Eyes Like the Sea: A Novel

"'All this they may do if they like, and yet this lady of mine will convey the despatch into the fortress.'

"'I should like to know her secret.'

"''Tis a very simple one. She will learn the whole despatch by heart from beginning to end.'

"The General began to laugh.

"'Oho ho! My dear friend, you don't suppose that we would entrust our couriers with a despatch in good Hungarian for the enemy to snap it up on the way, and thus learn all about our military operations. It may also be deliberately betrayed. In the times in which we now live men are quick enough to discover excuses for changing their saddles. This despatch contains all our secrets: where we are strong, where we are weak, where we want to assume the offensive, where we are obliged to stand on the defensive. Such a despatch would be worth 200,000 florins to the enemy at the very least.'

"'I can assure you, General, that neither I nor this lady will betray it.'

"'You couldn't if you would, for the whole despatch is in cipher. Take it, and look at it. Do you understand a word of it? Can any one possibly learn it by heart?'

"The writing which he placed in my hand was composed of a jumble of letters grouped into words—characters whose contents could scarcely be called language at all. I nevertheless assured the General that this lady of mine would learn the despatch off by heart all the same.

"''Tis impossible.'

"'Nothing is impossible. Once, when we were actors ...'

"'Then you were actors? And this lady was an actress too, eh?'

"'Yes. Once our whole company went to Eszek, and there we acted a whole piece in the Croatian tongue without understanding a word of its meaning. A man is like a starling. If he repeats a thing a hundred times it remains in his head although he does not understand it.'

"'Look here, then! Read but two lines of this despatch a hundred times over, half an hour will do, and see if it remains in your head.'

"I consented. A quarter of an hour had not yet elapsed when I said that I was ready. I gave the General the despatch back again, and asked for ink and paper. And then slowly, meditatively, I wrote down the contents of those two lines letter by letter.

"'You've got a marvellous headpiece,' said the General, in amazement. 'And has that lady of yours just such a marvellously retentive capacity as you have?'

"'Just the same.'

"'Then I consider the stratagem as feasible.'"

Here I could not help leaping to my feet. "What!" cried I, "you actually undertook to learn by heart a whole despatch written in cipher?"

"No, my sweet friend! I won't deceive you as I deceived that other man. The whole thing was a delusion. The cryptograms which reached the Commandant of the fortress were entrusted to Rengetegi, that he might unpod them with a secret key. He communicated this key to me. One had only to know a single word whose consecutive letters repeat all the characters of the alphabet in different series. The whole thing only required a little calculation; there was no need to rack one's brains about it. With the assistance of the secret key I first of all deciphered the cipher, and then I retransferred it into its original rigmarole."

"But are you aware," I interrupted, "that if the General had found you out, he would have had you shot on the spot?"

"I suspected as much. But he suspected nothing. He was really a good, worthy man. He said that things being as they were, he could safely confide the despatch to my hands.

"After that he pointed out to me on the military map the route I ought to take through Galicia, by which I should possibly avoid falling in with the enemy's squadrons. My passport in the name of Madame János Bagotay he filled up with his own hand. I begged him to leave a blank space for the personal description of my travelling companion.

"When this was ready he gave me a portfolio full of Austrian bank-notes, besides a hundred louis d'ors and a handful of silver money.

"Then he pressed my hand, and said: 'The last line of this despatch announces the promotion of Captain Rengetegi to the rank of major.'"

