They Were Divided

by Miklos Banffy

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

In the foreground the lives of Balint, with his ultimately unhappy love for Adrienne, and his fatally flawed cousin, Laszlo Gyeroffy, who dies in poverty and neglect, are told with humour and a bitter-sweet nostalgia for a paradise lost through folly. The sinister and fast moving events in Montenegro, the Balkan wars, the apparent encirclement of Germany and Austria-Hungary by Britain, France and Russia, and finally the assassination of Franz Ferdinand all lead inexorably to the youth of Hungary marching off to their death and the dismemberment of their country.

Release date: October 21, 2010

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 276

Sample

WINNER OF THE WEIDENFELD TRANSLATION PRIZE

Praise for Miklós Bánffy

‘Bánffy is a born storyteller’ Patrick Leigh Fermor, from the Foreword

‘A Tolstoyan portrait of the end days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, this compulsively readable novel follows the divergent fortunes of two cousins, the politician Abady and gambler/drunkard Gyeroffy, detailing the intrigues at the decadent Budapest court, the doomed love affairs, opulent balls, duels and general head-in-the sand idiocies of a privileged elite whose world is on the verge of disappearing for ever. Bánffy – Hungarian count – also writes with extraordinary vividness of the natural beauty of his Transylvanian homeland. Two more novels – They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided – followed, usually published as The Transylvanian Trilogy’ Adam Newey, ‘1000 Novels You Must Read’, Guardian

‘Just about as good as any fiction I have ever read, like Anna Karenina and War and Peace rolled into one. Love, sex, town, country, money, power, beauty, and the pathos of a society which cannot prevent its own destruction – all are here’ Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph

‘Fascinating. He writes about his quirky border lairds and squires and the high misty forest ridges and valleys of Transylvania with something of the ache that Czeslaw Milosz brings to the contemplation of this lost Eden’ W. L. Webb, Guardian

‘Pleasure of a different scale and kind. It is a sort of Galworthian panorama of life in the dying years of the Habsburg empire – perfect late night reading for nostalgic romantics like me’ Jan Morris, Observer Books of the Year

‘Totally absorbing’ Martha Kearney, Harper's Bazaar

‘Charts this glittering spiral of decline with the frustrated regret of a politician who had tried to alert Hungary's ruling classes to the pressing need for change and accommodation. Patrician, romantic and in the context of the times a radical, Bánffy combined his politics – he negotiated Hungary's admission to the League of Nations – with running the state theatres and promoting the work of his contemporary, the composer Béla Bartók’ Guardian Editorial

‘Like Joseph Roth and Robert Musil, Miklós Bánffy is one of those novelists Austria-Hungary specialised in. Intimate and sparkling chroniclers of a wider ruin, ironic and elegiac, they understood that in the 1900s the fate of classes and nations was beginning to turn almost on a change in the weather. None of them, oddly, was given his due till long after his death, probably because in 1918 very much was lost in central Europe – an empire overnight for one thing – and the aftermath was like a great ship sinking, a massive downdraught that took a generation of ideas and continuity with it. Bánffy, a prime witness of his times, shows in these memoirs exactly what an extraordinary period it must have been to live through’ Julian Evans, Daily Telegraph

‘Full of arresting descriptions, beautiful evocations of scenery and wise political and moral insights’ Francis King, Spectator

‘Plunge instead into the cleansing waters of a rediscovered masterpiece, because The Writing on the Wall is certainly a masterpiece, in any language’ Michael Henderson, Daily Telegraph

‘So enjoyable, so irresistible, it is the author's keen political intelligence and refusal to indulge in self-deception which give it an unusual distinction. It's a novel that, read at the gallop for sheer enjoyment, is likely to carry you along. But many will want to return to it for a second, slower reading, to savour its subtleties and relish the author's intelligence’ Allan Massie, Scotsman

