and any Jew who failed to wear this distinctive garb was fined four deniers. There was little scope for trade. Merchants, shop-keepers and brokers bought and sold for ready-money only; no one might incur debt save in pawning; and if the customer failed to pay up, the pledge was forfeited. Thus there was no call for legal aid. If the citizens had a quarrel, they carried their difference to the magistrate to be adjusted, and both parties had to be satisfied with his decision, no counsel being necessary. Affairs of honour and criminal cases however were referred to the exchequer, with a principal attorney and a vice-attorney for the prosecution and for the defence.
At that time, there was in what is now Grenadier Street, a single-storied house opposite the "hop-garden." This house was the County Assembly House whence the provincial jurisdiction was exercised. It had been the Austrian barracks, till finally, Maria Theresa promoted it to the dignity of a law-court, and caused a huge double eagle with the Hungarian escutcheon in the middle, to be painted thereon; from which time, no soldier dare set foot in its precincts. Here it was only permitted to the civilians and the prisoners confined there to enter. Only the part of the building which faced east was then standing: this wing comprised the officials' rooms and the subterranean dungeons.
The magnates carried on their petty local dissensions, aided by their own legal wisdom alone, yet every Hungarian nobleman was an expert in jurisprudence in his own fashion. There were even women who had proved themselves quite adepts in arranging legal difficulties. The Hungarian constitution allowed the right to the magnate who did not wish the law to take its course, of forcibly staying its execution, and the same prerogative was extended to a woman land-owner. The commonweal also demanded that each one should strive to make as rapid an end as possible to lawsuits. Long legal processes were adjusted so that there should be time for the judge as well as the contending parties to look after building and harvest operations, as well as the vintage and pig-killing. On these occasions lawsuits would be laid aside so as not to interfere with such important business.
But if the tax-paying peasant was at variance with his fellow-toiler, the local magistrate, and the lord of the manor, were arbitrators. So here likewise there was no room for a lawyer.
But when the peasant had ground of complaint against his betters, he had none to take his part. There was, however, one man willing to fill the breach, although he had been up to this time little noticed, and that man was Rab Ráby—or to give him his full title of honour, "Mathias Ráby of Rába and Mura."
He it was who was the first to realise the ambition of becoming on his own account the people's lawyer in the city of Pesth—and this without local suffrages or the active support of powerful patrons—but only at the humble entreaty of those whose individual complaints are unheard, but in unison, become as the noise of thunder.
The representative of this new profession did Ráby aim at being. It was for this men called him "Rab Ráby," though he had, as we shall see, to expiate his boldness most bitterly.
In what follows, the reader will find for the most part, a true history of eighteenth century Pesth. It will be worth his while to read it, in order to understand how the world wagged in the days when there was no lawyer in Pesth and Buda. Moreover, it will perhaps reconcile him to the fact that we have so many of them to-day!
CHAPTER I.
They sit, the worshipful government authorities of Pesth, at the ink-bespattered green table in the council room of the Assembly House, the president himself in the chair; close beside him, the prefect, whom his neighbour, the "overseer of granaries," was doing his best to confuse by his talking. On his left is an empty chair, beside which sits the auditor, busy sketching hussars with a red pencil on the back of a bill. Opposite is the official tax-collector whose neck is already quite stiff with looking up at the clock to see how far it is from dinner-time. The rest of the party are consequential officials who divide their time between discussing fine distinctions in Latinity, and cutting toothpicks for the approaching mid-day meal.
The eighth seat, which remains empty, is destined for the magistrate. But empty it won't be for long.
And indeed it is not empty because its owner is too lazy to fill it, but because he is on official affairs intent in the actual court room, whereof the door stands ajar, so that although he cannot hear all that is going forward, he can have a voice in the discussion when the vote is taken.
From the court itself rises a malodorous steam from the damp sheepskin cloaks, the reek of dirty boots and the pungent fumes of garlic—a combined stench so thick that you could have cut it with a knife. Peasants there are too there in plenty, Magyars, Rascians, and Swabians: all of whom must get their "viginti solidos," otherwise their "twenty strokes with the lash."
For to-day is the fourth session of the local court of criminal appeal. On this day, the serious cases are taken first, and after the death-sentences have been passed, come a succession of lesser peasant offenders for judgment.
Some have broken open granaries, others have been guilty of assaults, but there are three main groups. To one of these belong the settlers from Izbegh who have been convicted of gathering wood in the forests of the nobles. The second section embraces those culprits who were artful enough during the vintage to cover the ripe grapes over with earth, (so that the magnates should be cheated out of their tithes), and to evade the heydukes who kept watch and ward over the vintagers. Thirdly, there were the offenders who had formed a deputation to the chancery court, and dared to pray for a revision of the public accounts for the past twenty-five years, a request at once temerarious and stupid, for twenty-five years is a long time—long enough indeed for accounts to become rotten and worm-eaten. But that they were in sufficiently good order, the revenue for this particular year, 1783, testified, seeing it amounted to sixty thousand gulden, of which six thousand were paid to the ground landlord, and two thousand towards the internal expenses of the province, with a balance in hand of fifty-two thousand gulden—not an extravagant outlay, surely!
But what remains for the peasant?
Why just those twenty strokes with the lash. These solve the question of "plus" and "minus."
The presiding judge, Mr. Peter Petray, only records his vote through the door, but he himself is doing his official part, for from the window of the adjoining room he superintends the sentences carried out in the improvised court below. There are the prisoners in the dock on whom the vials of justice are being poured forth. They are by no means a contemptible study either for the psychologist or the ethnographer. The Rascians are the defaulters against the vintage rights, and loudly they shriek and curse as the blows are administered, whilst the outragers of the forestry laws are mostly Swabians, who take advantage of the pauses between the lashes roundly to abuse the overseer. But there are many other delinquents besides in that motley crowd, who simply clench their teeth and await their chastisement.
But the eye of the law must itself watch over the execution of judgment, so that nothing in the shape of an understanding between the heyduke and the culprit, tending to mollify the punishment, may be arrived at. Much depends on how the blows are laid on. Not only does the sentence provide that the due number of lashes may be fulfilled, but likewise that the strokes should be heavy. It is for this that the judge, if he sees the heyduke falter in his work, urges him on to harder blows, by calling out "Fortius!"
But Judge Petray knows how to combine duty and pleasure. For Fräulein Fruzsinka, the niece of the prefect, is also in the room, and their whispered confidences and languishing glances show that the judge and the young lady have not met here to discuss simply official questions.
Whilst the notary in the next room is reading the indictment in a loud enough tone for Petray to be able to follow him, this dignitary manages to interpolate various interesting "asides" to his companion amid the fire of cross questions, and only calls out his vote when asked for it.
Only the prefect cannot just now leave his post as assessor, and it is impossible for him to see all that goes on. In the pauses therefore between the blows, the flirtation between these two goes on merrily.