"I believe that you've a little too much heart."
"Perhaps all that my heart led me to do was sinful. I was mad. I was blind. Passion got hold of me; but the feeling I had for you would not have been out of place in heaven itself. When I am alone, I am always with you; and when I think of anything I think of you. I wish you to go onwards and upwards along the rugged path that you have entered upon; but can you do it here, with a leaden weight on your feet, a padlock on your mouth, and a strait jacket on your body?"
"'Tis because it is heavy that I must needs carry my burden."
"But how much more brilliant would be the success of your struggle if you could continue it on a foreign soil—in free France, for instance! Just think! If you were now to appear in Paris, the leaders of the French literature would receive you with open arms. The French public would enrol you among its great writers, and then you might write of the glory, the sufferings, and the heroic struggles of Hungary, and of the amiable qualities of its people; you might write all this with perfect freedom, from the very bottom of your heart, and millions and millions, the whole round world, would read your writings, and not merely a handful of people, as here at home. There you would be a rich man, here you are only a day-labourer. Here you might sing like a Tyrtæus, and the world outside would hear nothing of it; but if you raised your voice abroad in the midst of a great nation and a cosmopolitan capital, your voice would be like the horns of Joshua before the walls of Jericho."
Ah! how luring was the panorama.... To become a great French writer! To be raised aloft on the shoulders of the most glorious of nations! What here at home was but the crack of a whip in my hands, would there be a thunderbolt!
"But it is impossible," I objected. "How could I possibly force my way to the frontiers of France from the depths of Tordona, through my own country, through Austria, through Germany, without a passport, without money, in a semi-Asiatic garb? Just as well might I cast myself down from the mountain-top in the belief that I could fly."
"Well, come now, I have a very good plan to suggest to you. I've got an English passport. Have I not told you exactly how I got it? None besides yourself knows that I have it, except, of course, the officials who have viséd it on the way. In this passport the blank for my travelling companion has not yet been filled up. You asked me just now why I did not insert the name and description of Bálványossi. Now, I'll tell you. Nobody is pursuing him. I always intended to fill up that blank with your name. You won't have to sacrifice much beyond that little moustache and beard of yours, and resigning yourself to speak nothing abroad but French and German. I appoint you my secretary. I myself am an English lady. We mustn't go viâ Vienna. But the way is clear in the direction of Breslau. I have quite enough money for us both. I still retain the hundred ducats which I received at Debreczin. We shall do sumptuously with this till we get to Paris. My capital in the Vienna bank I can leave where it is, or I may have it sent after me, and the interest from it will suffice for your modest needs at the beginning of your residence at Paris, so that you will not have to resort to the emigrants' fund. When once you have won a position for yourself in Continental literature you will need no further assistance from anybody. You will be able to refund to me what I advanced to you as a loan. Only as a loan remember, not as a gift; still less do I expect anything in exchange, not even a warm pressure of the hand. I am simply your proselyte whose mission it is to make straight the way of the prophet."
It was a seductive picture, and still more seductive was she who presented it to me.
To be free! To be able to pronounce my name boldly in the face of every one who met me! Not to tremble at the pattering of every footstep at my door! To fight for great ideas in the company of great and noble minds!
And how her eyes sparkled as she said these words, like the parhelia in the glowing girdle of a solar halo! And her face was as open as a child's. I could have sworn that she was an artless virgin opening her heart for the first time to a true sentiment. Her hands were folded as if in prayer.