We had already begun to count the days that remained.
One week before the final day, I received a letter from Lorand, in which he begged me not to go to meet him at Lankadomb, but rather to give a rendezvous in Szolnok: he did not wish the scene of rapture to be spoiled by the sarcasms of Topándy.
I was just as well pleased.
For days all had been ready for the journey. I hunted up everything in the way of a souvenir which I had still from those days ten years before when I had parted from Lorand, even down to that last scrap of paper,[70] which now occupied my every thought.
[70] The paper of Madame Bálnokházy's letter which was used for the fatal lot-drawing.
It would have been labor lost on my part to tell the ladies how bad the roads in the lowlands are at that time of year, that in any case Lorand would come to them a day later. Nor indeed did I try to dissuade them from making the journey. Which of them would have remained home at such a time? Which of them would have given up a single moment of that day, when she might once more embrace Lorand? They both came to me.
We arrived at Szolnok one day before Lorand: I only begged them to remain in their room until I had spoken with Lorand.
They promised and remained the whole day in one room of the inn, while I strolled the whole day about the courtyard on the watch for every arriving carriage.
An unusual number of guests came on that day to the inn: gay companions of Topándy from the neighborhood, to whom Lorand had given a rendezvous there. Some I knew personally, the others by reputation; the latter's acquaintance too was soon made.
It struck me as peculiar that Lorand had written to me that he did not wish the elegiac tone of our first gathering to be disturbed by the voice of the stoics of Lankadomb, yet he had invited the whole Epicurean alliance here—a fact which was likely to give a dithyrambic tone to our meeting.