At this both Bessy and I laughed heartily, and then she merrily resumed her story as follows:—

"My return journey was in a much more lordly fashion. Everywhere relays were waiting for me. In a couple of days I reached Vienna. While still in Comorn, I had learnt that my mother had gone there for refuge, and still kept up her intimacy with a certain high official in the Imperial army. He was in the service of the War Minister there. It was not difficult to find him. I will leave you to picture to yourself the scene of our meeting. My mother loves acting, but she is a bad player, she never knows her part. She would have liked to have cried and fainted when I came rushing in, but she got no further than sobbing. I was all the better able to play my part. I hastened to excuse her for her behaviour at our last meeting. I took all the blame on myself. I ought to have remembered, I said, that it was not the proper thing to cling on to my mother's carriage when the infuriated populace was seeking her life. Then I went on to the motive of my coming there. The Hungarian Governmental Commission at Comorn had ordered that every Austrian bank-note which could be laid hands upon was to be burnt in the middle of the market-place. My mother had 40,000 florins in bank-notes, which the Orphanage Fund had retained from my patrimony. This amount had been lent out to various persons at interest. These persons, as soon as they heard of the order of the Governmental Commission, had hastened to deposit their German bank-notes—not in the fortress, but in the town bank, that they might at least get back their securities; and thus it was our money that would be burnt. That was why I had come at such a break-neck pace, I said. If my mother would give me a power of attorney for the purpose, I would immediately return, and as I had great influence with the Commandant, I would so manage that our money instead of being burnt should be handed over to me. After that I would settle with my mother. She also had money locked up there which I would get handed over to me.

"This proposition made an impression.

"I had already informed my mother by letter of all this when communications were freer than now, but she, as all nervous people do with their letters, the moment she recognised my handwriting in the address, put it away without opening it. She fancied it was full of maudlin penitence. Now, however, when I called her attention to this letter, she took it out and opened it, and almost fainted with terror when she saw the annexed official communication of the Governmental Commission, and learnt therefrom that the term fixed for the bonfire of the Austrian bank-notes would be reached in three days.

"Then there was such a scampering to her good friend the high official, and to all sorts of high commanding officers, in order to procure for me a safe-conduct; then she got me a power of attorney neatly written out, by means of which I could reclaim her money, and then she said: 'Now, don't wait a moment, my darling girl, but jump into a fiacre and gallop off to Comorn.'

"I found my journey back much freer from obstacles than my coming away. The self-same major of cuirassiers who would have had me flogged as a gipsy leader was now full of courtesy towards me. After reading my letter of introduction, in which the object of my journey was mentioned, he could not have the slightest doubt that I was about purely private business which was very pressing. He did not even have me searched. I could have smuggled into the fortress anything I liked.

"When I had passed through the besieging lines, I turned off from the highway in the direction of Hetény, that I might seek out my captive.

"After the first delights of meeting each other again were over, I told him the whole story which I have just been telling you. I must say that I had a much more appreciative audience than you are. At the sensational scenes, he flung himself on the ground ... and with folded, uplifted hands implored the wolves not to devour me. He swore that if he caught the Ban of Croatia he would dance the life out of him for making me fiddle so unmercifully. When I dictated to him the despatch I had learnt by heart, by means of the secret key, the last lines of which contained his promotion to the rank of major, he exclaimed, with an irresistible burst of grateful emotion: 'My Queen! my Zenobia!' I had made him a major; he made me a queen. We were quits.

"'And now let us hasten to the fortress,' I said, 'for I have urgent business there. I want to save my property. Our house has been burnt already; if our money is burnt too, we shall be beggars.' This made him hasten.

"'I must, however,' said he, 'devise something to round off my expedition, something of the quality of a heroic deed.'

"And by the time we reached the fortress he had devised something.

"The return of the courier with the despatch of the Hungarian Commander-in-chief created an extraordinary sensation in the fortress and spread even to the town. The Commandant immediately proclaimed that Captain Tihamér Rengetegi had been promoted to the rank of Major by the Hungarian War Minister for extraordinary services.

