Paul Kéri, whose name used to be Krammer, and Francis Göndör, whose real name was Nathan Krausz, two radical newspaper scribes, decide who is to command the troops of the Hungarian capital! And it is on Heltai, the son of Adolph Hoffer, that their choice falls.

VICTOR HELTAI alias HOFFER,
REVOLUTIONARY COMMANDER OF THE BUDAPEST GARRISON. 		PAUL KÉRI alias KRAMMER,
ONE OF COUNT KÁROLYI’S ADVISERS.

([To face p. 10.])

Wild fury, hopeless despair, came over me. I wanted to shout for help, like the Swabian women whom I had seen robbed. But who would have listened to me and my misery? They might have laughed, or they might have arrested me. The street moved, lived, hummed, but it was not conscious. For a time I stared at the people, then I set my teeth. Was it I who was mad, or they? And I went on.

In front of the Astoria Hotel the crowd stopped. After its secret sittings in Count Theodor Batthyány’s palace Károlyi’s National Council pitched its tent here, till it might take possession of the conquered Town Hall. Near the hotel innumerable carriages and motors were waiting. Flags flew from the building and through its revolving door, which reminded one of a bank, men of the stock-exchange type went in and out. There was no policeman anywhere, though the crowd was increasing dangerously. The monster which had crawled in from the suburbs was reclining against the wall of the building, leaving a muddy, smirched trail behind it. Its head rose under the porch: a man stood on the others’ shoulders. His face was red and he waved his hat violently as he shouted:

“Hadik has got the sack.... Károlyi is Prime-Minister!”

“Somebody is going to make a speech,” a little Jew girl said and tried to press forward. Over the porch an ugly fat man appeared between the flags. “Eugene Landler!” shouted the girl in rapture. A soldier thrust her aside. “What’s he got to do with it? In the barracks, last night, those who spoke were at any rate Hungarians—a chap called Martin Lovászy and one called Pogány. They had darned big mouthpieces, but they had the gift of the gab!”

The crowd hummed like a boiling kettle. “Speak up, hear! hear!” All looked upward.