The deformed offspring of a consanguineous marriage, the heir to the enormous entailed possessions of the Károlyis, was born with a cleft palate and a hare-lip. He was fourteen years old when an operation was performed on him which enabled him, against the will of Divine Providence, to learn to speak—so that he might beguile his nation and his country into destruction. A silver palate was put into his mouth. The boy struggled and suffered. He wrestled with the words, and if his poor efforts were not understood by his companions he went into violent fits of temper. The only one who could have understood him, his mother, died early. His grandmother and his sister guided the poor boy through his unhappy early days. His progress in school was slow and the results of examinations deplorable. He passed his _baccalaureat_ at the same time as my brother, yet he practically knew nothing and could not even spell. He passed all the same: “The poor, young invalid!” That served him as a passport everywhere. Fate decreed that the misshapen youth should live, and he lived to take a cruel revenge for its cruelties. [Illustration: COUNTESS MICHAEL KÁROLYI (_née_ COUNTESS KATINKA ANDRÁSSY). (_To face p. 72._)] His physical shortcomings prevented anyone from expecting much from him, so that almost everything he learned, did or said, surpassed the extremely low standard his family had set for him. His relations recognised this “ability” and admired him. And this delusion was the root of Károlyi’s ever-increasing vanity. He became convinced that he was an extraordinary man and that he was predestined for wonderful things. When he came of age he entered into possession of one of the greatest estates in Hungary. He could dispose freely of an enormous income. He had no need to keep accounts, and he kept none. He spent recklessly. He gambled, indulged in orgies. People laughed at him. Nobody took him seriously. His spendthrift life, cards, and the political rôle he assumed later, absorbed fabulous sums. But his fortune could still stand it. He was surrounded by sycophants. And he believed the flatteries of his cringing parasites. His megalomania at last became pathological. Without possessing the necessary aptitude, he now conceived the idea of making up for what he had neglected in his idle youth. He began to read. And when husbandry, political economy, sociology, were accumulated in an indigestible hotch-potch in his brain, he aspired to become a leader of men.