Our good host, worthy Beno Csányi, as he sat by the table, kept on mumbling in his beard: "That's something like a woman—that is a wife, if you like!"
Well, now that we are both together again, what does it all matter?
Yes, but how long shall we be together again?
My wife must go back the day after to-morrow. Only grudgingly had the director of the theatre allowed her a four days' leave. On the fifth day she must play.
But my captivity was soon to draw to a close.
My wife took a carefully concealed piece of paper from her breast; it was a tiny little grey schedule, but that little schedule was in those days a great treasure. It was the guarantee of my liberation—a Comorn passport.
It was a very simple method of deliverance, as simple as the egg of Columbus.
When the fortress of Comorn capitulated, each of the officers of the garrison there received a passport which guaranteed his life and liberty, and also dispensed him from enrolment in the Austrian army. My wife managed to procure me such a passport in the simplest way in the world. There was a brother of Szigligeti's in the Comorn garrison, Vincent Szathmary (Szathmary was their family name), who wrote my name down in the list of the capitulating officers as a Honved lieutenant, and handed the passport bearing my name to my wife.
This was the reason why I was obliged to remain in concealment in the meantime.
Thus my dove had brought me two leaves of the olive-branch, namely, life and liberty; but how about the third? I had still to wait for that. I was not free to come forth till I got it. I should have to wait till she came back for me a second time. I no longer ran any risk of being condemned, but I might still run the risk of being interned at my native place, Comorn, and that would have been a fresh torment for me.