My mother’s hand remained on the table. She sat motionless in the green armchair and turned her head back a little as if listening. We did not speak a word, yet knew that we were thinking of the same thing. The silence was so absolute that we could hear the steps of the concièrge going towards the door. The key turned. There was talking down below. And then we could hear the steps coming up the stairs. Would they stop at the first floor for us, or would they go on? We held our breath to hear the better. The steps went on. My mother’s rigid attitude relaxed, and she leant back in the arm-chair. “What can the time be?” she said after a while. I was packing away the treasures of the old china cabinet, one after the other. Should we ever see them again? They might be smashed, they might be carried off. I took leave of them, one by one. Nowadays one is for ever taking leave.... * * * * * _February 25th._ What are they waiting for? The night has passed, so has the day, and I am still free. Nobody has been arrested yet. Pogány insisted on the arrests being made, and Böhm proposed them to the cabinet council, which accepted the proposal unanimously. The fate of the arrested Communists was settled unanimously too. They were to be detained only for the sake of appearances, not to protect the town from them, but to protect them from the vengeance of the police. Since Baron Arco’s bullet laid low Kurt Eisner, the Jewish tyrant of Bavaria, the Government has been getting more and more nervous. Since the Soldiers’ and Workers’ Council in Munich decided for the Dictatorship of the proletariat, the Communists party here is getting more audacious every day. Red news comes from Berlin, from Saxony, and, like a distant earthquake, it shakes our town. Notwithstanding the request of the Entente, the date of the elections for the National Assembly has again been postponed. Perhaps in March, or in April.... If it’s delayed so far the fight will be hard. The party at present in power is employing unheard-of stratagems. The achievements of the revolution: freedom of the press, freedom of thought and of opinions, freedom of association and meeting, all these exist only for them. Our opinion has no longer a press. One newspaper dared to raise the question of shirking work, and the gigantic amount paid out in unemployment doles; the Communists demolished its offices. Then came the turn of another which had attacked Hatvany’s book, the chronicle of their revolution. Others followed, and the plant of their printers was wrecked too.