The Strange Story of Rab Ráby. Mór Jókai

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      The jurymen had often been in this place before. It was a low-pitched cellar, with a massive, vaulted arched roof, and in a corner of it, there stood an iron coffer made fast to the wall.

      Beside this iron chest stood a Rascian "pope," whose hand they could reverentially kiss if they wished. How he came there no one knew.

      The "pope" produced a large, curiously wrought key, and the notary a second one like it.

      "These are the keys, open it who can!"

      Three or four times some jurymen made the attempt, yet without success; in vain did the keys press right and left in the wards, but it opened not.

      "We are wasting time," cried the "pope." "Do you try, Mr. notary, you understand it."

      Whereupon the notary turned the keys, and the coffer was opened.

      Everyone wanted to see inside.

      There were nothing but ducats there: ducats, indeed, by hundreds, in fine transparent bladder bags, through which the yellow metal gleamed seductively. The sacks stood as in battle array, like so many soldiers close to each other. There must be a fabulous lot of gold there! Now another row was to be added to it. Then from a side compartment of the chest, a small book was fetched out wherein the notary entered all kinds of accounts. And strange entries might those be, judging from the frequent exclamations of the jurymen, which showed that the budget he examined was a notable one.

      "Tut, tut," cried the notary interrupting, "you don't want it published to all the world."

      "But if it has to be, eh?"

      After which, certain accounts were duly registered in the little book, and the great coffer was again closed. Then the "pope" spoke.

      "I see well enough that you have again husbanded your funds carefully, and that the money has increased, but where does the blessing of Heaven come in? You never give a thought to the Church! You promised to buy a new church bell, to gild the church roof, and to build a house for the parish priest. There's no money for all these things, but the coffer gets fuller and fuller."

      "Make yourself easy, your reverence," answered the notary, "all that may come next year, if we are spared. For that the small cash-box will suffice."

      "So you think it will, do you? What has ruined the hospital? The poor sick folk nearly perish of hunger in summer, and are nigh frozen in winter, whilst you carry off the timber by cart-loads as presents to Pesth, and then think of the amount of smoked sturgeon and caviare and wine you send thither, and all for the magnates, but nothing for the sick and needy!"

      "Let it be, your reverence, there's nothing so advantageous for the sick as fresh air, and nothing so harmful as overloading their stomachs. But it's far better that we should give firing for the magnates, than that they should make it hot for us!"

      "And the poor-house which our revered Queen, Maria Theresa, endowed, is it not still empty? What are we about that we do not find inmates for it? But you find none."

      "The devil we do! Don't the blind and the lame stand each Sunday before the church door, but if we want to befriend them, we've only to say: 'Come you, poor wretches, we'll show you the way into the poor-house,' and off they run in a fright, so great a horror have they of the bread of the State."

      "You children of the devil! And what of the poor Izbeghers whose forty houses were burned down? The Emperor allowed them as much from the treasury as the worth of the houses amounted to, but you raised the rents of the remaining houses and then dunned them for the money."

      "That's natural enough, seeing the Emperor let the State annex the burned part in order to pay so much the less to the ground-landlord. If Peter has nothing, then pay Paul, that is the rule."

      "A godless rule too! Amend your ways, I say, for if next year as many complaints reach my ear as have this, I'll denounce your coffer to the Treasury."

      These words only provoked laughter.

      "Your reverence is not such a bad sort," ventured the judge in a conciliatory tone.

      Thereupon, the keys were withdrawn, the night-caps again donned, and the notary led his blind men again to the ground-floor of the council chamber, where they congratulated one another on the risks run.

      "Only yon priest should not have it all his own way with his maledictions," grumbled the judge. "But they are all like that. Each one of them thinks that hardly earned money should be wasted on churches and hospitals."

      "I also think, my lord, that it would be better that such an unreasonably big sum of money should be divided to each one as he has need," suggested a juryman bolder than the rest.

      The speaker might, from the assenting murmur which greeted his speech, take it for granted that he had a good many on his side, but the eloquence of the notary soon crushed such sympathy.

      "Ay, my dear friend, that would kill the goose which lays the golden eggs. This coffer is our pledge of power, our shield of protection, our bond of union. As long as it exists are we rulers in this city and in all its dependencies. As long as this coffer answers for us, so long can we get the laws made in our favour. As long as we have our money, they won't take our sons for military service, or ask us for accounts, and if a meadow or a plot of land is to be divided, we look after the allotment. It is we who direct public works. It is we who fell the timber in the forest, who cast the net into the Danube, and limit the vintage; we buy and sell; and fix the tithes. As long as the key of that coffer is in our hands, we must needs be great powers in the city, like Kaiser Joseph in his palace at Vienna. At the end of that key we whistle a tune to which all men must dance."

      "Quite right, quite right!" shouted the whole assembly.

      And who could contradict them?

CHAPTER VI.

       Table of Contents

      The Jew Abraham was the father of twelve children, all sons, and all red-haired. And each one equally resembled his father.

      Yet it will be well to explain matters from the beginning.

      Up till the Emperor Joseph's time, the Jews had been devoid of any family names, as once in the Promised Land.

      But when Joseph II. admitted the Jews to the rights of citizens, he stipulated that they should render military service if called upon, and that they should choose a surname—and that a German one.

      To this end, royal commissions were despatched on all sides which should provide the Jews with surnames. And a nice business it was! Whoever had a well-filled purse had a free choice, if it so pleased him, but woe to him who set about it empty handed, for the nickname wherewith his mocking neighbours had christened him, stuck to him pitilessly.

      Because Abraham had not sufficiently opened his purse-strings, he still had to go by his nickname of "Rothesel," wherewith he was known among his neighbours.

      The epithet "roth" (red), he had received from the colour of his beard, but he had been qualified as "esel" (ass), because he had done nothing more enterprising with his wife's dowry of two hundred thalers, than buy up wine with it. On this account everyone СКАЧАТЬ