“Yesterday they liberated in triumph all the deserters.... Only a few hours before the assassination of Stephen Tisza a commission came with the written order of the National Council to the jail to free all political prisoners, and as the order put it, “all deserving prisoners.” The first to rush out of the prison was Lékai-Leitner, the man who recently made an attempt on Tisza’s life. He addressed a speech to the assembled mob and explained without being interfered with why the principal contriver of the war, Tisza, should be killed. “Let him perish!” he shouted, and the mob cheered while he, protected by the police, incited his comrades in the street to murder.”
“Károlyi’s National Council must have known of that. Yet they did nothing to protect Tisza. A few hours later his assassins could destroy him without fear of interruption.”
I thought of Marat’s saying to Barbaroux: “Give me four hundred assassins and I will make the revolution.” ... Into the hands of what a crowd have fallen the fates both of our country and ourselves! High treason and rebellion are no longer crimes, violence is lawful, incitement to it permissible. Assassins can exercise their trade without punishment, and there is no place where one can claim justice. I staggered under the confusing thoughts. I seemed to have lived through something like this once before. Many years ago, on a hot, close summer night, I was awakened by a violent shock. The room swayed, the house tilted backwards and forwards, everything tottered, cracked, collapsed. An earthquake! And when I wanted to grasp something it gave way, moved from its place; nothing seemed firm.... “Let us fly!” ... A mad voice shouted it through the night.... Fly? On such occasions there is no place whither flight is possible; for miles and miles the earth quakes.
Presently, in order to encourage my mother, I said aloud:
“Everything is not lost yet. The troops will come back from the front. They will restore order. Those who have fought there will not tolerate the rule of deserters and shirkers at home.”
“Unfortunately Károlyi’s agents have gone to meet them at the front,” said my brother-in-law. “And they have taken with them an ample supply of the government’s newspapers.”
Meanwhile out of doors the fog became as dense as if a morass had swollen up in the valleys. It clung about the windows and coated the panes. My brothers and sisters prepared to go. When we took leave we agreed that as we could hope at any rate for a little more safety in town than here, we would move in as soon as we could procure the necessary vans. The villa stood in a lonely spot among abandoned houses; only my sister Mary, and, on the other side of the ravine, the farmer, lived on the hill besides ourselves. And the woods were full of vagabonds.
“It will be safer....”
“It will be equally unsafe everywhere in Hungary,” I said while I put my coat on to accompany them a short distance.
When we reached the bottom of the hill shots broke the silence. Rifles answered them, and their echo rolled on between the hills. A white dog, frightened to death, rushed past me like an arrow, his tail between his legs, and his ears pressed tightly back. The caretaker of one of the empty villas, an old Swabian gardener, stood in the gate, smoking his pipe and watching the road.