The clock struck nine; suddenly I heard a violent knocking and furious cursing at the end of the corridor, and a fat, angry man rolled into the room. He had forgotten to take his hat off, and his pipe was in his mouth. It was old Schlegel, a stout old German market gardener from the banks of the Ipoly, a fiery Hungarian patriot, who within the last few months had helped innumerable refugees across the river. “Donnerwetter! The devil, why don’t you open your door? I knock—the curfew—they shoot people down out there.” Now that he was in safety, he calmed down and put his fat hand on Mrs. Huszár’s shoulder: “I just came to tell you you need not be anxious. Your husband is in my house. We have plenty of arms. If the Communists try their slaughtering trick here, I’ll come too and shoot them like dogs.” He produced from his pocket a huge rusty revolver and waved it like a mace threateningly above his head. “That is all I had to say.” I stole to the front door to see if all was clear. The new moon had already set and there was not a soul in the street. I made a sign to the old man and in his gouty way, his right leg always foremost, he passed me into the street. Without a word he touched his hat and with shaky, baby-like steps disappeared at the end of the street between the high stalks of the Indian corn. The electric light went out. The town moved no longer. Our vigil was illuminated by a single candle, and we kept looking at the clock. It was said that the Terrorists were guarding the streets leading out of town so that nobody should be able to escape. Looting was to begin at midnight. Even if they did their work quickly it would take them half an hour before they came here. This house was said to be marked as their third point of attack. Somehow I remembered a horror of my childhood. I was quite small. My grandmother Tormay was telling us stories about her Huguenot ancestors. She told us how, before the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, the men of Catherine de Medici had locked all the gates of Paris so that none should be able to escape and then marked with chalk the houses inhabited by Huguenots. “But that happened more than three hundred years ago,” my grandmother said, “when people were still wild and cruel.” The clock struck midnight. I asked Mrs. Huszár to escape at once with her children into the fields of Indian corn as soon as the shooting started. We listened. Nothing ... only the clock struck again. Half-past twelve. My friend was standing near the window listening, and I thought how often we had sat up through the nights like this during the last few months. “Do you remember? That night when we kept saying, ‘Now the Czechs have fired!’ ‘Now the Reds!’”? Our fate has not altered. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is still alive and continues to torture us. One o’clock! A hen fluttered up the roof of the house opposite. Under the stars silence pervaded the summer night. Half-past one!