Hours followed which have escaped my memory. News from the impenetrable tangle filtered through in the afternoon. The town has become more and more strange and incomprehensible: it has put its neck into the halter while talking of reconquering the country. Reliable news is now obtainable of Károlyi’s resignation, and the proceedings of the ministers’ Council have been divulged by journalists. Before the meeting Károlyi had a long secret talk with Kunfi; thence Kunfi proceeded directly to the prison, where he made formal compact with Béla Kun and the Communists in the name of the Social Democratic Party. The agreement was drawn up in writing. Meanwhile, in the old House of Parliament, Pogány-Schwarz proclaimed the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. After that everything went quickly: barracks, arsenals and munition depots had already been given up to the Communists. Now the post office and the telegraph have come into their power. Kunfi obtained from Károlyi an order for the release of Béla Kun and his fellow prisoners; he then drove to fetch them and they left their prison, as Hungary’s all-powerful masters, to occupy the sleeping capital. Meanwhile Károlyi was sitting with his Countess and the former Prime Minister Berinkey in a room of the Prime-Ministerial Palace. The town was getting restless in the dark night. Wrapped in a blanket, Károlyi shivered and asked what was happening out there. When he was told that his proclamation had already been read in the Workers’ Council he asked sleepily, “What proclamation?” “Why, your resignation!” “Impossible! I scarcely remember what it contained, I was so hurried to sign it. Its publication must be prevented.” An official told him that he was too late. “It is already being printed by the papers and will appear in the morning.” Károlyi stammered that he had no intention of withdrawing it, he only wanted to alter some passages. But the Communists had taken good care that by then it should have already been telephoned to Vienna. The wires carried the news of Károlyi’s resignation and his disgrace, and the document, as edited by Kéri-Krammer, is preserved for the edification of a horrified posterity. This is not a tale, not a figment of imagination devised to make people’s flesh creep. In the night of the 21st of March Károlyi stood with his narrow head bent to one side, his hollow chest heaving, in the room formerly occupied by Stephen Tisza, and before the cock crowed thrice.... This morning someone met Károlyi and his wife walking on the embankment of the Danube. A big red carnation was glowing in his button-hole, and his wife wore a bright-red hat in the shape of a Phrygian cap and a red collar on her coat. Both looked happy and were laughing. “I am so pleased,” Countess Károlyi said to a friend, “Hungary has never been so happy as it is now.” At the Prime Minister’s house, when taking leave, Károlyi expressed himself in the same sense.