For an instant the misguided people seemed to have regained their consciences. Terrified disappointment, bitter complaints filled the car. Most of them cursed the French general furiously, and remarks of a new kind were heard about Károlyi too. Something had become clear.... Or did I only see my own views in the eyes of the others? “It isn’t all that,” said a gentleman to his neighbour; “we must not judge hastily.” And he read aloud that the delegates of the government had made the signing of the armistice conditional. These conditions were set out in a dispatch which was forwarded through Franchet d’Esperay to Paris. “It is clear,” the gentleman said, “that the government will only sign the armistice if the Entente powers guarantee the old frontiers of Hungary till the conclusion of peace. Károlyi will manage the peace treaty all right. His confidential friends say that he can carry everything before him in Paris. He will get peace in six weeks.” The exhausted people clung to these words. The protesting telegram had destroyed the finality of the catastrophe.... And those who a few minutes ago had spoken desperately, sent their tired souls to sleep with self-deceiving optimism. They became quiet. They crowded together and looked out of the window. A woman yawned aloud. Behind my back they talked of the high prices: potatoes had gone up again.... When I came home my mother was sitting in the little green room near the window. She sat passively in the twilight, she who was always busy with something. When the door opened she turned towards me and raised her head slightly to be kissed. I saw in the twilight her kind blue eyes, which, in spite of years, had retained their youth and lustre. They now looked at me in indescribable grief. A newspaper lay on the table. “Have you read it?” I asked. “I have....” * * * * * _November 9th._ Huge white posters have appeared on the walls. All along the streets everything is covered with them. They are posted on the shop windows, on the windows of the coffee-houses. They appear between the announcements of the kinematographs in the advertisement columns. Not orders, not regulations, not proclamations: from far away I could see it, one word at the top of them all: A BALLAD.