“Where have you been?” my mother asked. “I went to see about the coal.” “Well?” I did not want to tell her my visit had been in vain. “I shall have to go again. I couldn’t settle matters to-day.” I thought of our empty cellar and of the coal-office, the long queue of waiting people. Scenes passed before me like the pictures of a kinematograph.... The window of the _Pesti Naplo_. People were waiting there too.... Big letters, latest news... Czechs, Roumanians, Serbs, and the names of ancient Hungarian towns.... People said nothing and craned their necks to see.... Everywhere the same tired faces.... And as if one voice were speaking for them all: “It is no good struggling ... we can’t get out ... it was all in vain”.... Yes, it is past the remedy of generals and statesmen.... All the time my mother was looking at me thoughtfully over her patience cards. She said nothing, asked no questions, but leant forward and stroked my head. It was unlike her: her tenderness was hardly ever visible or heard. It was always there, but quietly, underneath. She rarely showed her feelings, and lived behind a veil of self-control. In my childhood it was only when I was ill or down-hearted that she showed her true self, for my sake, not for hers. But lately, now that events had caused old age to quicken his steps, the veil had been more often drawn aside. I wanted so much to say something, to thank her for what was beyond thanks. She stroked my hair.... How soothing it was! Her hand knew a sweet, tender secret which it revealed only on the brows of her children when they bent under the weight of sorrow. Dear loving hands! They can accomplish what neither generals nor statesmen can. Something I cannot express in words rose within me in that moment. Was it a foreboding, was it the clue that we were all seeking, was it a presentiment of something I was to do? I cannot answer, but it was something that should throw itself before the torrent of destruction, should raise a dam before the motherland and its women, the faithful, the prolific, the holders of Hungary’s future.... To protect those who see things with eyes different from those of generals and statesmen. A carriage stopped in front of the house. Who could it be? For days I had seen practically nobody. Social intercourse had almost ceased; one did not even know what was happening to one’s best friends or where they were. Everyone took refuge in his own home, and the threads that had been broken in October had not yet been retied. A knock at the door, the hinges creaked. Steps in the corridor. It was my friend Countess Raphael Zichy. “Do you remember the last time we met? Up in the woods in a fog? And while we were trying to guess what the future had in store for us the rebellion had already started in the town.” “Then it must have been about the 30th of October.” “Since then everything has collapsed. Is there any force on earth that could repair the havoc?”