"A banquet in honour of the returning hero followed. All the officers were present. The ladies also took part in it. I was there too. Never had I seen Bálványossi (I beg his pardon, Rengetegi) play his part in so masterly a manner as on that evening. He was the gipsy leader who, with three others, fiddled his way right through every hostile camp. And what amusing adventures befell him on the road! I believe he laid under contribution every book of gipsy anecdote that was ever published. And when he came to that ghastly scene with the wolves—that was indeed a drastic description. The reality was nothing like so horrible as his account of it. The ladies swooned, the men were horror-stricken, only I was inclined to laugh. And when the guerillas turned up, how valiant my Rengetegi became all at once! He took horse and started off in pursuit of the cuirassiers. (To him they were cuirassiers!) It would have been beneath his dignity to have chased mere hussars.... By way of climax came the splendid description of how he cut his way through the besieging host. In the dark night, amidst a blinding blackness of midnight snow-storm, he cut his way on horseback through the Austrian foreposts, leaping over trenches and earth-works, with the bullets skimming about his ears right and left. His horse was shot dead beneath him, but ever equal to the occasion, he hastily fastened on his skates, and skated with the rapidity of lightning over the frozen Zsitva and the Csiliz, and two other rivers the names of which I never heard of before. Thus at last he reached the fortress. Every one was enchanted with the narration. The ladies rose en masse and kissed him, and improvised a laurel-wreath for his brows out of muscatel leaves.

"To save appearances, I also went up to him that I might condole with and congratulate him upon all the exploits and sufferings he had gone through, when all at once my friend turned quite stiff and rigid, gave me a cold bow, pursed his lips, and turned up the whites of his eyes.

"'Madame!' said he, 'I have a word or two to say to you also. Where were you, may I ask, while I was jeopardizing my life a hundred times every day for my country? Can you tell me how you were occupying your days all this while?'

"I was confounded. Language died away on my lips. The blood rushed to my face. I felt that every one was now looking at me. Naturally nobody in Comorn had seen me all this time.

"'If what the world whispers turns out to be true, and you have in the meantime been to Vienna—but no! I will not believe it.'

"His magnanimity offended me even more than his indictment.

"'What is it to you whence I come or whither I go?' I replied, turning my back upon him and beginning to talk to the young officers, like one who has nothing to be ashamed of.

"Shortly afterwards I quitted the banqueting-room. I hadn't reached the end of the long pavilion corridor in the fortress when Rengetegi came running after me.

"'What on earth possessed you to calumniate and accuse me before the whole company,' I said to him, 'just as if I were a traitor, or I don't know what?'

"'Tsitt! Zenobia, my Queen. Let us understand each other. It was in your own interest that I had to feign jealousy and rage. Let us go into my room and I'll explain everything.'

"When we were alone together he locked the door and then explained things nicely.

"'It concerns your money.'

"'Aha!'

"'Amidst all this laudation, appreciation, and ovation, and all the other flummery, I did not lose sight of the main chance. I told the Governor privately that if he wished to reward me in any way, he might do me the favour not to give to the flames the property deposited in the bank to the credit of the damsel who was so near to my heart, but allow me to bring it back to her. The austere patriot was as inexorable as Brutus. "Never!" said he. "We will burn what we have laid hands upon, even though it were the property of my own father. We can make no exception. What would those poor devils say whose paltry ten or twenty florins we surrender to the flames of the auto-da-fé if we allowed the forty or fifty thousand florins of the rich to fly away? Burn they shall!" This he said with a very wrathful voice. Then he added in a milder tone: "However, I'll confide the burning of them to you."'

"Now I began to understand.

"'A quarrel between us therefore has become an absolute necessity. We must fly into a rage with each other. The auto-da-fé will take place in a couple of days. The bonfire will be in the centre of the public square. I shall throw the bundles of bank-notes one by one among the spluttering faggots. You must be close by the booths of the bread-sellers, and break out into curses. You remember the cursing scene from Deborah? Very well, it may be useful. After the auto-da-fé there must be a lively scene between us. We must cast our mutual souvenirs at each other's feet. I'll throw at you the embroidered cushion which you worked for my birthday, and inside it will be the money belonging to you and your mamma which I have rescued. Then be off as quick as you can to Vienna.'

"'But how about the packet that you have to burn?'

"'Leave that to me; a few copies of the Comorn News will give every bit as brisk a flame.'

