Mathias Sandorf/Page 02

Mathias Sandorf - I,2

CHAPTER III. COUNT SANDORF.
Magyars settled in Hungary toward the end of the ninth century of the Christian era. They form a third of the population—more than five millions in number. Whence they came—Spain, Egypt, or Central Asia, whether they are descended from the Huns of Attila, or the Finns of the North—is a disputed question, and is of little consequence! One thing is very obvious, that they are neither Sclaves nor Germans, and have no desire to become so.

They still speak their own language—a language soft and musical, lending itself to all the charm of poetical cadence, less rich than the German, but more concise, more energetic; a language which between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries took the place of Latin in the laws and edicts, and became the national tongue.

It was on the 21st of January, 1699, that the treaty of Carlowitz gave Hungary and Transylvania to Austria. Twenty years afterward the Pragmatic sanction solemnly declared that the States of Austria-Hungary were thence-forth indivisible. In default of a son the daughter was to succeed to the crown according to the rule of primogeniture. And it was in accordance with this new statute that in 1749 Maria Theresa ascended the throne of her father, Charles VI., the last of the male line of the House of Austria.

The Hungarians had to yield to superior force; but 150 years afterward people were still to be met with among all ranks of society who refused to acknowledge either the Pragmatic sanction or the treaty of Carlowitz.

At the time this story opens there was a Magyar of high birth whose whole life might be summed up in these two sentiments—the hatred of everything German, and the hope of giving his country her ancient independence. Although still young, he had known Kossuth, and although nis birth and education kept him apart from him on important political questions, he could not fail to admire the patriot's nobility of heart.

Count Mathias Sandorf lived in one of the counties of Transylvania in the district of Fagaras. His old castle was of feudal origin. But on one of the northern spurs of the Eastern Carpathians, which form the frontier between Transylvania and Wallachia, the castle rose amid the rugged scenery in all its savage pride—a stronghold that conspirators could defend to the last.

The neighboring mines, rich in iron and copper ore, and carefully worked, yielded a considerable income to the owner of the Castle of Artenak. The estate comprised a part of the district of Fagaras, and the population exceeded 72,000, who, all of them, townsfolk and countryfolk, took pains to show that for Count Sandorf they felt an untiring devotion and an unbounded gratitude for the constant good he had done in the country. This castle was the object of particular attention on the part of the Chancery of Hungary at Vienna, for the ideas of the master of Artenak were known in high quarters, and anxiety was felt about them, although no anxiety was betrayed about him.

Sandorf was then in his thirty-sixth year. He was rather above the middle height and of great muscular strength. A well-shaped, noble-looking head rose above his broad, powerful shoulders. Of rather dark complexion and square in feature, his face was of the pure Magyar type. The quickness of his movements, the decision of his speech, the firm, calm look of his eyes, the constant smile on his lips, that unmistakable sign of good nature, a certain playfulness of gesture and speech—all went to show an open, generous disposition. It has been said that there are many resemblances between the French and Magyar characters. Sandorf was a living proof of the truth of this observation.

One of his most striking peculiarities is worth noting. Although Count Sandorf was careless enough of what concerned only himself, and would pass lightly over any injury which affected him alone, he had never forgiven and never would forgive an offense of which his friends were the victims. He had in the highest degree the spirit of justice and hatred of perfidy, and hence possessed a sort of impersonal implacability, being by no means one of those who leave all punishment in "this world to Heaven.

Mathias Sandorf had been highly educated. Instead of confining himself to the life of leisure his fortune opened out to him, he had energetically followed his tastes and been led to the study of medicine and the physical sciences. He would have made an excellent doctor had the necessities of life forced him to look after the sick. He was content to be a chemist in high repute among the learned. The University of Pesth, the Academy of Sciences at Presburg, the Royal School of Mines at Chemnitz and the Normal School at Temesoar, had all counted him among their most assiduous pupils. His studious life had improved and intensified his natural gifts. In short, he was a man in the fullest acceptation of the term. And he was held to be so by all who knew him, and more especially by his professors in the different schools and universities, who continued their interest in him as his friends.

