In Love With the Czarina, and Other Stories

SPECIAL AUTHORISED EDITION
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL HUNGARIAN WITH THE AUTHOR'S SPECIAL PERMISSION BY LOUIS FELBERMANN AUTHOR OF HUNGARY AND ITS PEOPLE ETC.
LONDON FREDERICK WARNE & CO. AND NEW YORK
DEDICATED TO HUNGARY'S GREATEST WRITER MAURICE JÓKAI BY LOUIS FELBERMANN
From him I took it; to him I give it
EASTERN PROVERB
London 1894

The entire Hungarian nation—king and people—have recently been celebrating the jubilee of Hungary's greatest writer, Maurice Jókai, whose pen, during half a century of literary activity, has given no less than 250 volumes to the world. Admired and beloved by his patriotic fellow-countrymen, Jókai has displayed that kind of genius which fascinates the learned and unlearned alike, the old and the young. He enchants the children of Hungary by his fairy-tales, and as they grow up into men and women he implants within them a passion for their native land and a knowledge of its splendid history such as only his poetic and dramatic pen could engrave upon their memory. His versatility of talent—for, besides being the Hungarian poet-laureate, he is a novelist, playwright, historian, and orator—enables the Hungarians to see in him their Heine, their Byron, their Walter Scott, and their Victor Hugo.
Jókai began his career at a period when Hungary aspired to political freedom, and his powerful pen, in combination with that of his familiar friend, Alexander Petőfi, Hungary's greatest lyric poet, was mainly instrumental in rousing the nation to arms. In 1849, when the Hungarian nation had sustained a cruel defeat, it was Jókai who cheered the flagging spirits of the Magyars, and by the potency and skill of his extraordinary pen influenced that reconciliation between Sovereign and people which was ultimately accomplished by Hungary's greatest statesman, Francis Deák.
The Hungarian language is one of the richest of Turanian tongues, and particularly lends itself to the didactic and romantic styles. So far back as the beginning of the thirteenth century we find traces of Hungarian literature, and, if it had been permitted to develop, Hungary might now have possessed a literature second to none in the modern world. But in consequence of political struggles the Hungarian language and literature had to give way, at times, either to the Latin or German races, so much so that as late as 1849 all scientific subjects had to be taught either in German or in Latin. It was then that a few patriotic Magyars took the matter acutely to heart, and strove to restore the language and literature of their country, with the happy result that Hungary now, in proportion to its population, comes immediately after Germany in the number of its universities, colleges, and scientific institutions, where all subjects are taught in the Hungarian language only .