"Do you know why I have kept you?" asked Alfonsine, when the other had gone. "I have kept you in order that I may whisper in your ear every night, when you lie down to sleep: 'I will kill him. The man you love has murdered the man whom I love, and the murderer must die.' You shall taste the despair that embitters my heart. You shall not be happy while I am miserable."
She threw herself into an armchair, weeping passionately, and Edith sought her old room.
CHAPTER XXIII.
A DUEL BETWEEN BROTHERS.
A whole nation's gaze was turned toward the fortress of Buda. There it stood, weak when it came to self-defence, yet capable of working fearful destruction in case of attack. From the summits of the surrounding mountains one could overlook Buda and examine its interior as if it had been an open book. Old brick walls formed its sole fortifications, with no outworks of any sort.
Wherein, then, lay its mysterious strength? In the fact that Pest lay outstretched at its feet, and for every cannon-ball directed against the fortress it could retaliate with a deadly shower of fire and iron. The enemy on the hill said to his foe across the river: "If you draw your sword against me I will slay your wife and daughters and the infant in its cradle." Nevertheless the sword was drawn.
For the fiery and impetuous, nothing tries the patience more than the forced inactivity of a siege,—the sitting down before a blank wall from behind which the enemy sticks out his tongue and laughs in derision. Before three days had passed, nine-tenths of the besieging army had become fretful with impatience. The men were eager to storm the enemy's stronghold on all sides. Even in the council of war the spirit of impatience was rife and the commanding general was urged to order an assault. Violent scenes were enacted, in which the best friends fell to quarrelling. All were divided between two parties, the hot-headed and the cool-headed. Thus it came about that the two Baradlay brothers, Ödön and Richard, found themselves opposed to each other in the council, and on the fourth day of the siege they went so far as to exchange hot and angry words.
"We must bring the siege to an end," declared the younger brother, vehemently.
"And I say," rejoined the elder, "that we have but just begun it and must wait for our heavier guns before we can think of making an assault. Otherwise we shall provoke a deadly fire on Pest, and all to no purpose."
"What is Pest to us in this crisis?" cried Richard. "Ten years ago the great flood destroyed the city, and we rebuilt it. Let the enemy burn it down; in ten years it will have risen from its ashes, more beautiful than ever."