Formerly the castle of Artenak, then, had been all gayety, life and movement. On this rugged ridge of the Carpathians the Transylvanian hunters had held their meetings. Expeditions, many and dangerous, were organized, in which Count Sandorf sought employment for those instincts of battle which he could not gratify on the field of politics. He kept himself out of the political stream, watching closely the course of events. He seemed only to care about a life spent between his studies and the indulgences that his fortune allowed him.

In those days the Countess Rena Sandorf was still alive. She was the soul of these parties at Artenak. Fifteen months before this history begins death had struck her in the pride of her youth and beauty, and all that was left of her was a little girl, who was now two years old.

Count Sandorf felt the blow cruelly. He was inconsolable. The castle became silent and deserted. From that day, under the shadow of profound grief, its master lived as in a cloister. His whole life was centered in his child and she was confided to the charge of Rosena Lendeck, the wife of the count's steward. This excellent woman, who was still young, was entirely devoted to the sole heiress of the Sandorfs, and ably acted toward her as a second mother.

During the first months of his widowerhood, Sandorf never left his castle of Artenak. He thought over and lived among the remembrances of the past. Then the idea of his country reduced to an inferior position in Europe seized upon him. For the Franco-Italian war of 1859 struck a terrible blow at the power of Austria. Seven years afterward, in 1866, the blow was followed by one still more terrible, that of Sadowa. It was no longer Austria bereft of her Italian possessions; it was Austria conquered on both sides and subordinated to Germany; and to Austria Hungary felt she was bound. The Hungarians—there is no reasoning about such a sentiment, for it is in their blood—were humiliated in their pride. For them the victories of Custozza and Lissa were no compensation for the defeat of Sadowa.

Count Sandorf, during the year which followed, had carefully studied the political outlook, and recognized that a separatist movement might be successful. The moment for action had then come. On the 3d of May of this year, 1867, he had embraced his little daughter, whom he had left to the tender care of Rosena Lendeck, and leaving his castle of Artenak had set out for Pesth, where he had put himself in communication with his friends and partisans, and made certain preliminary arrangements. Then a few hours later he had gone to Trieste to wait for events.

There he became the chief center of the conspiracy; thence radiated all its threads collected in Sandorfs hands. In this town the chiefs of the conspiracy could act with more safety and more freedom in bringing the patriotic work to an end.

At Trieste lived two of Sandorfs most intimate friends. Animated by the same spirit, they were resolved to follow the enterprise to its conclusion. Count Ladislas Zathmar and Professor Stephen Bathory were Magyars of good birth. Both were a dozen years older than Sandorf, but were almost without fortune. One drew his slender revenues from a small estate in the county of Lipto, belonging to a circle beyond the Danube; the other was Professor of Physical Science at Trieste, and his only income came from the fees from his lectures.

Ladislas Zathmar lived in the house discovered on the Acquedotto by Sarcany and Zirone—an unpretending place, which he had put at the disposition of Mathias Sandorf during the time he was away from Artenak—that is to say, till the end of the projected movement, whenever it might be. A Hungarian, Borik, aged about fifty-five, represented the whole staff of the house. Borik was as much devoted to his master as Lendeck was to his.

Stephen Bathory occupied a no less unpretending dwelling on the Corso Stadion, not far from Count Zathmar. Here his whole life was wrapped up in his wife and his son Peter, then eight years old.

Stephen Bathory belonged, distantly but authentically, to the line of those Magyar princes who in the sixteenth century occupied the throne of Transylvania. The family had been divided and lost in its numberless ramifications since then, and people may perhaps think it astonishing that one of its last descendants should exist as a simple professor of the Academy at Presburg. Whatever he might be, Stephen Bathory was a scientist of the first rank—one of those who live in retirement, but whose work renders them famous. “Inclusum labor illustrat,” the motto of the silk-worm, might have been his. 0ne day his political ideas, which he took no pains to conceal rendered it necessary for him to resign, and then he came to live at Trieste as professor unattached.

