I had reached the limit of my endurance when my wanderings came to an end at Budapest, and I found myself in a comfortable first-class hotel. The authorities saw nothing compromising in my presence. At my urgent request the count was allowed to leave the small town where he was interned, and remain near me for several days in order to discuss my affairs.
Unfortunately the war was hopelessly prolonged. Life gradually became more and more difficult. Austria and Hungary were no longer the victims of illusion. Enlightened by the knowledge of defeat, they cursed Berlin as the author of their misfortunes. Budapest was in a state of ferment.
All at once everything collapsed. The wind of Bolshevism swept furiously over the Dual Monarchy. I now became familiar with the commissaries and soldiers of the Revolution. I experienced visits of inspection, perquisitions, interrogations. But suddenly my misfortunes disarmed even the savage leaders of Hungarian Communism. I have already mentioned how one of these men remarked when he saw to what poverty I was reduced: "Here is a king's daughter who is poorer than I am."
If I were to live for centuries, I should still experience in thought those poignant emotions which I underwent during the time of torment which overthrew thrones and threw crowns to the four winds of heaven. Past ages have never witnessed such an upheaval.
On the banks of the Danube, between the east and the west, the downfall of Prussian power and the prestige of Monarchy was felt perhaps more keenly than elsewhere.
I often wondered whether I was actually alive in the world I had formerly known, or if I was not the victim of a long-drawn-out nightmare.
Our troubles, our worries, our own individuality are as naught in the whirlpool of human passions. I felt myself carried away with everything which surrounded me into the unknown country of a New Era.
CHAPTER XX
In the Hope of Rest
And now that I have said all that I think is indispensable, perhaps my readers will make excuses for me if I have expressed myself badly in narrating the story of my sufferings.
They will, perhaps, also make excuses for my having broken the silence which I have hitherto maintained.