Lorand did not agree with the idea.
"There is still one lodging vacant in it."
And that was a horror to us all.
Every evening we parted as if saying a last adieu.
Nothing in life gave him pleasure. He took part in nothing which interested other men. He did not play cards, or drink wine: he was ever sober and of unchanging mood. He read nothing but mathematical books. I could never persuade him to take a newspaper in his hand.
"The whole history of the world is one lie."
Every day, winter and summer, early in the morning, before anyone had risen, he walked out to the cemetery, to where Czipra lay "under the perfumed herb-roots:" spent some minutes there and then returned, bringing in summer a blade of living grass, in winter of dried grass from her grave.
He had a diary, in which nought was written, except the date: and pinned underneath, in place of writing, was the dry blade of grass.
The history of a life contained in thousands of grass-blades, each blade representing a day.