"Everything happened according to his instructions. I saved our property, and you must admit that my friend and I displayed considerable prudence on this occasion. We did nobody any wrong: I only recovered what was my own.

"Then we fell out together publicly, as preconcerted. My friend Rengetegi played Othello in a masterly manner. Then as our acquaintances could not succeed in reconciling us, we solemnly separated and I went back to Vienna.

"On the way back I again fell in with the Austrian major. I showed him the money I brought with me, naturally without letting him know how I came by it. He became so friendly as even to entrust me with a letter to an old acquaintance of his in Vienna, who was none other than my mother's colonel....

"You may imagine the friendly reception which awaited me when I returned to Vienna and gave my mother her money. She folded me in her arms, covered me with kisses, bedewed me with tears, and called me her darling child. What still remained to me of my patrimony, about 40,000 florins, I placed in the Vienna savings-bank. The rest of my dower was in the hands of Muki Bagotay, with the exception of what we spent while we lived together. This also I contrived to get back again—but how?

"In the spring, when the fortune of the war changed, Comorn was relieved, and I hastened off home again. I told my mother that I was urgently bent upon building up again our burnt house—only the roof had been burnt off, the walls remained standing. She approved of my resolution, and was very proud of having such a sensible and enterprising daughter. I immediately set about rebuilding our house, taking advantage of the time which elapsed from the raising of the first to the beginning of the second siege. During my stay at Vienna I moved continually in military circles, and I saw quite plainly what was coming. But why reopen my wounds? All my illusions were over. I had learnt to know my hero at close quarters, behind the scenes, I might say. This 'lord of creation' used to whine before his tailor for a respite with his account till next pay-day, and immediately afterwards would ascend his triumphal car drawn by captive kings and declaim to the populace of conquered Constantinople. But in one particular thing Major Rengetegi really extorted my admiration, I mean by his strategical science."

"Ah!" cried I.

"You may well say 'ah!' I have read the campaigns of Napoleon I., I have read the campaigns of Charles XII., but in none of them could I discover so many ruses of war as my hero invented in order to triumphantly solve the problem—how a man in his capacity of superior officer may constantly be taking part in the most ticklish skirmishes without allowing his person to get into the way of any wandering bullet. He always knew how to hit upon some mission whereby he might manage to skedaddle out of danger. And if I now and then fluttered the red rag of self-esteem before his eyes, he would reply: 'I have duties towards art; if they shoot away half my leg, how shall I be able to act on the stage again?' Yet, when the battle was over, who so great a hero as he! Others only mowed down the enemy, he thrashed them afterwards with a flail. 'Tis a dreadful thing when a woman discovers that her hero is a habitual liar, lying with the fiery burning conviction that no man will dare to doubt him, so that she has to make him swear to the truth of every word he utters.

"Meanwhile, I continued my house-building. Every sort of building material was very dear, and there was plenty of money too. Whence did all this money come? I'll tell you. The Russian hosts had already invaded the kingdom. The speculator-species perceived that the national cause was declining. The Hungarian armies were everywhere falling back. Then Klapka, by a brilliant victory, raised the second siege of Comorn and was within an ace of capturing the besieging host. The region was instantly alive with people, and a whole series of triumphs followed one after another. And now there flocked to Comorn from every part of the kingdom quite a tribe of panic-stricken speculators and jobbers, with bags full of Hungarian bank-notes, and bought everything that was for sale, at whatever price the sellers liked to ask. My Muki also took advantage of this lucky period to regulate his finances. He sold his herds at four times their real value, and paid the price, in Hungarian bank-notes, into the deposit bank at Comorn. It was my dowry paid back, he said. The bank hastened to place the amount in my hands; and I hastened to satisfy therewith my architects and builders, who did not let the money stick to their hands.

