CHAPTER VII
WELTSCHMERZ CONDITIONS[25]—"REMAIN OR FLY!"
[25] Világ fájdalmas állapotok. There is no English equivalent of Világ fájdalmas.
When I got back to Pest, I found two letters awaiting me on my writing-table, one from Tony Várady, inviting me to stand godfather to his new-born son, and the other from Petöfi, informing me that he had just been married to Julia Szendrey, and that they were having very happy days at Teleky's Castle, Koltó. Both of these friends were poor fellows, like myself; and the ladies who had chosen to be their companions through life were girls belonging to wealthy, eminent families, accustomed to luxury and splendour, surrounded by obsequious wooers, and their mothers loved them as the apples of their eyes. Their families opposed the marriages, and the enamoured young ladies, handicapped as they were by the weight of their parents' refusal, followed their beloveds notwithstanding.
Then true love is no dream after all, but pure gold. And yet when I seek this pure gold they call me a crazy alchemist!
And now Petöfi begged me by letter to seek out a convenient lodging for him, where they and I could live together. That a newly-married bridegroom should invite his faithful bachelor comrade to be a fellow-lodger with him is a fact which belongs to the realm of fairy tales.
I immediately hunted up in Tobacco Street a nice first-floor-apartment,[26] consisting of three chambers and their domestic offices; the first room was for the Petöfis, the second for me, while the intermediate one was to be a common dining-room, and there were separate entrances for each of us.
[26] Used here in the French sense of a suite of rooms.
The young couple came in during the autumn; they kept one maid, and I had an old servant. We had both very primitive furniture. Mrs. Petöfi had left her father's house without a dowry; she had not so much as a fashionable hat to bless herself with; she had sewed herself together a sort of head-dress of her own invention, which she never wore. Her hair was cut short, so that she looked like a little boy. They had nothing, and yet they were very happy! Julia's sole amusement was to learn English from Petöfi, and afterwards, at dinner (which was sent in from "The Eagle"), we spoke English, and laughed at each other's blunders. And I had to be a witness of their bliss every day!
It was just as if one were to season hell with piquant pepper.