"But flowers must bloom somewhere, I suppose?"
"But the people dance the livelong night."
"That doesn't injure any one, surely?"
"But after dancing they sit down to rest."
"That is very natural."
"But they take their rest and recreation very noisily."
The Town Captain shrugged his shoulders, he could do nothing in the matter; it was a ticklish business to interfere in; it did not fall within his jurisdiction, etc., etc.
But when, finally, Szigligeti said: "My lodger, the correspondent of the Jelenkor, cannot sleep all night because of them," then, indeed, the Town Captain suddenly leaped from his chair, set all his myrmidons in motion, and by the next day the whole flower-garden and dancing academy was transferred to another forcing bed. Such in those days was the authority of a newspaper correspondent.... I was therefore no longer a mere cipher. I was a something now. And, more than that, I was a somebody also. For it was in those days that I passed my legal examination, and became a certificated lawyer in the ordinary and commercial courts. My diploma, indeed, was not præclarus, but at any rate it was laudibilis. The oral rigorosum I passed through brilliantly, but in the scripturistik (there's a fine dog Latin word for you!) my Hungarian style was not considered satisfactory.
The publication of my legal diploma in the county court was a sufficiently dignified excuse for a visit to my native town. With head erect I could now enter the presence of the fairy damsel with the sparkling "eyes like the sea."