prove that the dying man had not said, "Dumány Nelly," but "Du mein
liebe"; yet there was the sworn statement of my drummers to the
contrary, as well as the evidence of his wife and children that the man
had been a devout and religious Jew, incapable of offending Jehovah by
uttering German words with his last breath. He had simply pronounced my
name in Jewish fashion, and eased his patriotic heart by voting for me.
Itzig Maikäfer's vote was as sound as a nut and could not be rejected.

Not quite so sound, however, was the other dead man's vote--that of Tóth
János, the potter. We had sent his substitute, the poultry-dealer, with
a cartload of odds and ends to Galicia, just to have him out of the way.
We managed to make it difficult to prove which of the two men named Tóth
János had been buried two days before election-day by providing for the
dead man's family, and sending them off to a remote place; and as the
poultry-dealer (who was a widower without any family) did not return
from Galicia for many weeks to come, everything seemed secure. But we
had reckoned without our host, and did not take into consideration a
possible treachery. The barber, a miserable wretch, whom we thought to
be a true red-feather man, and who had been more than liberally paid for
extracting the poultry-dealer's front teeth, and trimming his hair and
beard into the semblance of those of the dead potter, went and blabbed
of his work. A strict examination followed, the body of the potter was
exhumed, and his identity proved to a certainty. Of course, no one dared
to accuse me of foul play, but a new election was found necessary, and
the day after I had first taken my seat as a member of the Hungarian
Parliament, I was politely but firmly given to understand that I had no
legal right to its possession, and had better go. This is the story of
how I became to be called "the dead man's representative," and how I was
a colleague of yours for a single day.