"Doesn't this remind you of the round game we used to play as children, when we lit a straw, and, sitting in a circle, passed it round from hand to hand; whoever was the last to hold it till the fire burned his hands, him we used to thump unmercifully—that was the forfeit? Just such a burning straw was the dowry paid back to me by my husband. The roof of my father's house was the straw end which remained in my hands. The amount which I deposited in the Vienna bank is all I have left in the world—except Tihamér Rengetegi. But not even he has remained mine, for he has changed into Bálványossi. And now here we are together. The playing of a common part unites us. From morn to eve every word we say to one another is a lie. It is not even true that any one is pursuing Rengetegi, for at the capitulation of Comorn he received his safe-conduct which guarantees his life and liberty. That is not what distresses him. But he wishes to deny the whole part he played during the Revolution, that as Bálványossi, the theatre-director, he may get the necessary concession. He is continually urging me to go to Miskolcz to the Government Commissioner and settle the business for him."

"I understand."

"No, you don't. It is none of those interventions which we see in romances and dramas, when a pretty woman goes to move a mighty tyrant with her tears, and sacrifice her charms to him as the price of the life and liberty of her persecuted husband. Oh no! my hero is no plagiarist! His ideas are all original. He wants me to go to the mighty gentleman and tell him that the Debreczin expedition, which has given rise to the whole of this heroic poem, is not his 'crime,' but mine. I was the gipsy leader who played before the Ban Jellachich, and then escaped. It was I who carried the despatch to the Hungarian Government. In a word: I am to sacrifice myself on his account!"

"Fie! fie! And still you love this man!"

"What am I to do? I have nobody but him in the wide world; and besides, he is such a droll, amusing character. All day long we are either fighting or frolicking, and it is this variation which makes life so charming."

But for all that, she flung herself on the ground and hid her face in the green moss. She was in such a good humour!

"Sha'n't we give our friend a signal to come out of his hole?"

"He is quite comfortable—don't disturb him."

"I wonder you don't hit upon the very obvious idea of putting an end to this pantomimic game of hide and seek. You have a foreign passport. You could enter your friend in it under some such description as major-domo or travelling companion. You could take him with you to Naples or to Paris, and you could live without care on the interest of the fund deposited at the Vienna bank."

"I know that."

"Then why not do it?"

"Because I don't choose."

And as she said this she looked strangely at me with her enigmatically mysterious eyes, in which heaven and hell were blended together like starlight in darkness!

CHAPTER XIV

"Every career has its own peculiar maleficium—drowning awaits the sailor, shooting the soldier; the doctor may fall a victim to an epidemic; the glass-maker suffers from caries; choke-damp kills the miner; and he who meddles with politics runs a chance of being hanged or guillotined."

"No, no! They shall not do it!" she cried hoarsely, seizing my hand in both her own.

"I do not want them to do it," I said, "and that is why I am hiding myself here at the back of beyond."

"But how long is this to go on? What future do you see before you?"

"For the present I am like the convalescent beggar whose promenading does not go beyond the house-door. I thought of beginning a little farming in this valley and forgetting all my dreams of glory. I shall become an agriculturist."

"Very nice! And your wife?"

"She will join me."

"And you seriously think so? You think she'll come and settle down with you in a hut with a clay floor and a straw roof, like the one you are living in now."

"It's a palace compared with what we lived in in our Debreczin days. When my wife did the cooking—for we had no servant—we loved each other better than ever. In a little house loving hearts are nearer to each other than in a large palace."

"It was possible then, no doubt. I have experienced the same thing. But this is quite different. When a man has such brilliant hopes, want is no affliction. It will be over soon, he thinks. But to enter upon misery with the knowledge that it will last till death, is beyond the power of resignation. And particularly with a woman! Believe me, I know my own sex. Your wife, who now stands at the summit of her artistic fame, cannot quit her brilliant career. No! If you were an angel she could not."

I could not defend my point of view against her. Stern reality was on her side; on my side were only faith and imagination.

"I believe in my wife's promise to deliver me out of my difficult position."

