Our road leads through a mist and nobody can see the end of it. Some day, when we look back upon the past, many things may appear simple and clear which now, while we are living through them, seem mysterious and incomprehensible. Events come fast, crowding one on the other without rhyme or reason. Common sense is of no use, for our fate is woven by maniacs. We have occasional bright moments, little flickers which the storm extinguishes. If we see clearly for an instant, darkness falls before we can find our way, and in its gloom, fate deals us such blows that we become giddy and lose our bearings. Nothing helps. Everything is new and strange; in a present like this the past is no guide. One cannot acquire the habit of dying!—and Hungary is struggling in agony in the hands of her murderers. To-day the lamp flared up in an unexpected way, for I heard news which staggered me, stopped the beating of my heart and left me speechless. I heard the familiar step of my brother Géza passing through the drawing-room to my mother’s room, and rushed after him with a feverish desire to hear and to know. Perhaps he might be the bearer of hopeful news, as he used to be during the war; then, whenever he came to see mother, there had been a bright spot in our gloom. But now he sat in a state of collapse in the tall green armchair, and fury distorted his face. “All these scoundrels are traitors. Lieut.-Colonel Julier has told me how damnably they have betrayed the country. They are leading it to destruction.” He banged the table with his clenched fist. “Do you know that the armistice of Belgrade was superfluous? The Common High Command had arranged with General Diaz, who was the delegate of the Allies, for an armistice for us too as from the 4th of November, leaving the frontiers of Hungary untouched and fixing the pre-war frontiers as the line of demarcation. There was to be no enemy occupation. And on the 6th of November Michael Károlyi, in Belgrade, opened the flood-gates on us.” There was a weary silence in the room for a while. It was so terrible, so monstrous, that, though my opinion of Károlyi and his gang was low enough, I could scarcely believe it. “Perhaps they—perhaps Károlyi didn’t know the conditions of Diaz’s armistice?” “They did; it was in Károlyi’s pocket before he went to Belgrade,” my brother said. “They did it for the sake of power, for the doubtful honour that the conclusion of peace should be in their names. Franchet d’Espèray could not understand why they came. Then he gave them their medicine: ‘If you want it, have it!’ says he.”