The sick boy tossed his head from one side to the other and groaned in his sleep. His groans are not the only ones that the shabby gray walls had heard this year. Rooms that are never unoccupied, rooms like great stuffy cupboards that are crammed with humanity. Their complements arrive and are crammed into them, awaiting with trembling heart the hour when some new arrivals, able to pay more, will crowd them out again. Up and out on to the road again, to drag with them the horrible vision of their lost land, their destroyed home, through the great town which has squandered without mercy that which was theirs and now has no pity for them. But there is also another drawer in the cupboard: that other room, the man in his gabardine, the clean shaven one, the foreign money on the table.... No, these don’t suffer. These have come to take possession of what is left of Hungary. Through the influence of Trotski, Jews from Hungary who were prisoners of war, became in Russia the dreaded tyrants of lesser towns, the heads of directorates. The Soviet now sends these people back as its agents. Will the government prevent them from coming? Will it arrest them? Probably not. Many believe that during his stay in Switzerland Károlyi came to an agreement with the Bolsheviki and now abets the world-revolutionary aims of the Russian terror. Sinister tales circulate under the walls of the houses of Pest. What madness! An agricultural country like Hungary is no soil for that seed. And yet.... A few days ago an alarming rumour spread. In vain did the government attempt to suppress it. The news leaked out that as soon as it had come to power the government received a wireless message from the Russian Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council, who sent their fraternal greetings and promised that the Russian Soviet would send help and food if only the Hungarian proletariat would join it in its war against the Capitalism of the Allies. For, said the wireless: “The freeing of the toiling masses is possible only through a proletarian world-revolution. Unite, Hungarian proletarians! Long live the world-revolution! Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat! Long live the world’s Soviet-republic!” This message, kindled by the fire of class hatred, spread its sparks over the Russian swamps, over the Carpathians, and fell glowing into Károlyi’s nefarious camp. Nobody trod on it to extinguish it, it was kept alive, in secret, among them. No wonder they are uneasy. * * * * * _November 14th._ The days are getting shorter and shorter, and darkness comes earlier every day. The lamp was lit on my table. Count Emil Dessewffy was telling me about his journey to Eckhardsau. Now and then he fixed his strong single-eyeglass into his orbit, then again he toyed with it between his long, thin fingers, as if it were a shining coin. He was obviously nervous; and he kept crossing and uncrossing his legs.