr. Postmaster Leányfalvy, who led between them
Mathias Ráby, and presented him to the company.
The old campaigner, with his shabby sheepskin over his shoulders, and a
short pipe between his teeth, pressed into the ranks of the combatants
as calmly as if the Geneva Red Cross had sheltered his breast. Not a bit
intimidated by the uproar, he brandished his pike, and cried out in a
shrill voice:
"So you are at it again, are you! Be quiet, you fellows; and so early
too, for you can't have drunk much yet. But listen to me, friends. This
gallant gentleman whom you see here is Mr. Mathias Ráby of Rába and
Mura, the son of the late Stephen Ráby, that noble patriot, who so
often stood up for Magyar rights. During his absence from home some
bullies in Szent-Endre have ejected this noble gentleman from his own
house, and occupied it. Now he calls upon us, the patriots of Velencze
and Bicske, to come to his aid, and will pay us a salary of two gulden
per head, to drive out the illegal occupiers from his lawful domicile.
Therefore I suggest that you adjourn your mutual quarrel till the next
Stuhlweissenburg fair (and chalk it up so that you do not forget it);
but meantime, come with us, and help to right the wrong done him."
Whereupon the twenty men present cheered loudly and signified their
readiness to go.
"We have four carriages here," said Sir Stephen. "Four must stay with
the horses, so that there will be sixteen all told for the expedition."
And so it was arranged.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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