I knew what it was about, and early in the afternoon I started on my errand. It was five o’clock before I entered the door of the house owned by the Franciscans. Some gentlemen were on the staircase before me. We met in the rooms of Stephen Zsembéry, a former deputy. All the leaders and principal members of the anti-revolutionary parties were present with the exception of Count Julius Andrássy, who had mysteriously disappeared, and Count Apponyi, who has retired from politics. Count Stephen Bethlen proposed the union of all parties, as the only means of saving the country. At first he was supported, then objections were raised and—when we broke up it was decided to meet again soon, in order to come to some final decision. I was sad when I went home. On the way I remembered a story I had once written of how an inn stood on the plain, on the great military road. Warriors passed in great numbers, on their way to recover Buda from the Turks. They hailed from all the corners of the earth. There were only two Hungarians in the inn, but they could not get on with each other: they quarrelled, came to blows, killed each other. Over their bleeding corpses their greatest foe said happily: “That is a good job: if they had not killed each other, we never could have got the better of them.” These two Hungarians have had many names in the course of the centuries. Once they were called Ujlaki and Gara, at another time Kuruc and Labanc; then Görgey and Kossuth, quite lately Tisza and Andrássy. And to-day our perennial ghost seemed to have walked during our labours. _Æterna Hungaria_.... CHAPTER XIV. _January 6th._ That ghost has been haunting us too long: it must be laid. Ever since I met this ever-recurring cause of our nation’s defeat in the Franciscans’ house, my language to the women has assumed a graver tone. Those who have allowed the country to go to rack and ruin have not changed, and so a new future must be built up in the minds of the children. To succeed our own much tried generation we must raise up a new one which understands and holds in horror that bane of our nation, party strife, born of everlasting jealousy. We must start with the children, and see that in future no man says to his brother: “Why should it be thine? Why not mine?” Or: “If it cannot be mine, let it be rather our neighbour’s child than thine....” The women understand me. Our numbers grow more and more.