We must abstain from giving a detailed account of his novels. Their plots are, by themselves, simple, if not purely on the lines of the historic events which they relate. Their author, like Balzac, excels chiefly in psychology and analysis; and although the dialogue is not neglected, it is not made the centre of the tale. In “_Gyulai Pál_” (1846) is shown the struggle between a noble and high-minded statesman and his ambition. In the attempt at saving his prince, Sigismund Báthori, from the latter’s rival, Balthesar Báthori, Gyulai plunges into a series of crimes, and mortally wounds the heart of his idol, Eleonore, who finally brings about his execution. In “The Widow and Her Daughter” (“_Az özvegy és leánya_,” 1857) is told, and with greater regard to form and architecture than in Kemény’s other novels, the tragedy of the family of Mikes. A subject admirably suited to the gloom of Kemény’s mental atmosphere is treated in his “The Fanatics” (“_A rajongók_,” 1859), a story of the curious sect of the Sabbatarians in Transylvania in the fourth decade of the seventeenth century (_cf._ page 55). The Macchiavellian prime minister, Kassai, on the one hand, and the rich and mystic Simon Pécsi, the head of the Sabbatarians, with his beautiful daughter Deborah, on the other, are amongst the leading persons of this terrible novel. No less appalling in its way is “Rough Times” (“_Zord idő_,” 1862), in which the capture of the Hungarian capital, Buda, by the Turks, is told with magnificent power. In the short novels of Kemény, taking up subjects of modern time (“Love and Vanity” [“_Szerelem és hiúság_”]; “Husband and Wife” [“_Férj és nő_”]; “The Abysses of the Heart” [“_A sziv örvényei_”]); as well as in his smaller tales, such as “Virtue and Convention” (“_Erény és illem_”); “Two Happy Persons” (“_Két boldog_”); “_Alhi Kmet_” (a proper name), etc., Kemény likewise dwells on that _fatalisme raisonné_ as it might be called, that does not permit him, or very rarely, to tarry over the sunny moments of life. Writers like Kemény, in quite modern times, have found means of gently veiling their inner despondency by light touches of melancholy, as is done by Maeterlinck; or by fine irony, as used by Anatole France. In Kemény there is no mercy, not even that of irony. His novels are like the gigantic inundations of the Theiss river in Hungary: you see the floods nearing, often noiselessly, but with distressing rapidity, and in all directions; there is no escaping them; in their inexorable progress they roll onward like a host of innumerable serpents, stifling life and levelling down everything to the sameness of death. When Kemény died (1875), on his small paternal estate of Puszta-Kamarás, in Transylvania, he had himself long been buried by the floods of mental derangement. Reality had shown him no pity either. CHAPTER XXVII.