Our dear friend János Rákóczy, as an old country gentleman, was a capital coachman so long as he had only to guide the horses, but that part of the stableman's science which deals with harnessing and unharnessing he had never learnt. So when we came to a place in the sweltering heat of the dog-days after a long drive through the vast plain, the very first thing he did was to let the unharnessed horses immediately drink their fill at the spring, and then tie them up in the stable, in consequence of which the shaft horse caught inflammation of the lungs, and expired an hour afterwards. The saddle horse survived as by a miracle. Instead of the deceased horse, therefore, we had to harness another nag, which we picked up on the road for 100 florins. This new horse was a hand and a half smaller than the steed that still remained with us. With this slap-dash team nobody would have taken us any longer for gentry.
We had still to pass through Miskolcz, where the Russians were encamping. Here dwelt my wife's father, the wise and worthy professor Benke Laborfalvy. He pointed out to us the road which led into Tordona. Five hours long we penetrated through dense forests: not a human dwelling place, not a beaten tract was to be seen. A stream cut through the winding valley and along its bank, shifting now to the right hand and now to the left, a sort of path wound its way naturally, without anything like a bridge; for the convenience of foot passengers, huge stones at irregular intervals had been cast into the bed of the racing stream. There, in a deeply hidden, delightful valley, lay the little spot which is walled off from the world.
My wife and I descended at the Telepi's house and were heartily welcomed by our worthy hostess. Rákóczy, with his equipage, had to be lodged in another house. Madame Telepi's brother, my tenderly remembered good friend, the worthy Béni Csányi, dwelt in a house a little farther off. It was he who stabled the horses. Later on I joined him.
He was really a model of a "small country gentleman," such as they ought to be nowadays. An accomplished, intelligent man, speaking, besides his own language, Latin and German, with a thorough knowledge of the law, for which he had been trained, and who, for all that, now went out and ploughed his own land with the aid of a man-servant. He ate his home-made bread, drank his home-brewed wine, welcomed guests with all his heart, and slew a sheep or a pig in their honour. His wife baked and brewed, led the way at the spindle, and sewed her children's clothes with her own hand. They had three sons, and the little money that flowed into the domestic coffers was spent in the schooling of the children. Csányi never borrows, and owes no man anything. His work-room is a joiner and wheelwright's shed; when anything breaks in the wagon he mends it himself: it is his pet pastime. He has a library also, full of such books as Sir Walter Scott's historical work on the French Revolutionary Wars. Newspapers he never reads. If, again, a poem pleases him, he learns it by heart, and passes it on further by word of mouth. He never goes to law with his neighbour, and when two fall out he makes peace between them. But when the cry goes forth, "The fatherland is in danger! Let us make sacrifices for the commonweal!" then he cuts the large silver buttons off his mantle, and lays them on the altar of his country.
I owe it for the most part to this worthy man that I did not lose my reason altogether in these hard times.
Thus we arrived hither. I was saved. I was no longer a dead man. I lived.
But what sort of a life was it? It was the sort of life which belongs to a new-born babe: absolute inability to help one's self. Rákóczy quitted us on the following day. He was off to the Carpathians. There he took service as coachman (naturally under an assumed name) in the family of a wealthy territorial Count. They were more than contented with him, for he was an excellent and honest coachman. But one day a strange misadventure befell him. He was taking the Count and his brother-in-law out for a drive, when the gentleman began talking of the era of Louis XIV., and one of them could not call to mind the name of a celebrated statesman of those days. Then the coachman could not help turning round towards them, and saying, "Colbert!" The Counts immediately dismounted from the coach and went home on foot. The learned coachman, however, was discharged. It is not good to sleep under the same roof with a coachman who knows so much.
My wife and I agreed that she should return to Pest and resume her engagement at the National Theatre there till I should get back my patrimony. Then we would purchase a little property in the depths of the beech forest, close to Béni Csányi, and plough and sow to the end of our days. What else could we do? Our country, our nation, our liberty were now no more. Our souls had no wings. We stuck fast in the mire.
On the very anniversary of our wedding, which was my wife's birthday as well, we parted. Our wedding tour had lasted exactly a year. I wish nobody such another, but I would not exchange all the joys in the world for the recollection of it.
I remained behind in a vast primeval forest, entombed, forgotten.