Tengelyi is about fifty years of age, though his thin locks sprinkled with flakes of grey, and the deep wrinkles with which Time has marked his forehead, would cause you to think him older; but then he is like a sturdy oak, with gnarled roots and branches bearing witness to its age, while its leaves are still fresh and green, and show that there is a strong and hearty life in it. Tengelyi's manly form and erect bearing under his silvery locks, and his shining eyes beneath his wrinkled forehead, bespeak him at once as a man whom Time has not broken, but steeled,--and who, like colours that have seen many a battle-field, in the course of years, had lost nothing but his ornaments.
The man who, sitting at Tengelyi's side, counts the petals of a flower, while his eyes are directed to the blue mountain-tops of Tokay looming in the distance, appears still more advanced in age, and his mild and regular features form a striking contrast to the severity which is the leading characteristic of Tengelyi's face. That face exhibits the traces of fiery passions and fierce contentions, which, though soothed into oblivion, might still under circumstances break forth afresh; while Vandory's features might be likened to a clear sky, on which the passing storm has left no trace. Vandory's appearance needs no aid from his clerical dress to inform you that you accost one of those men whom God has sent to represent his mercy upon earth. The notary's bearing shows an honest man, who had but little happiness in the world,--while Vandory is a living demonstration of the old adage, that virtue is its own reward, even in this world of ours.
Vandory at length interrupted the silence which the two friends had observed for the last half-hour, by saying, "Where are your thoughts, my friend?"
"I scarcely know," was Tengelyi's reply. "I thought of my youth,--of Heidelberg,--of my career as a 'jurat.' Do you sometimes think of Heidelberg? _I_ do; and whenever my thoughts return to the green mountains and the bright rivers of that country, I feel inclined to quarrel with fate for casting my lot in this desolate champaign."
"Do not, I pray, abuse our country," said Vandory, smiling. "What can be greener than this meadow? Is not that river beautiful, flowing as it does among the reeds? And what can be more striking than the far steeples and the mountains of Tokay? As for the blue sky and the rays of the setting sun, they are beautiful anywhere. You are very unjust, sir, and that is the long and the short of it."