‘So evocative’ Simon Jenkins, Guardian

‘Bánffy's loving portrayal of a way of life that was already much diminished by the time he was writing, and set to vanish before he died, is too clear-eyed to be simply nostalgic, yet the ache of loss is certainly here. Laszlo has been brought up a homeless orphan, Balint's father died when he was young and the whole country is suffering from loss of pride. Although comparisons with Lampedusa's novel The Leopard are inevitable, Bánffy's work is perhaps nearer in feel to that of Joseph Roth, in The Radetzky March. They were, after all, mourning the fall of the same empire’ Ruth Pavey, New Statesman

Cast of Characters

(In order of appearance in the three volumes of The Transylvanian Trilogy)

COUNT BALINT ABADY

Main character of trilogy. Son of Countess Roza Abady and the late Count Denes Abady. Heir to castle and estate of Denestornya. Member of Parliament. Nickname ‘AB’.

COUNT LASZLO GYEROFFY

Orphan. Cousin of Balint Abady. Brought up by his Kollonich grandfather and aunt. Nickname ‘Laci’.

COUNTESS ADRIENNE UZDY

Oldest daughter of Count Akos Miloth. Married to Count Pal Uzdy. Mother of daughter Clemmie. Nickname ‘Addy’.

COUNT PAL UZDY

Husband of Adrienne, owner of castle of Almasko, and also a house in Koloszvar. Father dead, son of Countess Clémence Uzdy.

COUNTESS CLÉMENCE UZDY

Lives with her son Pal at Almasko. Mother-in-law of Adrienne Uzdy.

COUNTESS JUDITH MILOTH

Second daughter of Count Akos Miloth.

COUNTESS MARGIT MILOTH

Third daughter of Count Akos Miloth.

COUNT ZOLTAN MILOTH

Only son of Count Akos Miloth.

COUNT AKOS MILOTH

Father of Adrienne, Judith, Margit and Zoltan. Nickname ‘Rattle’.

COUNTESS MILOTH

Wife of Akos Miloth. Sister of Countess Ida Laczok.

COUNTESS ROZA ABADY

Mother of Balint, widow of Count Tamas Abady, her first cousin. Owner of Denestornya castle and estate.

COUNT JENO LACZOK

Owner of Var-Siklod castle. Father of Anna, Ida and Liszka Laczok.

COUNTESS IDA LACZOK

Wife of Jeno Laczok, sister of Countess Miloth.

COUNTESS ANNA LACZOK

COUNTESS IDA LACZOK

COUNTESS LISZKA LACZOK

Daughters of Count Jeno Laczok

COUNTESS LIZINKA SARMASAGHY

Known to everyone as ‘Aunt Lizinka’. Malicious gossip. Cousin of Balint's grandfather.

COUNTESS ADELMA GYALAKUTHY

Widow. Mother of Dodo Gyalakuthy.

COUNTESS DODO GYALAKUTHY

Daughter of above. Very rich heiress.

COUNTESS DINORA ABONYI

Formerly Malhuysen. Former girlfriend of Balint Abady. Married to Count Abonyi.

COUNT ADAM ALVINCZY

Father of four sons.

COUNT FARKAS ALVINCZY

Oldest son of Adam Alvinczy

ADAM, ZOLTAN, AKOS ALVINCZY

Tree younger sons of Adam Alvinczy.

COUNT ISTVAN KENDY

Cousin of the Abadys. Nickname ‘Pityu’.

COUNT SANDOR KENDY

Cousin of the Abadys. Nickname ‘Crookface’.

COUNT AMBRUS KENDY

Distant cousin of Crookface. Known as Uncle Ambrus.

COUNT JOSKA KENDY

Another cousin. In love with Adrienne Uzdy

COUNT DANIEL KENDY

Old, poor and drunkard. Cousin of Crookface and Ambrus Kendy.

COUNT EGON WICKWITZ

Austrian Army lieutenant. Nickname ‘Nitwit’.

MIHALY GAL

Old actor, friend of Balint Abady's grandfather Count Peter Abady.

