Thus far the reporter’s account. My mother looked at me interrogatively for an instant and then shook her head sadly.
“Something has been omitted from that account. It all sounds very improbable. Hungarian soldiers don’t kill in the presence of women.”
“It is a psychological impossibility,” I said; “such an account can have sprung only from the imagination of a Budapest reporter. Soldiers from the front would not talk politics if they wanted to kill. They might have rushed in and stabbed Tisza, but such a cold-blooded, cowardly, premeditated murder is not in the nature of Hungarians. It must have been very different.”
“However it was,” my mother sighed, “it is terrible to think that it could happen. Poor Countess Tisza!”
A short notice at the foot of the paper said something about her—Count Michael Károlyi had sent her the following telegram: “It is my human duty to express my deep sympathy over the tragical death of my greatest political opponent.”
My mother was horrified at this.
“How could he be so shameless as to intrude like that!”
Indeed, this impudence sounded like a sneer at Tisza’s memory, and in any case it was wanton cruelty to the faithful, heroic woman who knew full well that for many years Károlyi had with cruel hatred incited the masses against her husband.
The origin of this hatred was deep and irreparable, for it sprang not from a divergence of ideas but from the physical disparities which resulted from Károlyi’s infirmities. Michael Károlyi, a stunted degenerate afflicted with a cleft palate, a haughty, hopelessly conceited, spoilt and unintelligent child of fortune, could never forgive the simple nobleman Tisza that he was gifted, strong, clean and healthy, every inch a man, powerful, and in power. It was the hatred of envious deformity for strength, health and success. Those about him, for ends of their own, made capital out of this. Some of his satellites reported several of his utterances on this subject. In fact Károlyi made no secret of his hatred for Tisza.