More than four months had elapsed since the outbreak of war. The approach of Christmas found us on the battlefield and, alas! as far from our goal as on the occasion when we officers of the General Staff, assembled on the eve of our departure for the Front, raised our glasses and drank to the day of victory. All hope of a short campaign had gone for ever. Being now a prisoner of war, I can confess to my feelings of those days without the slightest compunction, and frankly admit that, despite our undoubted military successes, I was a disappointed man. How could my mental attitude be otherwise when I sat down and calmly compared the early weeks of the war with the existing situation? Candidly, I was full of disillusionments, and to add still more to my wretchedness in the little Hungarian village where we were stationed, certain personal grievances weighed heavily upon me. Picture a soldier of my active and imaginative temperament, who had lived for weeks in the hope of participating in the glory of battle, being forced to live that quasi-military life somewhere at the back of the Front. I was not the only one who felt the monotony of that existence, made up of receiving and transmitting reports, coding and deciphering messages, poring over maps, and otherwise taking part in the office work of the General Staff. Some of my brother-officers were perhaps more patient and philosophic than I was, but I am convinced there was not one of them who, at the bottom of his heart, was not heartily sick of this vegetating life at the end of the telegraph wires, far from the actual scenes of operations. But I am wandering a little from my story, and mentioning my brother-officers brings me back to the main theme. Whom do you think--to the infinite satisfaction of a man yearning for congenial society, no less than to his great surprise--they included? Of all people in the world, no other than Count Seilern! Retrospection--backed up by a nature essentially fatalistic--forces me to the conclusion that I was destined to meet this man again and to play a prominent part in his life. How can one set down to a mere coincidence that second meeting and the blossoming of our acquaintanceship of the International Club of C---- into a close friendship, any more than one can think that it was due to mere chance that I should then have learnt so much (for my future guidance) relating to his private history, in which, again, I was to be, in such strange circumstances, both actor and historian? Since Fate, then, has made me the historian of this tragic tale, let me come at once to the facts and so relieve my mind of some part of the burden which I fear will always oppress it.