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THE VILLAGE NOTARY.

CHAPTER I.

The traveller in the districts on the lower Theiss, however narrow the circle of his peregrinations, may be said to be familiar with the whole of that part of Hungary. Some families boast of the resemblance, not to say the identity, of their members. To distinguish one from another, we must see them long and often. The case of these districts is very much the case of those families; and the traveller, after a few hours' sleep on our sandy roads, has no means of knowing that he has made any progress, unless, indeed, it be by looking at the setting sun, or his jaded horses. Neither the general character nor the details of the country will remind him of his having been subjected to locomotion. As well might the seaman on the Atlantic endeavour to mark his course on the watery plain which surrounds him. A boundless extent of pasturage, now and then diversified by a broken frame over a well, or a few storks that promenade round a half dried up swamp; bad fields, whose crops of kukuruz and wheat are protected by God only, and by that degree of bodily fatigue to which even a thief is exposed;—perhaps a lonely hut, with a couple of long-haired wolf-dogs, reminding you of the sacredness of property; and the ricks of stale hay and straw, left from the harvest of last year, impressing you with the idea that their owners must either have an excess of hay, or a want of cattle:—such were the sights upon which you closed your eyes, and such, indeed, are the sights which you behold on awaking. The very steeples, which, before you fell asleep, were visible on the far plain, seem to have gone along with you; for there is as little difference between them, as between the village which you were approaching in the early part of the afternoon and the one to which you are now drawing near. The low banks of the Theiss, too, are the same; our own yellow Theiss is not only the best citizen of our country,—for it spends its substance at home,—but it is also the luckiest river in the world, since nobody ever interferes with it. The Theiss is, in fact, the only river in Europe of which it may be said that it is exactly such as God has made it.

Somewhere on the banks of the lower Theiss, in any of its districts,—say in the county of Takshony,—close to where the river flows in the shape of a capital S, and at no great distance from three poplars on a hill (there is not a hill for many miles in whichever direction you may go, and, least of all, a hill with trees upon it), lies the village of Tissaret, under the lordship of the Rety family, who have owned the place ever since the Magyars first came into the country,—a fact which Mr. Adam Catspaw, the solicitor of the family, is prepared to prove at all times, and in all places, to any one that might be inclined to doubt it.

Than the family of the Retys none can be more ancient; and it cannot therefore be a cause for wonder that the village of Tissaret came in for a few spare rays of that dazzling brilliancy which surrounded its masters. There is a large park, in which the trees, which were planted as early as thirty years ago, have grown to a fabulous height. There is a pond, the waters of which are sometimes rather low, but which, no matter whether high or low, are always beautifully green, like the meadow around. In rainy weather that meadow is rather more sandy than the paths, which, though frequently covered with fresh earth, are still sometimes in a condition which induces strangers to call them dirty, thereby astonishing the gardener, who thinks that they are exactly what paths ought to be. And, besides, there is a large castle, with a high roof with gilt knobs on the same; and with a Doric hall, in which the sheriff used to smoke his pipe; and with a gothic gate, in front of which a crowd of supplicants might at all times be seen loitering and losing their time. There is a yard, with stables to the left, and a glass-house and a hen-roost to the right, without mentioning the grand dunghill which covers more than one half of the stables. Every thing, in short, is grand and comfortable, and shows—especially the high-road from the door of the house to the county-town, and which has been made expressly for the Retys—that the place is the residence of a sheriff.

All the buildings of the Retys are of a monumental character; and the more so, since one distinguishing feature in monuments, viz. their being built at the public expense, belonged to every fabric, road or bridge, made by the Retys. Every one in the county knew of this fact; and, though a few persons pretended to blame them for it, the great majority of the people were quite satisfied, as, indeed, it was their bounden duty to be.

But there will be plenty of occasions in the sequel to make my readers acquainted with the beauties and comforts of the seat of the Retys, and of the village of Tissaret. For the present, I will take them by the hand and lead them about two miles from the said village, to the hill which is commonly called the Turk's Hill, and which is remarkable, not only for its three trees, but also for the distant view you enjoy on it of the mountains of Tokay, which, on a clear day, like the one that opens this tale, may be seen looming in the distance like dark-blue haystacks.

The warm rays of an October sun fell upon the plains of Tissaret; there was not a cloud in the sky, not a speck of dust on the heath. The solemn silence of the scene was interrupted only by those vague sounds which herald the approach of evening,—the carol of the birds, the faint tinkling of distant sheep-bells, and the song of a lonely workman wending his way homeward, with his scythe on his shoulder. The view from the hill commands the country to the wood of St. Vilmosh, the acacias of Tissaret, and the far windings of the Theiss. On that hill there are two men, whom I take the liberty of introducing to my readers as Mr. Jonas Tengelyi, the notary, and Mr. Balthasar Vandory, the curate of the village of Tissaret.

Every aristocracy has its marks of distinction. Long nails, a tattooed face, a green or black dress, a button on the hat, a ribbon in the button-hole, a sword or a stick with an apple,—these are a few of the marks which in various times and places have served, and still serve, to separate them from the common herd; which, wherever that strange animal—man—has left the savage state and become domesticated, part them asunder from their birth to their dying hour; and which, in the most civilised countries, show you by the very gallows that the culprit is not only a thief, but also a plebeian. Nature, too, has her nobility; she, too, puts marks of distinction on her aristocrat, by which you may know her elect, in spite of all the preachers of a general equality. Nature does not, indeed, compete with civilisation in ennobling a man's fathers that lived before him, or the babe unborn that is to call him father,—but there are cases in which Nature's nobility is unmistakeably expressed in individuals. Any man that has once seen the notary Jonas Tengelyi, will confess that my statement is correct; and to make this fact still more comprehensible, I will add that Tengelyi's nobility dates more than a hundred years back, and that, in the present instance, Nature had all the advantages which the "usus" could give her.

Tengelyi is about fifty years of age, though his thin locks sprinkled with flakes of grey, and the deep wrinkles with which Time has marked his forehead, would cause you to think him older; but then he is like a sturdy oak, with gnarled roots and branches bearing witness to its age, while its leaves are