petition of that farce which took place ten years ago, when you drew
lots as to who was to dance with the white elephant."

I saw Gyali turn as white as paper.

"What farce?" he panted, beginning to rise from his chair.

"You always were a jesting boy, Pepi: at that time you made me draw lots
for you, and told me to put both the one I had drawn and the other in
the grate: but instead of doing so I threw the dance programme in the
fire, and put those papers aside and kept them. You, instead of your
own, wrote my brother's name on the paper, and so whichever was drawn,
Lorand Aronffy must have come out of the hat. Look, the two lottery
tickets are still in my possession, those same two pieces of paper, a
sheet of note paper torn in two, both with the same name on them, and on
the other side the writing of Madame Balnokhazy."

Gyali rose from his seat like one who had seen a ghost, and gazed at me
with a look of stone.

Yet I had not threatened him. I had merely playfully jested with him. I
smilingly spread out the two pieces of lilac-colored papers, which so
exactly fitted together.

But Lorand with flashing eyes glared at him, and as the dignified
upright figure stood opposite him, threw the contents of the glass he
held in his hand into the fellow's face, so that the red wine splashed
all over his laced white waistcoat.

Gyali with his serviette wiped from his face the traces of insult and
with dignified coldness said:

"With men in such a condition no dispute is possible. We cannot answer
the taunts of drunken men."

Therewith he began to back towards the door.

Everybody, in amazement at this scene, allowed him to go: for all the
world as if everyone had suddenly begun to be sober, and at the first
surprise no one knew how to think what should now happen.

But I ... I was not drunk. I had no need to become sober.

I leaped up from my place, with one bound came up to the departing man,
and seized him before he could reach the door, just as a furious tiger
fastens up a miserable dormouse.

"I am not drunk! I have never drunk wine, you know," I cried losing all
self-restraint, and pressing him against the wall so that he shivered
like a bat.--"I shall be the one to throw that cursed forgery in your
face, miserable wretch!"

And I know well that that single blow would have been the last chapter
in his life--which would have been a great pity, not as far as he was
concerned, but for my own sake--had not He