ANDRAS JOPAL

Nephew of Mihaly Gal, inventor, tutor to Laczok boys at Vat-Siklod castle

PRINCE LOUIS KOLLONICH

Owner of Simonvasar castle. Co-guardian of Laszlo Gyeroffy. Father of Klara, Niki and Peter.

PRINCESS AGNES KOLLONICH

Born Gyeroffy. Aunt of Laszlo Gyeroffy and his guardian. Second wife of Prince Louis Kollonich. Stepmother of Klara. Mother of Niki and Peter.

DUCHESS KLARA KOLLONICH

Daughter of Prince Louis Kollonich. In love with Laszlo Gyeroffy, who is also in love with her.

DUKE NIKI KOLLONICH

Brother of Klara Kollonich.

DUKE PETER KOLLONICH

Brother of Klara Kollonich.

COUNT ANTAL SZENT-GYORGYI

Owner of Jablanka castle. Married to Princess Kollonich's sister.

COUNTESS ELISE SZENT-GYORGYI

Married to Antal Szent-Gyorgyi, sister of Princess Agnes Kollonich, born Gyeroffy.

COUNTESS MAGDA SZENT-GYORGYI

Daughter of Antal and Elise Szent-Gyorgyi.

COUNT STEFI SZENT-GYORGYI

Brother of Magda.

COUNTESS FANNY BEREDY

Wife of Count Beredy. A beautiful singer.

COUNT JAN SLAWATA

Councillor to the Foreign Office.

COUNT FREDI WUELFFENSTEIN

Foolish Anglophile.

ISTI KAMUTHY

Young M.P. Foolish Anglophile who speaks with a lisp.

PRINCE MONTORIO-VISCONTI

Suitor to Klara Kollonich.

KRISTOF AZBEJ

Unscrupulous lawyer to Countess Roza Abady. Manages Laszlo Gyeroffy's estate.

MRS TOTHY AND MRS BACZO

Housekeepers to Countess Roza Abady.

ANDRAS ZUTOR

Balint Abady's forest ranger. Nickname ‘Honey’.

KALMAN NYIRESY

Balint Abady's forest supervisor.

GEZA WINCKLER

Balint Abady's head forester.

GASZTON SIMO

Dishonest notary in Balint Abady's constituency.

DR AUREL TIMISAN

Romanian lawyer.

DANIEL KOVACS

Notary in Lelbanya – Balint Abady's constituency.

COUNT IMRE WARDAY

Guest at Fanny Beredy's dinners.

MADAME SARA BOGDAN LAZAR

Farmer. Befriends Laszlo Gyeroffy.

COUNT TAMAS LACZOK

Brother of Count Jeno Laczok. Railway engineer.

BARON GAZSI KADACSAY

Unconventional soldier. Owner of fine horses.

NESZTI SZENT-GYORGYI

Rich cousin of Antal Szent-Gyorgyi.

ZSIGMOND BOROS

Transylvanian lawyer. M.P. A shady rogue.

MAIER

Butler to Uzdy family. Formerly worked in lunatic asylum.

COUNT TISZA

Minister-President of Budapest parliament. Admired by Balint Abady.

PALI LUBIANSZKY

Politician. Opposed to Tisza.

TIVADAR MIHALYI

Leader of opposition in Budapest parliament.

FERENC KOSSUTH

Important politician.

MINISTER-PRESIDENT JUSTH

Important politician.

ANDRASSY

Important politician.

GEZA FEJERVARY

Politician, elected Prime Minister.

JANKO CSERESZNYES

Unscrupulous demagogue, ally of lawyer Azbej.

KRISTOFFY

Minister of Interior in ‘Bodyguard’ government.

SAMUEL BARRA

Politician: opposed to Ferenc Kossuth.

MIKLOS ABSOLON

Political leader of Upper Maros region. Uncle of Pali Uzdy. Brother of Countess Clémence Uzdy. Traveller.

COUNTESS LILI ILLESVARY

Daughter of Countess Illesvary, niece of Countess Elise Szent-Gyorgyi.