"I can't imagine how. She cannot do what I can do for Bálványossi—in other words, accuse herself and say: 'It was not he who proclaimed freedom on March 15th. It was not he who wrote those heart-stirring articles to the nation. It was not he who edited those newspapers; not he who went to battle with the armies; not he who inspired the Honveds at the siege of Buda: but I.' Your wife cannot take your fault on her shoulders."

I couldn't help laughing.

"I would not let her."

"But let us suppose that a great artiste, a renowned beauty, might perhaps manage by some means or other to procure an amnesty for her hidden husband" (and as she said this she discharged murderous, envenomed darts at me from the corners of her eyes), "what will be your subsequent lot when you return to Pest as a rebel amnestied at the intercession of his wife? The earth and the sky which you used to adore have vanished. No poet, no newspaper, no publisher: what will you do? Will you enter a lawyer's office again to copy deeds, issue summonses, and serve writs at so much a day? Or will you translate comedies (under official protection) at fifty florins each for the National Theatre; or paint fashionable portraits of butchers' wives at five florins apiece? Or, perhaps, you'll do nothing at all, but live simply under the wing of your wife as 'the actress's husband,' and see a woman bending beneath the load of sustaining a household—accomplishing the most exhausting work; coming home after her day's acting is over, tired to death, excited, unstrung. See her, poorly though she be, hurry from one provincial town to another, acting uncongenial parts, so as to scrape together a little money wherewith to satisfy the Jews with whom she has to haggle for the material for her costumes. And the husband must look on at all this with his arms folded, or, if he does anything at all, may perhaps paint the flowers for her costumes, which she herself will then sew on with her own hands."

"It will not last for ever—other times will come."

"Other times! You think other times will come, eh? Now, that is what I fear most of all. I know you well. You are not the sort of man who can content himself with the thought—what is past is over! You will never forget what you used to be, still less what you meant to be. The glory of fame is not forgotten as easily as a pawned jewel. You will again fall into those straits from which you have been set free."

And the woman saw right into my soul. My face is so maladroit that it never could keep a secret. You can read my features like an open book. When I am frightened, it is vain for me to pretend that I am plucky. When I'm in a rage, it is useless for me to affect calmness—nobody is taken in by it. I cannot even haggle over a bargain properly, people can read from my face what I have to give. This woman could see where my soul was wandering in secret, far, far away, in a gloriously arisen Hungary of the future. And she regarded this talk of turning farmer as little more than the incoherent delirium of a fevered visionary.

"Let it be as you say," I said.... "If I live I will build a tower out of the ruins of my country's glory; if I die, my grave will become an altar. Vainly does this coward flesh of mine tremble in every nerve. I am neither a hero nor a giant. The report of a gun makes me tremble; I grow pale in the presence of death; grief draws tears from me—but I will not depart from my set path. If I cannot write under my own name, I will write under the name of my landlord's dog. I will be 'Sajó.'87 We'll bark if we can't speak, but we'll not be silent."

The lady, in terror, seized me by both arms.

"For Heaven's sake, take care! A step backwards, and you'll fall over the rock."

"But I don't mean to take a step backwards."

"Listen to me quietly. Don't fly into a rage. Sit down beside me. You need have no great fear of me. I am not a luring demon. I have not a word to say against what you've said. Do whatever your soul bids you. I ask for nothing more. Don't you believe that I've a good heart also?"

"I believe that you've a little too much heart."

"Perhaps all that my heart led me to do was sinful. I was mad. I was blind. Passion got hold of me; but the feeling I had for you would not have been out of place in heaven itself. When I am alone, I am always with you; and when I think of anything I think of you. I wish you to go onwards and upwards along the rugged path that you have entered upon; but can you do it here, with a leaden weight on your feet, a padlock on your mouth, and a strait jacket on your body?"

"'Tis because it is heavy that I must needs carry my burden."

