Two Jews were talking to each other:
“At last! Beneidenswertes Volk, these Bulgarians. They will get good conditions! Prima Bedingungen! And that is the beginning of peace.”
They alone seemed to be happy.... And the sun glittered on the roof-tops and there was something in the glowing brightness of the early autumn which reminded me of the waking life of spring, when I had walked in the same neighbourhood. When was it? I remembered with a pang. On the morn of the victory of Gorlice did the sun shine thus, above the bright-coloured waving flags. And through my tears I saw suddenly the little dead golden-headed boy, the hope of his house: little Andrew Tormay.... He came during the war, he smiled, and he was gone. His short life ended with the last world-moving act. But was it the last? Or was it a new beginning?
A cold shudder ran down my back. Merciful God, is it not enough? Somewhere a cock crowed and roused me from my meditations. I took my hands from my face and rose stiff from beside my table. The room had become chilled during the long night. Between the slats of the blind something was painting with a delicate brush rapid, cold blue lines on the darkness. Dawn. I looked out for an instant into the damp, sad half-light and tried to picture the morn. But the thoughts of the night crowded upon me.
Some time must have elapsed before I noticed that I was sitting on the edge of my bed, rigid, dressed. A jumble of thoughts thronged my brain.... Since the Bulgarian armistice life had been one continuous series of shocks, and I remembered events only with gaps. Big pieces were missing, then they started again.... Wilson! In those dark hours this name still soothed our harassed souls. Disastrous illusion, enticing nations into a death-trap! Peace ... peace! howled the voice of this phantom behind the battlefields, attacking the still resisting armies in the back. Peace!... Peace! it howled along the fronts. Then in an aside it added: “There is no peace for you till you discard your Emperor!” Meanwhile, in our midst, the camp of Count Michael Károlyi studied cynically, as if it were a game, the guide-book of the Russian Revolution. Tisza and Andrássy became reconciled. Too late, too late....
Then came a memorable day. Parliament sat on the 17th of October and the Prime Minister announced the severance of all community with Austria, except the personal union of the Sovereign. Too late, too late.... The aspiration of centuries, the hope of generations, became a puppet. The unity of the Empire, dualism, the common army, were feverishly thrown overboard from the Monarchy’s drifting airship. The opposition laughed. One deputy promised a revolution for March and turning toward Tisza spoke of the gallows.
“The parody of a revolution,” answered Tisza contemptuously.
Károlyi rose to speak. The storm broke, and one of his hangers-on, Lovászy, shouted at the House: “We are friends of the Entente!”
This was the first open avowal of the treason which had been committed for years by Károlyi’s party; the horror of it ran like a shudder through the House, the city and the land, to pass on as a slavering mendicant to our enemies. Those who were honest among us hurled the treason back at the traitors, that it might brand the foreheads of those who in the hour of our agony could offer their friendship to our destroyers. How could the powers of the Entente feel anything but contempt and disdain for such an offer! Their generals and politicians might make use of traitors, but certainly they would not demean themselves by accepting their friendship.