In this same asylum at Döbling died some years later another great man, Széchényi,[179] the creator of Danubian navigation, the founder of the Magyar Academy, the promoter of the revolution of 1848. At the very apogee of the revolution, when Széchényi was a minister, he was heard one day begging Kossuth, one of his colleagues in the Ministry, not to let him be hanged. It was looked upon as a joke, but it was not so. He foresaw the misfortunes which would fall on his country, and wrongly judged himself responsible. The monomania of persecution took possession of him, and threatened to lead him to suicide. He gradually became calm, but exhibited a morbid loquacity, strange in a diplomatist and conspirator, and all day long he would stop the lunatics and idiots, and, what was worse, the enemies of his country whom he met in prison, and narrate to them the long confession of his imaginary sins. In 1850 an old passion for chess awoke in him, and took an insane character. It became necessary to pay a poor student to play with him for ten or twelve hours at a time. The unfortunate student went mad, but Széchényi slowly became sane. At the same time he began to lose an aversion for contact with human beings which had taken possession of him, and which made it impossible for him even to see his relations. There only remained of his morbid habits a certain repugnance to the bright country light, and a great objection to leave his room. On certain days of the month he consented to receive his much-loved children; with a gesture he led them tenderly to his table, and read what he had written; but it required much diplomacy to bring him out into the park. His intelligence remained clear; it was even more robust than ever. He kept himself acquainted with the whole German and Magyar literary movement, and he watched for the smallest sign of better fortune to come to his country. When he saw an Austrian intrigue hindering the completion of the eastern railway to which he had devoted himself so vigorously he wrote a letter to Zichy, in which he shows all his old power, as may be seen from the following passages: “What has existed once often reappears in the world under another form and different conditions. A broken bottle cannot be put together, yet those poor fragments of glass are not lost; they may be thrown into the furnace and become a vessel for Tokay, the king of wines, to sparkle in, while the broken bottle may have held but a very inferior wine.... The greatest praise that can be given to a Hungarian is to tell him that he has stood firm. You know, my friend, our old proverb: ‘Stand firm, even in the mire.’ Let us apply that motto; distrust the reproaches even of our brothers to serve the common cause. To remain at one’s post, in spite of the mud that fanatical or frivolous patriots throw in the faces of their brothers and companions in arms, to remain obstinately there, even when insult strikes one in the face--that