"But how much more brilliant would be the success of your struggle if you could continue it on a foreign soil—in free France, for instance! Just think! If you were now to appear in Paris, the leaders of the French literature would receive you with open arms. The French public would enrol you among its great writers, and then you might write of the glory, the sufferings, and the heroic struggles of Hungary, and of the amiable qualities of its people; you might write all this with perfect freedom, from the very bottom of your heart, and millions and millions, the whole round world, would read your writings, and not merely a handful of people, as here at home. There you would be a rich man, here you are only a day-labourer. Here you might sing like a Tyrtæus, and the world outside would hear nothing of it; but if you raised your voice abroad in the midst of a great nation and a cosmopolitan capital, your voice would be like the horns of Joshua before the walls of Jericho."

Ah! how luring was the panorama.... To become a great French writer! To be raised aloft on the shoulders of the most glorious of nations! What here at home was but the crack of a whip in my hands, would there be a thunderbolt!

"But it is impossible," I objected. "How could I possibly force my way to the frontiers of France from the depths of Tordona, through my own country, through Austria, through Germany, without a passport, without money, in a semi-Asiatic garb? Just as well might I cast myself down from the mountain-top in the belief that I could fly."

"Well, come now, I have a very good plan to suggest to you. I've got an English passport. Have I not told you exactly how I got it? None besides yourself knows that I have it, except, of course, the officials who have viséd it on the way. In this passport the blank for my travelling companion has not yet been filled up. You asked me just now why I did not insert the name and description of Bálványossi. Now, I'll tell you. Nobody is pursuing him. I always intended to fill up that blank with your name. You won't have to sacrifice much beyond that little moustache and beard of yours, and resigning yourself to speak nothing abroad but French and German. I appoint you my secretary. I myself am an English lady. We mustn't go viâ Vienna. But the way is clear in the direction of Breslau. I have quite enough money for us both. I still retain the hundred ducats which I received at Debreczin. We shall do sumptuously with this till we get to Paris. My capital in the Vienna bank I can leave where it is, or I may have it sent after me, and the interest from it will suffice for your modest needs at the beginning of your residence at Paris, so that you will not have to resort to the emigrants' fund. When once you have won a position for yourself in Continental literature you will need no further assistance from anybody. You will be able to refund to me what I advanced to you as a loan. Only as a loan remember, not as a gift; still less do I expect anything in exchange, not even a warm pressure of the hand. I am simply your proselyte whose mission it is to make straight the way of the prophet."

It was a seductive picture, and still more seductive was she who presented it to me.

To be free! To be able to pronounce my name boldly in the face of every one who met me! Not to tremble at the pattering of every footstep at my door! To fight for great ideas in the company of great and noble minds!

And how her eyes sparkled as she said these words, like the parhelia in the glowing girdle of a solar halo! And her face was as open as a child's. I could have sworn that she was an artless virgin opening her heart for the first time to a true sentiment. Her hands were folded as if in prayer.

Had I wavered but a hair's-breadth, I must have plunged down into the abyss.

Ah! what a different man I should have become. Had I fled with her, I should now be the grand master of the Realists, for there is as much erotic flame, satiric vein, and luxurious fancy in me as in them; but I have not used these qualities, because I write for a Hungarian public. Had I flown with her, millions would have read my works, and fathers and mothers would have cursed me as the corrupter of their children. And I should have laughed at them, and tapped the fat paunch, which as an idealistic writer I have never been able to acquire.

And whither would this reinless, bridleless passion have hurried me had I been swayed by such a fascinating Calypso, whose every movement was a charm, whose every word was a snare, who was herself the personified joy of a Mohammedan paradise? For, remember, I was then only four-and-twenty!

Fortunately, a sober thought still remained in my head.

"I mean to remain in my own land," I said abruptly.

"Why?"

"I will not forsake those who arose at my word. If they lie on the earth, I also will lie down beside them. I will take my share of the suffering of which I was the cause."

"You won't remain out in the cold for ever, of course. Haven't you, then, the hope that those who have sought refuge abroad will one day return in triumph? Then you also will return home at the head of the reprieved."

