"We are no worse off here than you are," was the reply.
They were determined to wait till the printed broad-sides were ready.
Not very long afterwards Irinyi appeared at the window of the printing-office, for to get out of the door was a sheer impossibility. He held in his hands the first printed sheets from the free press.
Ah, that scene! when the very first free sheets were distributed from hand to hand! I cannot describe it. "Freedom, freedom!" It was the first ray of a new and better era!... A free press! the first-fruit of the universal tree of knowledge of Paradise. What a tumult arose when they actually clutched that forbidden fruit in their hands.... Hail to thee, O Freedom of the Press! Thou seven-headed dragon, how many times hast thou not bitten me since then! Yet I bless the hour when I first saw thee creep out of thy egg and gave thee what little help I could!
Young authors, clerks, advocates, all hot-headed young people, crowded around the invisible banner.
A young county official was now seen forcing his way through the dense crowd right to the very door of the printing-office, and from thence he addressed me. The influential Vice-Lieutenant of the County, Paul Nyáry, sent word to me that I was to go to him to the town hall.
"Why should I go?" cried I from my point of vantage. "I'll be shot down with cannon-balls rather! If the Vice-Lieutenant of the County wants to speak to us, let him come here. We are the 'mountain' now."
And Mohammed really did come to the "mountain," and with him came a group of grave-faced men, the veteran leaders of the camp of freedom.
Amongst them was a dwarfish little oddity of a man, the assistant editor of the Eletképek, the gallant little Sükey, who, despite a chronic asthma, fought through the whole campaign, musket in hand. Besides being a cripple, he was a really extraordinary stammerer. When he saw the grave-visaged men making their way to us through the crowd, he scrambled along beside them, and with all the force of his lungs bellowed out this notable declaration: "D-d-d-don't li-li-li-listen to those wi-wi-wi-wiseacres!"
But the wiseacres hadn't come to convert us to wisdom. On the contrary, Nyáry had come to approve of what we had done hitherto, and then to go together with us to the town hall, that they might there, together with the town councillors, ratify the Articles of the liberal programme.