se: but I have brought
four stone-workers with me, who, according to the judgment of the Court,
are to erase all those pictures."

"Genuine iconoclasm!" guffawed Topandy, who found great amusement in
arousing a whole county against him by his caprices. "Iconoclasts!
Picture-destroyers!"

"There is something else we are going to destroy!" continued the
magistrate. "In that place there was a crypt. What has become of it?"

"It is a crypt still."

"What is in it?"

"What is usually in a crypt: dead men of hallowed memory, who are lying
in wooden coffins and waiting for the great awakening."

The magistrate made a face of doubt. He did not know whether to believe
or not.

"And when you and your revelling companions hold your Bacchanalia
there?"

"I object to the word 'Bacchanalia.'"

"True, it is still more. I should have used a stronger expression for
that riot, when in scandalous undress, carrying in front a steak on a
spit, the whole company sings low songs such as 'Megalljon Kend'[31]
and 'Hetes, nyloczas,'[32] and in this guise makes scandalous
processions from castle to cloister."

[Footnote 31: "Stop (you)," "Kend" being the pleasant abbreviation for
"Kegyed," one method of addressing (literally "your grace"),
corresponding to our "you."]

[Footnote 32: "Seven and eight," referring to the number on the playing
cards: the Austrian National Hymn is sung by great patriots to these
words: the "king" and "ace" being the highest two cards, come together;
and this is in Magyar kiraly (king), diszno (ace); is also "swein."]

"The authorities must indeed be greatly embittered against me, if they
see anything scandalous in the fact that a body of good-humored men
undress to the skin, when they are warm. As far as the so-called low
songs are concerned, they have such innocent words, they might be
printed in a book, while the melodies are very pious."

"The scandal is just that, that you parody pious songs, setting them to
trivial words. Tell me what is the good of singing the eight cards of
the pack[33] as a hymn. And if you are in a good humor, why do you go
with it to the crypt?"

[Footnote 33: In Magyar cards the pack begins with the 7.]

"You know we go there for a little mumony feast."

"Yes, for a little 'Mumon,'" interrupted the lawyer.

"That's just what I meant," said the atheist, laughing.

"What?" roared the magistrate, who now began to understand the enigma of
the dead lying in their wooden c