The strain over, his brain renewed its functions, and he was able to think intelligently, so he allowed himself five minutes for recovery. This period of time he estimated, then he rose to his feet, ready for the next part of the programme. Somewhere or other he believed there were bound to be stairs leading down into the castle courtyard. These he knew he could only find by feeling for them, so he set out along the wall, step by step. He was not long in his search. Having traversed some fifteen yards or so he came to a small tower. Suspecting that the stairs might be inside he entered, to find his surmise correct. The tower was a shield for a circular staircase leading from below. Treading with the utmost caution he ventured down, and at length arrived at the courtyard. Even there not a single man was to be seen, though he could hear them, for inside the castle there was a noise of music and singing. Deprive the Hungarian of his music, and part of his life is erased. The tune was dimly reminiscent; and a grim smile creased the features of the White Knight. Well might it strike a chord in his memory! It was the _Marseillaise_! Altered and transposed almost out of recognition so that even Rouget de Lisle might not have identified it, the song howled by the drunken villagers was basically the same as that which had fired the blood of other revolutionaries in other times, in another land. The tune was Hungarianized, the words modernized by a local poet; but the spirit of the singers was not altered one iota. So had the people of France sung their hymn, drinking from their bottles under the frowning fortifications of Paris, and their thoughts had been the same, their aspirations similar. The uprooting of law and order, the disruption of the country--what mattered so long as they had government for the mass by the mass? That the rule of the mass proved even more despotic, still more unjust than before, was a matter of no account at all. The large iron-bound doors of the castle proper stood wide open, and for this Wenzel breathed a sigh of thankfulness. His entrance should be comparatively easy. From the shadows outside he looked into the large hall. Not yet had the invaders managed to destroy all semblance of its beauty. The stately walls still rose grandly up to the raftered roof; its upper panels, beyond the reach of the peasants, were still adorned with the trophies of centuries of war and sport. It was the floor which had suffered most; its polish was irretrievably ruined, damaged by the contact of heavy boots, and the mess and filth which littered it. There, too, sprawled the filthy bodies of the Communists, drunkenly sleeping off the effects of a day's carousal. Those who were still able to remain awake were piled around a platform which occupied part of the left side of the hall. Here were the musicians, babbling in their cups, and yet still musical.