At the head of the conservatives stood Stephen Tisza, by race and tradition the very model of Hungarian conservatism; another faction of this party was headed by Count Julius Andrássy. In these camps Károlyi could never be anything but a secondary figure; leadership was beyond his reach. This fact drove him to the extreme left. Spurred by his unhealthy ambition for power he assumed the absurd position of leader of the radical democracy, a demagogue playing with national catchwords, though he was an aristocrat by tradition, had no national feeling whatever, and had constantly proclaimed himself essentially a Frenchman at heart, the spiritual descendant of his French great-grandmother. His faction was in need of a figurehead. It found one in him. The clash between him and Tisza came when Tisza, then the President of the Commons, tired of the barren fights of eternal obstruction, and in anticipation of the future extension of the franchise, wanted to assure the decency of the proceedings in the Hungarian Parliament by a revision of the standing rules of procedure. The parties sounded the alarm. Personal feelings were much embittered. Andrássy and Károlyi found themselves in the same camp and both were mortally offended when Tisza imposed his haughty will with merciless firmness. It was by the application of the new rules that Károlyi happened later to be expelled from the House by physical force at the hands of the parliamentary guards. On this occasion he was heard to declare, foaming with rage, that he would get even with Tisza, even though it should be at the cost of his country’s ruin. His frenzy became akin to dementia as the result of the duel he fought about this time with Tisza, who managed to impress him once more with his contempt even at the moment of giving him armed satisfaction. Henceforth it was always the opposite to anything Tisza approved of that he desired, and consequently his gambler’s instinct forced him to put his money always on some other card than that on which the nation, through Tisza’s foresight, had risked its stakes. By this time his entourage was composed almost exclusively of Freemasons, and his person became the centre of attraction of that suspicious gang whose aim was to incite Hungarians against Hungarians, and Christians against Christians, so that it might gain the upper hand—in proof of the adage _inter duos litigantes tertius gaudet_. Shortly before the war Károlyi went with some of his adherents to the United States to collect party funds. No account of those funds was ever rendered. The outbreak of the war found him in Paris. His financial position had now become strained. The life-interest in his property, heavily mortgaged, left him no surplus. Yet he went on spending and gambling. Nobody knew whence his money came. Nor did anybody know why he alone was allowed to leave France at the outbreak of the war, while obscure individuals were mercilessly interned for its duration.