* * * * * _April 5th._ The men of the village Directorate came up to the castle to-day. There was some formality about their visit, and they wore their black Sunday hats. Mrs. Benjamin Kállay received them herself. The bad man of the village spoke the loudest among them, and whenever this occurred the others cast their eyes down and nudged their neighbours: “Come, speak up, now!” I thought of the little peacock-blue Sèvres vases up in the drawing-room; the Persian dishes and the old hand-painted fans in the glass-case. How were they going to describe them in their inventory? One of them declared that no more wine must be brought up from the cellar, for prohibition had been enforced. Nothing in the house must be removed, for it all belongs henceforth to the State. The others nodded as they looked around. “The people from the towns are going to come soon.” And so they left without making an inventory. The day has not yet come, but what of the morrow? Incertitude is increasing daily. Everything becomes transitory. In one’s plans one does not even dare to make arrangements for the following day. Generally one makes no plans at all. Days and hours become independent units, without continuity or cohesion among them. The Sunday hats of the Directorate were flocking back to the garden gate. One of them lingered behind, then seized the opportunity of turning back. He stood there before us, an old man, humble, hat in hand, with sad eyes: “Dear little lady,” he stuttered shamefacedly, “might I ask your Excellency for a little wine? Nobody will know. I want it for an invalid. A young woman who is dying.” A bottle was given to him and he hid it furtively under his coat. The Soviet Government threatens with its summary jurisdiction anyone found drinking wine. Not even the sick are allowed any. But drunken soldiers stagger unmolested in the gutter. The People’s Commissaries have champagne orgies in their special trains and throw the empty bottles from the windows. They have drinking bouts in the Soviet House of Budapest, the former Hotel Hungaria, which they have requisitioned. The occupants were expelled without notice and within a few hours the Commissaries, some with their wives, others with their mistresses, occupied the place. [Illustration: JULIUS HEVESI _alias_ HÖNIG. VICE-COMMISSARY, MINISTRY FOR SOCIALISATION. ] Everything I see, everything I hear, carries my thoughts to the guilty town, bids them seek among its million people, for the sake of one! To-day I received the first message from home. Charles Kiss, our faithful friend, has escaped from among the accursed walls and brought me a letter from my mother. She is well; she has already left for our cottage among the hills of Buda. She was in want of nothing, nobody interfered with her. They have not been looking for me. Thus Kiss brought me nothing but good news.