This individual remained standing at the door, while
Abonyi took his seat on the wooden bench and the lawyer in his chair.
Abonyi had bowed to the court when he entered, and now cast a searching
glance at the spectators. But he involuntarily started and hastily
averted his head, without noticing the smiling greetings of his
friends, for the first things he beheld were Panna's flashing black
eyes, which had pierced him when he first appeared, and which he
actually seemed to feel burning through his clothes, and consuming his
body, as he turned away from them.
Panna was intensely excited; her heart throbbed violently and her
eyebrows contracted in a gloomy frown. Abonyi's appearance had
destroyed a large share of her consoling and soothing illusions. She
had had a vague idea that he would be brought in in some humiliating
convict garb, perhaps with handcuffs or even with his feet chained, and
sit between two soldiers with fixed bayonets, deserted, humble,
penitent. Instead of that she saw Abonyi just as she was in the habit
of seeing him, attired in an elegant black suit, smoothly-shaved and
carefully combed, with plump cheeks and smiling lips, head erect and
bold eyes, more distinguished in appearance than any one inside the
rail, without the slightest token in aspect and bearing which could
mark him as a man charged with a heinous crime, in short here, just as
in his village, thoroughly the _grand seigneur_.
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