"I will consider the matter," returned Antoinette composedly, and she let him hurry away.
Jenő Baradlay never left his room all that day. The brave who laugh at danger little know the agony of fear that the timid and nervous must overcome before resolving to face peril and rush, if need be, into the jaws of death. Finally, at nine o'clock in the evening, his anxiety for Alfonsine's safety impelled him to seek her. With no means of self-defence, he went out on the street and exposed himself to its unknown perils. What he there encountered was by no means what he had, in the solitude of his own room, nerved himself to face. Instead of meeting with a violent and raging mob, he found himself surrounded by an exultant throng, drunk with joy and shouting itself hoarse in the cause of "liberty." Jenő's progress toward his destination was slow, but at last he managed to push his way into the street where the Plankenhorst house was situated. His heart beat with fear lest he should find the building a mass of ruins. Many a fine residence had that day fallen a sacrifice to the fury of the mob.
Greatly to the young man's surprise, however, upon turning a corner he beheld the house brilliantly illuminated from basement to attic, two white silk banners displayed from the balcony, and a popular orator standing between them and delivering a spirited address to the crowd below.
Jenő quite lost his head at this spectacle, and became thenceforth the mere creature of impulse. Reaching the steps of the house, he encountered nothing but white cockades and faces flushed with triumph, while cheers were being given for the patronesses of the cause of liberty by the throng before the house. Pushing his way into the drawing-room, he saw two ladies standing at a table and beaming with happy smiles upon their visitors. With difficulty he assured himself that they were the baroness and her daughter. The former was making cockades out of white silk ribbon, with which the latter decorated the heroes of the people, fastening bands of the same material around their arms. And meanwhile the faces of the two ladies were wreathed in smiles.
The young man suffered himself to be swept along by the crowd until Alfonsine, catching sight of him, gave a cry of joy, rushed forward, threw her arms about his neck, kissed him, and sank on his breast, exclaiming:
"Oh, my friend, what a joyful occasion!" and she kissed him again, before all the people and before her mother. The latter smiled her approval, while the people applauded and cheered. They found it all entirely natural. Their shouts jarred on Jenő's nerves, but the kisses thrilled him with new life.
In the days that followed, Jenő Baradlay found it quite a matter of course that he should be at the Plankenhorsts' at all hours, uninvited and unannounced, amid a throng of students, democrats, popular orators, all wearing muddy boots, long swords, and pendent feathers in their caps. He also found nothing strange in the fact that Alfonsine frequently received him in her morning wrapper and with her hair uncurled, that she embraced him warmly on each occasion, and that she took no pains to conceal her endearments either from strangers or from friends. It was a time when everything was permitted.
As the two turned aside one evening in their walk, to join a throng of eager listeners who were being addressed by one impassioned speaker after another, Jenő was startled at seeing his brother Ödön mount the platform as one of the orators of the occasion. He, too, it appeared, was on the side of the people; he was one of the parliamentary speakers who were making their voices heard in favour of popular rights and legislative reform. His speech swept all before it; no one could listen to his words without feeling his heart stirred and his pulse quickened. Alfonsine waved her handkerchief in her enthusiasm, but her companion was suddenly seized with a mysterious fear and dread. What premonition was it that seemed to whisper in his ear the true significance of that elevated platform on which his brother stood?
When the two had returned from their stroll, weary with walking the streets, and Jenő had been dismissed with a good-night kiss, Alfonsine, at last alone with her mother, threw her hat with its tricoloured ribbons into a corner and sank exhausted upon a sofa.