onsisted almost exclusively of his relatives and
friends, elected him president of the tribune[1] of his district.

Now he could imagine himself transported back to the fine old feudal
times before the March revolution. The peasants were again obliged to
raise their hats humbly to him, his hand dispensed justice and mercy,
the ancestral rod was brandished at his sign, and the whipping bench, a
pleasing symbol of his power, always stood ready below the windows of
his castle. When he drove through the country on official business or
pleasure, his carriage was drawn by four horses with a harness hung
with bells; if a peasant's cart was in the way and did not hasten at
the sound of the familiar little bells to move out, the heiduck in
coloured livery, with a sword at his side, sitting by the driver,
shouted an order and an oath to the laggard, and the coachman, while
dashing by, dealt the disrespectful loiterer a well-aimed blow. He
might even fare still worse if the humor happened to seize the grandee
in the spring carriage.

It would no longer do to get the village Jew and have him flogged for
pastime on long afternoons; but there were still gipsies who were
summoned to the castle to make sport for the noble lord. They played
their bewitching melodies, and if he was filled with genuine delight,
he gave the fiddlers, right and left, an enthusiastic slap in the face
which echoed noisily, then took a banknote from his pocket-book, spit
upon it and clapped it on the swollen cheeks of the howling gipsies,
whereupon they again grinned joyfully and played on with two-fold
energy.

Although Abonyi was a pattern magistrate, at the second election, which
according to the old county system, occurred every three years, he
suffered defeat. Political party considerations and government
influence sustained another candidate. So Abonyi was again relegated
to private life, but his birth and the office he had filled gave him
sufficient personal distinction to induce his village, immediately
after, to compensate him in some degree for his overthrow by a
unanimous election to the position of parish magistrate.

This gentleman, with whose course of life and prominent personal
characteristics we are now familiar, went one hot August afternoon to
the stables, which formed the back of the courtyard, to inspect the
horses and carriages, as was his custom.

Abonyi was in a very bad humour that day, for there had been a violent
dispute