Others accused the King, the Kunok, and other foreign guests who had lately arrived at the Court of Pest.
Some of these, the most timorous, actually wanted to force the King to send an embassy to the Great Khan, offering him an annual tribute and other shameful conditions.
Béla was a courageous man, and a true Magyar and king in the best sense of the words. He was calm, brave, and energetic. He saw through the cowards and despised their accusations; for it is the poltroon who is ever the first to accuse others of cowardice, and there is, moreover, one thing which he can never pardon--the being discovered trembling by men braver than himself.
King Béla paid no heed to the wagging of these many tongues, and himself went all round the eastern frontiers of the kingdom, to see personally to the defences. His plans were well considered and well adapted to the object in view. They failed in one point only, but that a fatal one--they were never carried out!
On the King's return to Pest, he found the capital given up to festivity. Nearly every noble in the place must be giving entertainments. If there was a banquet at one house to-day, there was one at another to-morrow. There was no trace of any preparations for war or defence, though there was plenty of nervous alarm.
Shortly after his arrival, the King called a Council, and the heads of Church and State met in a spacious hall often used for Court balls and assemblies, now presenting a very different appearance, and with its walls draped in sober green cloth.
The King was seated in a canopied armchair raised above the rest, and he wore a white silk mantle, with a clasp something like the ancient Roman fibula, but set with precious stones. On his head was a crown, simple but brilliant, in his hand he held a golden war-club, and from the plain leather belt which confined his white dolmány at the waist, there hung a long, straight sword, with a hilt in the form of a large cross.
The Council consisted of about sixty members, some wearing their ecclesiastical vestments, and others the long Hungarian dolmány. Of all those present no one looked so entirely calm as the King, and those who knew him best could read firm resolve in his face.