In the evening a neighbouring farmer came over. He was a faithful old friend of ours, and now, in his own simple way, he tried to give proof of his devotion, as if to offer reparation for the wrongs we had suffered. He asked us if we wanted any vegetables. “Just say the word, there are a few left in our garden.” And his thoughtful kindness impressed me more with the change that had taken place in our social order than any annoying brutality of the street could have done. Then we talked of other things. He spoke of Tisza and told us with many lamentations that they were still shooting in town, and that soldiers terrorised the people from big motor lorries. One railway station had been pillaged. Another was on fire, so a man told him who had just been there. The military stores had been stormed by the mob. Barrels of petrol were rolled into the street, smashed, and the petrol set on fire as it poured out. Soon after the farmer left us, the door bell rang, and my brothers and sisters came, one after the other, up the garden path. Whenever the door was opened the mist floated in from the darkness like smoke, and the new arrivals stamped on the mat for a moment or two to rid themselves of the mud. Slowly we gathered round our mother like birds in a storm. A fire was burning in the hall, its light playing over the beamed roof, glinting here and there from the oak staircase which rose high against the wall. It came and went, flared up a little, flickered, and then died down. When daylight had disappeared from the mullioned panes of the window the shaded lamp was lit on the round table. My mother prepared tea, just as if things were as they used to be, when we came home chilled. Then she sat down in her usual place, in the corner of the green velvet couch. Above her, on the wall, was a fine old etching. It was an old friend of my childhood, full of stories—_Le garde de chasse_. How I loved to look at it on Sunday afternoons when it hung in my grandmother’s room! Since then its old mistress had gone, so had her room—indeed the very house had been demolished. The picture alone remained. In the foreground on the edge of a wood, with raised fists and a huge gun on his shoulder, stands the aged keeper, in an old fashioned beaver and high shirt collar. Cowed and cringing are two little children, who have been caught in the act of stealing firewood. And now while the voices of my brothers were humming in my ears I was struck by something I had never noticed before. How this picture had gone out of date! Justice has altered. Nowadays the law of “mine, thine, his” is proclaimed in a new shape. Thine—is mine, his—is ours! This is the teaching of the new leaders of the people and the foundation of their power. For many thousands of years the crowd has learned nothing with such ease, and nothing has ever made it the slaves of its masters with greater speed.