It was in Zathmar's house that the three friends had met since the arrival of Count Sandorf—although the latter estensibly occupied an apartment on the Palazzo Modello on the Piazza Grande. The police had no suspicion that the house on the Acquedotto was the center of a conspiracy which counted numbers of partisans in all the principal towns of the kingdom.

Zathmar and Bathory were Sandorfs most devoted auxiliaries. Like him, they had seen that circumstances were favorable to a movement which might restore Hungary to the place she desired in Europe. They risked their lives, they knew, but that they cared little about. The house in the Acquedotto had thus become the rendezvous of the chiefs of the conspiracy. Numbers of partisans, summoned from different points of the kingdom, came there to take their measures and receive their orders. A service of carrier-pigeons was organized, and established rapid and safe communication between Trieste and the chief towns of Hungary and Transylvania when it was necessary to send what could not well be confided to the post or telegraph. In short, every precaution had been taken, and the conspirators had not as yet raised the least breath of suspicion. Besides, as we know, the correspondence was carried on in cipher, and on such a plan that unless the secret was known absolute security was obtained.

Three days after the arrival of the carrier-pigeon whose message had been intercepted by Sarcany, on the 21st of May, about eight o'clock in the evening, Zathmar and Bathory were in the study, waiting the return of Mathias Sandorf. His private affairs had recently compelled the count to return into Transylvania and to Artenak; but he had taken the opportunity of consulting with his friends at Kiasenburg, the capital of the province, and he was to get back this very day, after sending them the dispatch of which Sarcany had taken the duplicate.

During the time Sandorf was away, other correspondence had been exchanged between Trieste and Buda, and many letters in cipher had arrived by pigeon-post. And Zathmar was even now busy in working out the real meaning of one of these cryptographic epistles by means of a “grating.”

The dispatches were devised on a very simple plan—that of the transposition of the letters. In this system every letter retained its alphabetical value—that is to say, b meant b, o meant o, etc. But the letters are successively transposed, in accordance with the openings of a grating, which, laid on the message, only allowed such letters to appear as were to be read, and hid all the others. These gratings are an old invention, but, having been greatly improved by Colonel Fleissner, they seem now to offer the best and surest means of obtaining an undecipherable cryptogram. In all the other systems of inversion, be they systems of an invariable base or a simple key in which each letter is always represented by the same letter or sign; be they systems with a variable base, or a double key, in which the alphabet varies with each letter, the security is incomplete. Experienced decipherers are capable of performing perfect prodigies in such investigations, either with the aid of the calculation of probabilities, or by merely trying and trying until they succeed. All that has to be done is to find out the letters in the order of their repetition in the cryptogram—e being that most frequently employed in English, German and French, o in Spanish, a in Russian, and e and i in Italian—and the meaning of the text is soon made clear. And there are very few cryptograms based on these methods which defy investigation.

It would appear, therefore, that the best guarantee for indecipherability is afforded by these gratings, or by ciphered dictionaries—codes, that is to say, or vocabularies in which certain words represent fully formed sentences indicated by the page number. But both these systems have one grave drawback; they require absolute secrecy on the part of those that use them, and the greatest care that the books of apparatus should never get into undesirable hands. Without the grating, or the code, the message will remain unread; but once these are obtained the mystery vanishes.

It was then by means of a grating—that is to say a piece of card cut out in certain places—that the correspondence between Sandorf and his accomplices was carried on, but as an extra precaution, in case the gratings should be lost or stolen, every dispatch after being deciphered was destroyed. There thus remained no trace of this conspiracy in which the greatest noblemen and magnates of Hungary were risking their lives in conjunction with the representatives of the middle class and the bulk of the people.

Zathmar had just burned his last dispatch when there came a quiet knock at the study door.

It was Borik introducing Count Mathias Sandorf, who had walked up from the nearest railway station.

Zathmar immediately rose to greet him.

“Your journey, Mathias?” asked he with the eagerness of a man who wished at the outset to find that all was well.

“It was a success, Zathmar,” answered Sandorf. “I have no doubt of my Transylvanian friends, and are absolutely certain of their assistance.”

“You let them have the dispatch which came from Pesth three days ago?” asked Bathory.

