The drumming went on: “False reports ... revolutionary tribunal ... executed.... The Revolutionary Council is abolished.... In the Soviet republic all rank, title and nobility are abolished....” At this moment the footman brought the coffee on a silver tray: “Is it your Excellency’s pleasure that coffee be served here?” How incongruous it all seemed! The huge room, the unreal continuation of the old aristocratic life. Is it real, or is it a mirage? The snow-white lady, her head erect, among her lace, sitting in an arm-chair. Her two daughters, one leaning gracefully over her embroidery, the other turning the leaves of a book. The huge Venetian glass chandelier, which once shone over Maria Theresa, spreads a gentle light. On the wall, between two pastels representing children, the Empire clock of gilded wood ticks slowly, and its ticking sounds as if ripe corn were being rubbed together. Slowly life is passing before our eyes, a grain of life with every moment that departs beyond recall. The mirage is still there. Nothing is altered. But outside, the filthy tide is rising, spreads and rolls onwards from the Red town, covers the fields, touches the villages, laps at the walls of the cottages. It comes nearer and nearer; and the wind which it raises drives before it phantoms which rush by and in their flight glare in through the windows. Elsewhere it is different. The glitter of the peasant’s scythe menaces the castle. The despoiled landlords have to flee or become the bailiffs of Béla Kun’s ‘Co-operatives of Production’ on their own estates. Our fate is coming without doubt. But still, here in the great drawing-room, life has not yet altered. These people round me are just waiting for whatever is to come, and whether death or reprieve be their destiny, they are faithful to the blood which is in them. CHAPTER III _March 29th._ Communists from Aszód have arrived in the village. The glass screen between myself and reality has suddenly cracked. The agitators dragged a table in front of the town hall, climbed on it and addressed the crowd. When we asked the coachman what had happened, he looked down and gave an embarrassed, evasive answer: “They are going to stay till to-morrow....” These Communists boasted that the workmen of the aeroplane works at Aszód had got the town in their power and that the directorate had had the lord of Iklad, Count Ráday, and his wife, arrested.