This depression was yet enhanced by the disappointment in regard to the material results of my book, and the rude awakening out of my dreams of comparative prosperity. To judge from the enthusiastic reception of my work both in Europe and America, and after all the laudatory criticisms of the Press, I expected to get from the sale of the first edition a sum at least sufficient to ensure my independence. The newspapers talked of quite colossal sums which my publisher had paid or would pay me, and I was consequently not a little crestfallen when at the end of the year I received the first account, according to which I had made a net profit of £500, a sum of which I had spent nearly a third in London. The modest remainder, in the eyes of the former Dervish a small fortune, was as nothing to the European accustomed to London high-life, and not by a long way sufficient for the writer, anxious to make a home for himself. The vision of all my fair anticipations and bold expectations vanished as a mist before my eyes, and after having tasted of the golden fruit of the Hesperides, was I to go back to my scantily furnished table, nay, perhaps be reduced again to poverty and the struggle for daily bread? After twenty years of hard fighting I was back again where I was at the beginning of my career, with this difference, that I had gained a name and reputation, a capital, however, which would not yield its interest till much later. I am therefore not at all surprised that in my desperate frame of mind I clutched at a straw, and looked upon a professorship at Pest and the doctor's chair of Oriental languages as the bark of salvation upon the still turbulent ocean of my life. True, my cold reception at home had somewhat sobered me, and made the realisation of even this modest ambition not quite so easy of attainment, but my longing for my native land and for a quiet corner admitted of no hesitation, no doubt. With incredible light-heartedness I disengaged myself from the embrace of the noisy, empty homage of the great city on the Thames and sped to Pest to present myself to my compatriots after my triumphal campaign in England and crowned with the laurels of appreciation of the cultured West. As may be supposed, my reception was somewhat warmer but not much more splendid than on my return from Asia. Small nations in the early stages of their cultural development often follow the lead of greater, mightier, and more advanced lands in their distribution of blame or praise. The homely proverb, "Young folks do as old folks did," can also be applied to whole communities, and, especially where it concerns the appreciation and acknowledgment of matters rather beyond the intellectual and national limits of the people, such copying or rather echoing of the superior criticism is quite permissible and excusable. On my return from England my compatriots received me with marked attention, but Hungary was still an Austrian province, and in order to