I went all over the house, and, one after the other, opened the doors of the cupboards and the drawers. I left everything open so that if burglars did break into the house in winter the locks might not be forced, the cupboards not smashed with hatchets. The fireplaces cooled down slowly. We had had no fires during the day in order to avoid accidents after we had gone. In one of the grates the embers still retained a little warmth, the others were as cold as the dead. I fastened the grated shutters in every room. In the semi-darkness, against the whitewashed walls, the old furniture, the old story-telling engravings, friends of my childhood, the big vase, the parrot-chandeliers, the coloured glasses in which the flowers of a hundred summers had blossomed in the rooms of my mother and my grandmother, all looked at me as if in sorrow. I looked also at my books, the old Bible on the shelf, at everything for which no room could be found in the vans and which had to be left behind. Things too have tears.... What if the empty house were pillaged? If I were never to see again the dear things full of memories?... Why do you leave us here? the abandoned things seemed to ask, and I felt as if I were parting from devoted, living beings, which patiently shared our fate. My mother called from below, waiting, ready to start, in the hall with my brother, who had come for us so that he might be there should the carriage be waylaid. As we went out of it the old house lapsed into lethargy and everything closed its eyes. The key turned, the pebbles clattered on the drive, and the carriage went slowly down the slope of the hill. At the bridge over the Devil’s Ditch my brother-in-law was waiting with his little daughter, and she got into the carriage. Reckless soldiers had overrun the hills and life was so insecure that they did not dare to keep the young girl at home. In town things may be quieter.... Beyond the cemetery we came to the booth of the excisemen. We waited for a time in the mist and as no policeman, no exciseman appeared, we passed on through the open barrier. The outlines of armed soldiers and sailors peopled the ill-lit streets of Buda. The forms of a few frightened citizens who were trying to get home appeared now and then, but were soon absorbed by the night. Beyond the bridge over the Danube the town was floating in light. Big arc-lamps were burning, as of old when a victory was reported from the battle-fields. Flags floated from the houses. In the fashionable streets the crowds thronged for their evening walk, and as the carriage passed Károlyi’s portrait could be seen in the shop windows among stockings and ribbons, furs and sausages.