“Yes,” said Sandorf. “Yes. They have all been cautioned, and they are all ready. They will rise at the first signal. In two hours we shall be masters of Buda and Pesth, in half a day we shall get the chief comitats on both sides of the Theiss, and before the day is out we shall have Transylvania and the rest. And then eight millions of Hungarians will have regained their independence!”

“And the Diet?” asked Bathory.

“Our supporters form the majority,” answered Sandorf. “They will also form the new government to take the direction of affairs. All will go regularly and easily, for the comitats, as far as their administration goes, depend very little on the crown, and their chiefs nave the police with them.”

“But the Council of the Lieutenancy of the Kingdom that the palatine presides over at Buda?” continued Zathmar.

“The palatine and the council at Buda will immediately be so placed as to be unable to do anything.”

“And unable to correspond with the Hungarian Chancery at Vienna?”

“Yes, all our measures are taken for our movements to be simultaneous, and thus insure success.”

“Success!” said Bathory.

“Yes, success!” answered Count Sandorf. “In the army of our blood, of Hungarian blood, are for us! Where is the descendant of the ancient Magyars whose heart will not beat at the sight of the banner of Rudolph and Corvinus?”

And Sandorf uttered the words in a tone of the purest Patriotism,

“But,” continued he, “neglect nothing that will present suspicion! Be prudent, we can not be too strong! You have heard of nothing suspicious at Trieste?”

“No,” replied Zathmar. “Nothing is spoken of but the works at Pola, for which the greater part of the workmen have been engaged.”

In fact for fifteen years the Austrian Government, with a view of the possible loss of Venetia—a loss now realized—had been thinking of founding at Pola, at the southern extremity of the Istrian peninsula, an immense arsenal and dock-yard, so as to command all that end of the Adriatic. In spite of the protests of Trieste, whose maritime importance would thereby be lessened, the works were being pushed on with feverish ardor. Sandorf and his friends had thus some justification for their opinion that Trieste would join them in the event of a separatist movement being started in the city.

Up to the present the secret of the conspiracy in favor of Hungarian autonomy had been well kept. Nothing had occurred to cause the police to suspect that the chief conspirators were then assembled at the unpretending house in the Acquedotto.

Everything seemed to have been done to make the enterprise a success; and all that remained was to wait for the moment of action. The cipher correspondence between Trieste and the principal cities of Hungary and Transylvania had almost ceased. There were now few messages for the pigeons to carry, because the last message had been taken. As money is the soul of war, so it is of conspiracies. It is important that conspirators have ample funds when the signal of uprising is given. And on this occasion the supply would not fail them.

We are aware that, although Zathmar and Bathory could sacrifice their lives for their country, they could not sacrifice their fortunes, inasmuch as their pecuniary resources were but meager. But Count Sandorf was immensely rich, and, in addition to his life, he had brought his whole fortune to the help of the cause. For many months, through the agency of his steward, Lendeck, he had mortgaged his estates, and thereby raised a considerable sum—more than 2,000,000 of florins.

But it was necessary that this money should always be at call, and that he could draw it at any moment. And so he had deposited it in his own name in one of the banks of Trieste, whose character was above suspicion. This bank was Toronthal's, of which Sarcany and Zirone had been talking in the cemetery on the hill.

This circumstance was fraught with the gravest consequences, as will be seen in the course of this history. Something was said about this money at Sandorf's last interview with Zathmar and Bathory. He told them that it was his intention to call on Toronthal and give him notice that the cash might be wanted immediately.

Events had so progressed that Sandorf would soon be able to give the expected signal from Trieste—more especially as this very evening he discovered that Zathmar's house was the object of very disquieting surveillance.

About eight o'clock, as Sandorf and Bathory went out, one to go home to the Corso Stadion and the other to his hotel, they noticed two men watching them in the shadows and following them at such a distance and in such a way as to avoid detection.

Sandorf and his companion, in order to see what this might mean, boldly marched straight on to these suspicious characters, but before they could reach them they had taken flight and disappeared round the corner of Saint Antonio's Church, at the end of the canal.