From this time Panna was remarkably quiet and composed. She went about her usual work, attended to her household duties with her usual care, and seemed to think of the past no longer; at least she did not mention the painful incidents of which we are cognizant, either to her father or the gardener, who sometimes visited her, and when the latter once turned the conversation to them, she replied:
"Let us drop that; the matter is now in the right hands; another head is considering it, and we need no longer rack our brains about it."
The gardener understood what she meant, and her father only half heard these mysterious words without pondering over their thoroughly enigmatical meaning.
Thus six weeks passed away and the end of January was approaching when, one Sunday afternoon, the pastor unexpectedly entered Panna’s hut. Without giving the astonished woman time for a remark, he sat down on the bench near the stove by her side, and said:
"Do not wonder, my child, that I have come again, after you so deeply offended and insulted me. I must not bear malice. It is my office to forgive wrong, and I would fain have you follow my example."
Panna gazed silently into her lap, but the priest continued in a voice which grew more and more gentle and insinuating.
"You see, you are still indulging your savage, pagan vengeance, and committing all sorts of follies which will yet ruin you. What is the use of it? Let the dead rest, and think of the living, of yourself, your future. What is the meaning of your going to the king and giving him a crazy petition----"
"What, do you know that, too?" cried Panna turning pale; she felt as if every drop of blood had gone back to her heart. "So the gardener tattled? Oh, fie! fie!"
"Nonsense, the gardener! We don’t need the gardener for that. The petition has come from the king’s cabinet to the office of the Home Secretary, which sent it through the county to the parish, that we might give a report of your mental condition. From your petition, you are believed to be insane, and that is fortunate, or you would be punished for contempt of court."
Panna clenched her teeth till the grinding sound could be heard, and obstinately persisted in her silence.
"Of course I know that your head is clear, only your heart is hardened, and I will pray to God that He may soften it. Herr von Abonyi is a very different Christian. You need not look at me so angrily, what I say is true. You know that he has great and powerful friends; it would cost them only a word, and he would be pardoned. They wished to appeal to the king in his behalf, but he would not permit them to take a step for him. He repents his deed, he has received a just punishment, and he wished to endure this sentence to the final moment. Through me, he entreats your forgiveness, he does not wish you and your father to remain his enemies, when he has penitently borne the punishment. You will probably owe it to him, if you have no unpleasant consequences to bear on account of your petition. You see how a man of principle and generosity behaves! And then, remember what I told you before: Herr von Abonyi is ready to provide for you all your life, as no one in your family was ever supported. Well, do you say nothing to all this? Have I nothing to tell the nobleman from you?" The pastor rose, laid his hand upon her shoulder, and looked her in the face.
Panna shrunk from the touch of his fat fingers, brushed them off, and said:
"Tell him it is all very well and we will see."
"Nothing else?"
"Nothing else."
The priest departed with an unctuous farewell, and left Panna alone. She remained motionless in the same position, with bent head, her hands resting nervelessly in her lap, her eyes staring into vacancy. So her father found her when, half an hour after, he returned from the parish tavern. When she saw him, she started from her stupor, rushed to him, and exclaimed amid a violent flood of tears:
"Father, it was all in vain, there is no justice on earth."
In reply to the astonished old man’s anxious questions, she told him, for the first time, the story she had hitherto kept secret of her petition to the king, and the pitiful result of this final step.
Her father listened, shaking his head, and said:
"You see if, instead of acting on your own account, you had first asked my advice, you would have saved yourself this fresh sorrow. I could have told you that you would have accomplished nothing with the king."
Now, for the first time in many weeks, the old man again began to speak of the matter which had never ceased to occupy Panna’s whole mind. He was choleric, and capable of a hasty deed of violence when excited, but he was not resentful; he was not the man to cherish anger long, and had already gained sufficient calmness to view Abonyi’s crime more quietly and soberly. He represented to his daughter that it would be folly to demand the nobleman’s life from the king in exchange for Pista’s.
Panna answered sullenly that she did not perceive the folly; did her father think that a peasant’s life was less valuable than a gentleman’s?
"That isn’t the point now. You must consider that the master did not kill your Pista intentionally."
"Stop, Father, don’t tell me that. He did kill him intentionally. I don’t care whether the purpose existed days or minutes before, but it was there; else he would not have sent for the revolver, he would not have aimed the weapon, touched the trigger, or discharged it."
"Even admitting that you are right, he has been punished for it."
Panna laughed bitterly. "Six months! Is that a punishment?"
"For a gentlemen like him, it’s a heavy one. And he will provide for you."
"Do you, too, talk as the priest does, father? You ought to know me better. Do you really believe that I would bargain over Pista’s life for beggerly alms? I should be ashamed ever to pass the churchyard where the poor fellow lies."
"You are obstinate, Panna. I see very plainly where you are aiming. You always say you want justice, but it seems to me that what you want is vengeance."
Panna had never made this distinction, because she was not in the habit of analyzing her feelings. But when her father uttered the word, she reflected a moment, and then said: "Perhaps so."
Yet she felt that it really was not vengeance which she desired, and she instantly added:
"No, Father, you are not exactly right, it is not revenge. I should no longer be enraged against Herr von Abonyi if I could believe that the law, which punished what he has done with six months' imprisonment, would for instance have punished you also with six months, if you had committed the same crime. But it cannot be the law, or they would not have shot Marczi for his little offence, you would not have been imprisoned three months for a few innocent blows. It is easy to tell me that the case is different. Or is there perhaps a different law for peasants and for gentlemen? If that is so, then the law is wicked and unjust, and the peasants must make their own."
The old man did not notice the errors and lack of logic in Panna’s words, but he was probably startled by her gloomy energy.
"Child, child," he said, "put these thoughts out of your head. I have done so too. If I could have laid hands on the murderer at first—may God forgive me—I believe that Pista would not have been buried alone. But now that is over, and we must submit. After all, six months' imprisonment is not so small a matter as you suppose. You need only ask me, I know something about it. Oh, it is hard to spend a winter in a fireless cell, busy all day in dirty, disagreeable work, shivering at night on the thin straw bed till your heart seems to turn to ice in your body, and your teeth chatter so that you can’t even swear, to say nothing of the horrible vermin, the loathsome food, the tyrannical jailers—a grave in summer is almost better than the prison in winter."