On taking leave of his guests, the General promised them a tranquil night, to compensate for the agitation of the day; and he was as good as his word, for that very night he made a sally with some troops above the Nadorvonal,[44] and compelled the enemy to withdraw their battery.
[44] Palatine's line.
Time flies; the past is gradually forgotten, and with it the past glory. Where are the glorious hopes—the bright dreams? All are gone. Comorn! monument of war! deserted and unhappy town! what remains of all thy power and glory? The blackened ruins, and the Comorn Honved officers![45]
[45] When the fortress capitulated, the officers of the national guard were suffered to quit the country free—one of the conditions for which they had stipulated.
MOR PERCZEL.
In the January of 1848 it had not yet entered the most speculative imagination that war might break out before the year had ended. Our humane patriots thought of anything in the world rather than of the manufacture of gunpowder; and when, during some unusually riotous municipal elections, one or two of our noble countrymen were shot through the head, the papers, for several weeks afterwards, were full of comments on the horrors of such unheard-of bloodshed.
It was about this time that the journals were much occupied with the wonders of a certain magnetic somnambulist, who foretold various strange things, which, to the astonishment of all who heard them, actually came to pass.
She foretold, among other things, the ruin of Comorn! Unhappy town! it might have been well for her if all her misfortunes had been included in this prophecy, but alas! her fate was doomed to exceed even this, in the direful results of the siege. Another of the prophecies of the somnambulist was, that the country should be visited by cholera, and that those whom it carried off would be the happiest.