RÁby no longer dreaded the poisoned food that he expected his gaoler to bring him, but next morning, strange to say, Janosics appeared with empty hands and a malicious leer on his ill-favoured features.

"Do I have no food to-day?" asked the prisoner.

"Yes, indeed, my dear friend, from to-day you live like a prince. No more bread and water for you, but just a jolly good dinner of the best, and as much red wine as you like. And your fetters are to come off, and you are to be moved into better quarters. You know, I daresay, as well as I can tell you, what all this means."

RÁby shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, it means that to-day your death-sentence is to be formally approved in court, and that the scaffold is your destination. Till then, you are to be kept in the condemned cell, and have everything you like as befits a criminal under sentence of death, and enjoy yourself while you may."

It was too true, and no jest. The locksmith came and filed off the prisoner's fetters once more, and then the barber shaved him, but the closeness with which his hair was cut, signified only too clearly it was the "toilet of the condemned."

They did not stand on ceremony, but just carried RÁby into the court (for he could not walk), to hear that the capital sentence against which he had previously appealed was now confirmed by the higher court, and that he must prepare to die forthwith.

He heard the decision with strange indifference, but all now he longed for, was that they should get it over as quickly as possible.

He was taken, not into his former cell, but into a small cheerful, well-warmed room, where a table stood spread with all the delicacies imaginable.

This was the "condemned cell," and to it many a kind-hearted housewife in those days was accustomed to send the pick of her larder, to provide a good dinner for those whose earthly meals were numbered—a form of charity at that time very much practised by the housekeepers of Pesth.

"Now, RÁby, you can eat and drink to your heart's content," cried Janosics. "But it's no good trying to take any away with you, remember." And the gaoler pushed the table to the couch, so as to be within the reach of the prisoner.

But RÁby had no appetite, and had other preoccupations than those of the table, to fill his mind just then.

Meanwhile, RÁby's message had not been forgotten by the heyduke to whom he had entrusted it. Old Abraham had taken it to the Emperor who, he heard, was laid up sick in the capital, and it had been promptly read and acted upon. Three days later, Colonel Lievenkopp, just appointed the commandant at Pesth, sought out the governor, and demanded immediate audience on urgent matters of state.

He had, in fact, a message from the Emperor. "Thanks, Colonel, leave it there; I'll read it later on; there's no hurry," said his Excellency, airily, on receiving the imperial missive.

"Unfortunately, there is hurry, your Excellency! I have orders to have the mandate read in my presence."

The words staggered the governor. He, the virtual, if not the nominal ruler of Hungary, to be spoken to like this, and to have the law laid down in this fashion to him!

"Hoity-toity! I have other things to do! Suppose, too, I am not inclined to read it?"

"Then your Excellency will permit me to observe that I am empowered to proceed to extreme measures. In the event of your Excellency not reading that letter at once, I am commissioned to call in half a dozen officers of public health who are waiting outside, with a regimental surgeon, for the purpose of placing your Excellency in a strait-waistcoat, and escorting you to Vienna under surveillance—you will guess whither?"The governor's face became crimson with rage.

"What do you say—For me, a strait-waistcoat? Me, the representative of the crown? Do you mean to say the Emperor said that, that he has written it? Impossible, man, impossible!"

And he tore the letter out of the envelope, and read its contents.

They were short, and his eyes became suddenly blood-shot as he read as follows:

"From to-day you are relieved of your office: make over your keys to the district commissioner at once.

"Joseph."