The proclamation was ready. We hastened into the street. We said nothing to Madame Petöfi. Every one of us had arms of some sort. I pocketed the famous duplex pistol already mentioned.
Every one knows ad nauseam what followed—how the human avalanche began to move, how it grew, and what speeches we made in the great square. But speech-making was not sufficient, we wanted to do something. The first thing to be done was to give practical application to the doctrine of a free press. We resolved to print the Twelve Articles of Pest, the Proclamation, and the "Talpra Magyar" without the consent of the censor.
The printing press of Landerer and Heckenast was honoured with this compulsory distinction. The printers were naturally not justified in printing anything without permission from the authorities, so we turned up our sleeves and worked away at the hand-presses ourselves. The name of the typesetter who set up the first word of freedom was Potemkin.
While Irinyi and other young authors were working away at the press, it was my duty to harangue the mob that thronged the whole length of Hatváni Street. I had no idea how to set about it, but it came of its own accord.
My worthy and loyal contemporary, Paul Szontagh, occasionally quotes to me, even now, some of the heaven-storming phrases which he heard me say on that occasion; e.g., "... No! fellow-citizens; he is not the true hero who can die for his country; he who can slay for his country, he is the true hero!"
That was the sort of oratory I used to practise in those days!
Meanwhile the rain began to fall, and rain is the most reactionary opponent of every revolution. But my people were not to be dispersed by the rain, and all at once the whole street was filled with expanded umbrellas.
"What! gentlemen," thundered I from the corner of the street, "if you stick up your umbrellas now against mere rain-drops, what will you stick up against the bullets which will presently begin to fall?"
It was only then that I noticed that there were not only gentlemen around me but ladies also. A pair of them had insinuated themselves close to my side. In one of them I recognised "Queen Gertrude."[49] On her head she wore a plumed cap, and was wrapped up in a Persian shawl embroidered with palm-tree flowers. Both cap and shawl were dripping with rain. I had met the lady once or twice at the Szigligetis'. I exhorted the ladies to go home; here they would get dripping-wet, I said, and some other accident might befall them.
[49] i.e., the actress who took that part.