Who knows whither I should have got to with my tower of Babel, had not a healthy earthquake brought it to the ground?
One day Petofi caught me in the act of touching up Bessy"s portrait. He saw from my eyes that I had been weeping. I tried to hide it, for I was a bit ashamed.
"_It is well that it is so, my son_," said he on that occasion; "_it is men who are unhappy that the world wants now._"
A memorable saying!
It was in those days that he wrote "I dream, I dream of b.l.o.o.d.y days,"
and "My Songs," with this final strophe, all blood and fire:--
"Wherefore doth this race of thralls endure it?
Wherefore rise not? Rend your chains and cure it!
Do ye wait, forsooth! till G.o.d"s good pleasure Rusts them off, and makes them drop at leisure?"
And then he would lead me into his room. On the walls there, in handsome frames, hung the portraits of the chiefs of the French Revolution--this was his only luxury--Danton, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Saint-Juste, Madame Roland. There, too, the parts we were to play were distributed; Saint-Juste was designed for me, Madame Roland for Julia.
And then we spoke of "the b.l.o.o.d.y days." They were to be no mere dream, we were to see them with our eyes wide open. And we were to be among the first to feel them.
A healthy-minded man would have been ready after such words as these to have left the house by jumping out of the window; but they had a charm for me. It suited my peculiar frame of mind just then to set on fire the Dejanira robe that was about me, and then rush out among the people and set them on fire also.
"Man"s fate is woman!"
Had that young lady the last time I held her hand in mine said "Stay!" I should certainly have remained. I should have crept into my little nook of bliss and never have gazed after the moonshine of fame. In that case I should now perhaps have been one of the judicial a.s.sessors at the Royal Courts, and have joined heartily in the laugh when one or other of my colleagues at the end of a friendly banquet might take it into his head to quote some monstrous sentences out of my earliest romance, an imperfect copy of which turns up now and then as a literary curiosity among other antiquarian rubbish.
This is what would have happened if the young lady had said "Stay!"
But if that young lady had said "Fly!" then I should have flown like the rest after the falling stars. And, indeed, of those who stood with me on the 11th March[30] before the mob on the balcony of the town-hall to announce "This is the day of national liberty!" of those my youthful-visaged, warm-hearted comrades, three have perished in defence of that word "Liberty" then p.r.o.nounced: those three names are "Petofi,"[31] "Vasvary," "Bozzai." And certainly, in that case, the four ounces of lead, or the cossack"s lance, or the grenade splinter which killed them, might have sufficed for me also--that is, of course, if that young lady had said "Fly!" Fate, in fact, confronted me with this paradox--"Either live and be forgotten, or be remembered as one who died young!"
[Footnote 30: When the Hungarian revolution of 1848 began.]
[Footnote 31: Petofi was most probably killed at the battle of Segesvar in July, 1849; at any rate he was never seen or heard of afterwards. He was only twenty-seven, and in him the world lost one of its great lyric poets.]
"Stay!" or "Fly!"
Then a voice said to me: "Go! but let us go together!"
But it was not the voice of the lady with the eyes like the sea.
One morning Petofi rushed into my room roaring with laughter.
"Ha! ha! ha! Do you want to laugh? Just catch hold of that _Honderu_."
And into my hands he thrust the latest number of the opposition paper.
I immediately caught sight of what had made him laugh so much. There was a magnificent description from my native town of the wedding which had taken place between Mr. Janos Nepomuk Bagotay and the world-renowned beauty--I didn"t trouble to look at the name. "The happy pair will spend their honeymoon at Paris!"
"Ha! ha! ha! ha!"
CHAPTER VIII
PETER GYURICZA"S CONSORT
After the March days, I quitted the Petofis and went into another lodging. I had got on so well that I could maintain a bachelor"s establishment, consisting of two rooms, which I furnished myself.
Properly speaking, it only became a bachelor"s establishment when I entered, for before I took it it was occupied by a little old woman who kept a registry office for providing respectable families with servants.
Every one knew "Mami," as she was called.... I was very well satisfied with my lodging, which quite answered all my requirements. It had this one drawback, however, that a whole mob of cooks, parlour-maids, and nursery-maids were constantly opening my door under the persuasion that I could provide them with places, and they disturbed my work terribly.
Besides, this constant flow of petticoats towards my door was sufficient of itself to bring a young man into disrepute. From the apartments at the opposite end of the corridor it was possible to catch a glimpse of my door, and it was just in these very apartments that Rosa Laborfalvy lived. I was afraid that _some one_ might think ill of me.
It was no longer the _Weltschmerz_, but a _Privatschmerz_,[32] that afflicted me.
[Footnote 32: _Privat fajdalmas_--private anxiety.]
Again I had applied myself to portrait-painting. A tall, slender girl in a white atlas dress, with large black eyes, and coal-black ringlets _a l"Anglaise_ rolling down to her shoulders, was standing on my easel; I was just giving it the finishing-touch, I had no need for the original to be my model. I have the portrait to this day.
All at once there came a knocking at my door "Come in!" The door opened, and in came a stylish young peasant girl. I thought as much; here we have another nursery-maid in search of a place.
"No, no; go away! The registry-office lady does not live here!" said I viciously, for I was busy with my portrait; and perceiving that the intruder did not retire even now, I bawled out, not over gently: "In Heaven"s name, be off, my dear!"
At this the peasant girl began to laugh. Had I not heard that laughing voice somewhere before? I turned round and looked at her, and the more I looked, the more astonished I felt. It was Bessy!
She wore a bright red gown trimmed with yellowish-green flowers, over that a dark blue, double-bordered damask ap.r.o.n, and a black silk bodice with puff sleeves. Above the bodice was a bib with beautifully embroidered palm flowers; on her head sat a c.o.c.ks...o...b..like Haube, frilled with starched thread-lace; on her arm she carried a covered basket by the handle.
Her face was ruddy and bronzed from exposure to the sun, and a sort of waggish little imp was nestling provocatively in her smiling features. I couldn"t believe my own eyes.
"What! don"t you know me?" she cried, with a merry laugh. "I"m Bessy!"
I saw that, but for the life of me I could not conceive what her object was in coming masquerading like this through the streets of Buda in broad daylight. And to hit upon _my_ lodgings of all places in the world!
"Madame de Bagotay?" I stammered in my confusion.
"Oh, I am no longer Madame Bagotay, but Madame Peter Gyuricza!"
"What on earth do you mean? Mrs. Gyuricza! The wife of a herdsman?"
My amazement was so genuine that Bessy clapped her hands together with glee.
"Then you actually don"t know about it? They haven"t written to you from home?"
"It is a long time since I received a letter from home."
"But this was a scandal which set seven counties in an uproar; there has been nothing like it since the French Revolution--and you call yourself the editor of a newspaper!"
"My paper does not meddle with purely family matters."
Bessy"s face was flushed, and she began smoothing it with the palms of both hands; she thought, perhaps, that she would brush the tell-tale blush away.