Part 97 (2/2)

A hay-wain now rattled in at the gate, as it did then.

And after the wain, on foot, the two brothers, hand in hand.

The women rushed to meet them, Lorand was the first whom everyone embraced and kissed.

”And your wife?” asked every lip.

Lorand pointed speechlessly to the wain, and could not tell them.

Desiderius answered in his place.

”We have brought his wife here in her coffin.”

CHAPTER x.x.xII

WHEN WE HAD GROWN OLD

Seventeen years have pa.s.sed since Lorand returned home again.

What old people we have become since then!

Besides, seventeen years is a long time:--and seventeen heavy years!

I have rarely seen people grow old so slowly as did our contemporaries.

We live in a time when we sigh with relief as each day pa.s.ses by--only because it is now over! And we will not believe that what comes after it will bring still worse days.

We descend continuously further and further down, in faith, in hope, in charity towards one another: our wealth is dissipated, our spirits languish, our strength decays, our united life falls into disunion: it is not indifference, but ”ennui” with which we look at the events of the days.

One year to the day, after poor Czipra's death Lorand went with his musket on his shoulder to a certain entertainment where death may be had for the asking.

I shall not recall the fame of those who are gone--why should I? Very few know of it.

Lorand was a good soldier.

That he would have been in any case, he had naturally every attribute required for it: heroic courage, athletic strength, hot blood, a soul that never shrank. War would in any case have been a delight for him:--and in his present state of mind!

Broken-hearted and crushed, his first love contemptuously trampling him in the dust, his second murdered in the fervor of her pa.s.sion, his soul weighed with the load of melancholia, and that grievous fate which bore down and overshadowed his family: always haunted by that terrible foreboding that, sooner or later, he must still find his way to that eighth resting-place, that empty niche.

When the wars began his l.u.s.treless spirit burst into brilliance. When he put on his uniform, he came to me, and, grasping my hand, said with flas.h.i.+ng eyes:

”I am bargaining in the market where a man may barter his worn-out life at a profit of a hundred per cent.”

Yet he did not barter his.

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