KING CHARLES.
Photo. Kosel, Vienna.
The old ruler closed his eyes after a long watch, and the reins of the two countries fell from his aged hands. In Vienna: an imperial funeral and imperial mourning; in Buda: a coronation shining with the lustre of ancient gold. The clouds had broken! With his veiled, white-faced wife the young King passed like a vision through his royal town.
But it was all a dream. The King was in a hurry. In vain did his people proffer their devotion at the gate of his castle: he was incapable of grasping the moment, and departed before he had gathered this royal treasure. So the wind scattered the despised love of the nation. Something froze under the Hungarian sky, and in chilled soberness the morrow dawned.
In those times the winters were cold in Hungary. They froze one to the marrow as they had never done before. There was scarcely any fuel. Along the walls of the houses in Pest, children, girls, and old people thronged at the entrance to the coal merchants. They sat on the edge of the pavement, shivered and waited. At the horse-butchers, at the communal shops, in front of bakers’, and dairymen’s, long rows of sad women waited from dawn till late into the night. Quiet, patient women ... waiting.... Everybody was waiting—for life, for death, for news, for somebody to return. The hospitals were overcrowded, and all through the land, from one end to the other, the roads resounded with the wooden clatter of crutches.
That was the once happy Hungary! But hope and honour were still alive. Our war was a war of self-defence. Perhaps we, of all the combatants, had nothing to gain, had no ambition to take anything from any other country.
But our corrupt politics had lost a greater struggle than a battle. Personal hatred and envy brought about the downfall of Stephen Tisza, and the helm came into inexperienced hands. The power which had steered till then ceased to be, and while men of the Great Plain, Transylvania, Upper Hungary and West Hungary were away on the distant battle-fields, in honour bound, something happened in the crowded capital of the empty country.
Traces of the silent, clandestine work of undermining became gradually perceptible. But before its threads could be clearly defined they faded away and were absorbed by daily life. In the background, as on a stage, sinister shapes passed. From the sides invisible prompters whispered, and in the foreground there appeared a figure which day by day grew more distinct. This figure kept repeating, louder and louder, the secret promptings, as though they were his very own.
That man was Count Michael Károlyi.