Motor horns, human shouts, rang here and there in the distance, whilst the rain poured in streams in the broken gutters. The road seemed absolutely empty. Suddenly I heard steps on the other side of the street. They had not approached from the distance but had started quite near by; someone must therefore have stepped from out of the shadow of the house opposite. Had he been waiting there spying on me? The steps became hurried, passed me, crossed the street. A dark shape hugged the wall under the recess of a door. No bell was rung. I stopped for an instant: the incertitude of the past few weeks reappeared. The knowledge of being watched, pursued, the torture of being deprived of my freedom, made me catch my breath. The threat had followed me so long, appearing and disappearing in turn, menacing me from under every porch, from every dark corner. Should I fly from it? Should I turn down a by-street? Suddenly I felt tired and ill: my pulses were leaden and my brain seemed weighed down with heavy stones. For an instant I contemplated giving in. I seemed to be of so little significance compared with the enormity of universal misfortune. The crash of general collapse had drowned the small moans of individual fates. The shadow suddenly emerged from under the porch and barred my way. We stared at each other. Then a well-known voice said, “Is it you?” It was my brother Béla, who had been watching for me so that he might accompany me. Only a few lamps were alight on the boulevard, and our heels crushed the fragments of glass from the broken ones. Empty cartridge cases shone in the puddles. Machine-guns stood in the middle of the street. Some men passed, carrying a red flag; then a lorry, bristling with bayonets, rumbled heavily by, full of armed sailors. One of these shouldered his rifle and aimed at us. He did not shoot, and when for an instant he appeared in the light of a lamp before the darkness swallowed him again, I could see the bestial grin which contorted his face. The lorry disappeared, but we could hear his voice shouting something in Russian. There are many of these here to-day. “A bourgeois, to hell with him!” The cry of Moscow fills Budapest. Frightened forms ran across the openings of the streets on the other side, and the air was filled with wild movements and lurching fear. At last I rang the bell of the front door which was to shelter me, and my brother wished me Godspeed and turned back. It was some moments before the door opened, and a woman came along, dragging her feet. She looked at me suspiciously and seemed frightened. Where was I going?