Even this weapon she managed to turn against me! Oh, what a weak coat of mail it was that defended me—only a single word!

"I have given my word that I'll not depart from hence," I said softly.

"To whom?"

"To her who gave me her word that she would come and seek me here."

"Your wife?"

"Yes."

"And if she seeks you, what then?"

"She will bring me liberty."

"How? In what way?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know, and yet you believe?"

"I believe with my whole heart."

"And you never think what may be the price of such freedom?"

"I spurn such a thought as often as it arises."

"You believe in a woman's loyalty, a woman's virtue?"

"I do."

"Then you are a very happy man!"

During this conversation I continued my drawing, and she called my attention to several objects in the landscape which had escaped me. Shortly after that she began a very ordinary conversation about the weather.

"Look! the prophecy of the old forester is well-nigh fulfilled. The sky is quite overcast. The snowstorm will surprise us here."

"Then, perhaps, it may be as well to call our friend out of his hiding-place?"

"Oh, that will be very easy! I need only give him one signal. He himself selected it from the romance 'Ivanhoe'—the note of the hero's horn—'Wasa hóa!' At this signal he will appear immediately."

"Well, I can scarcely see to sketch any more, it is so dark."

"Then you are determined to go to that little village down there?"

"Yes."

"No news from the world will ever penetrate thither."

"That will be all the better for me."

"You have heard nothing of what is going on outside all this time, I suppose?"

"Nothing pleasant."

"It is a dreadful world. How would the women manage to live if they couldn't chatter?"

"They could sew their children's clothes."

"Perhaps you haven't heard that Petöfi's widow has married again?"

Ah, that was indeed a murderous thrust! A calculated, well-aimed, poisonous dart where there was a weak joint in my coat of mail.

"What do you say?" cried I, in a perfect passion.

"It is a fact known to everybody."

"Petöfi's wife! Then what has become of Petöfi?"

"He fell at the battle of Segesvár."

"Who saw him fall?"

"A Honved officer who testified to the fact. This was quite enough for his widow. She immediately went to the altar with another young writer, who was not perhaps such a knightly hero as your friend, but who is a pleasant young man in a good official position, moving in the best society, and who is able to assure his wife a comfortable existence."

Every one of this woman's words went right through my heart.

Now, indeed, after years have elapsed, I can say that poor Julia did well to confide her fate to a good and worthy man. She had a child, and had duties towards that child. But at that moment a heavier blow could not have descended upon my head. The death of our martyrs, let it be never so cruel, was not nearly such terrible news to me as the news that the martyrs had been forgotten.

That any woman could ever forget Petöfi! The woman whom the poet had encompassed with the rays of his soul of flame! That the poet should be able to make himself immortal to the whole world and not to her whom he had worshipped!

No doubt the widow was right, she will be blessed in the next world, and there Petöfi himself will justify her—the righteous are always just; but to me this news seemed to open the very gates of hell. If the grass can grow so quickly over my overthrown idol, what am I, I should like to know? A frog enclosed in a tree, whose calling it is to live for a hundred years—beneath the bark!

"I won't believe it! I won't believe it! I won't believe it!"

She laughed at me. "Now wriggle away!" she seemed to say.

From the crown of my head to the heel of my foot I was full of bitterness. If such a thing as this could happen, why shouldn't that other thing happen, too? Why shouldn't another fallen writer forget the promise he had made to his wife, seize the hand of his former ideal, and fly away with her out into the world? That would be tit for tat.

Her two eyes flamed as she looked at me and laughed. It was just as if she knew she had wounded me and would fain stir me up to vengeance.

She had destroyed my idol: belief in a woman's heart.

Women were all alike!

"No, no, no! My wife is not like other women."

I sat down on the edge of the precipitous rock, made a speaking-trumpet of the palms of both hands, and called loudly down into the valley "Wasa hóa!"

The echo repeated my words. And not long afterwards could be heard from below the proud refrain:—