CONTESSA JULIE LADOSSA

Laszlo Gyeroffy's mother.

REGINA BISCHITZ

Daughter of shopkeeper. Sympathetic to Laszlo Gyeroffy.

MARTON BALOGH

Former butler and servant to Laszlo Gyeroffy.

Foreword

by PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR

I first drifted into the geographical background of this remarkable book in the spring and summer of 1934, when I was nineteen, halfway through an enormous trudge from Holland to Turkey. Like many travellers, I fell in love with Budapest and the Hungarians, and by the time I got to the old principality of Transylvania, mostly on a borrowed horse, I was even deeper in.

With one interregnum, Hungary and Transylvania, which is three times the size of Wales, had been ruled by the Magyars for a thousand years. After the Great War, in which Hungary was a loser, the peace treaty took Transylvania away from the Hungarian crown and allotted it to the Romanians, who formed most of the population. The whole question was one of hot controversy, which I have tried to sort out and explain in a book called Between the Woods and the Water* largely to get things clear in my own mind; and, thank heavens, there is no need to go over it again in a short foreword like this. The old Hungarian landowners felt stranded and ill-used by history; nobody likes having a new nationality forced on them, still less, losing estates by expropriation. This, of course, is what happened to the descendants of the old feudal landowners of Transylvania.

By a fluke, and through friends I had made in Budapest and on the Great Hungarian Plain, I found myself wandering from castle to castle in what had been left of these age-old fiefs.

Hardly a trace of this distress was detectable to a stranger. In my case, the chief thing to survive is the memory of unlimited kindness. Though enormously reduced, remnants of these old estates did still exist, and, at moments it almost seemed as though nothing had changed. Charm and douceur de vivre was still afloat among the faded decor and the still undiminished libraries, and, out of doors, everything conspired to delight. Islanded in the rustic Romanian multitude, different in race and religious practice – the Hungarians were Catholics or Calvinists, the Romanians Orthodox or Uniat – and, with the phantoms of their lost ascendency still about them, the prevailing atmosphere conjured up the tumbling demesnes of the Anglo-Irish in Waterford or Galway with all their sadness and their magic. Homesick for the past, seeing nothing but their own congeners on the neighbouring estates and the few peasants who worked there, they lived in a backward-looking, a genealogical, almost a Confucian dream, and many sentences ended in a sigh.

It was in the heart of Transylvania – in the old princely capital then called Kolozsvar (now Cluj-Napoca) that I first came across the name of Bánffy. It was impossible not to. Their palace was the most splendid in the city, just as Bonczhida was the pride of the country and both of them triumphs of the baroque style. Ever since the arrival of the Magyars ten centuries ago, the family had been foremost among the magnates who conducted Hungarian and Transylvanian affairs, and their portraits, with their slung dolmans, brocade tunics, jewelled scimitars and fur kalpaks with plumes like escapes of steam – hung on many walls.

For five years of the 1890s, before any of the disasters had smitten, a cousin of Count Miklós Bánffy had led the government of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The period immediately after, from 1905, is the book's setting. The grand world he describes was Edwardian Mitteleuropa. The men, however myopic, threw away their spectacles and fixed in monocles. They were the fashionable swells of Spy and late Du Maurier cartoons, and their wives and favourites must have sat for Boldini and Helleu. Life in the capital was a sequence of parties, balls and race meetings, and, in the country, of grandes battues where the guns were all Purdeys. Gossip, cigar smoke and Anglophilia floated in the air: there were cliques where Monet, d’Annunzio and Rilke were appraised; hundreds of acres of forest were nightly lost at chemin de fer; at daybreak lovers stole away from tousled four-posters through secret doors, and duels were fought, as they still were when I was there. The part played by politics suggests Trollope or Disraeli. The plains beyond flicker with mirages and wild horses, ragged processions of storks migrate across the sky; and even if the woods are full of bears, wolves, caverns, waterfalls, buffalos and wild lilac – the country scenes in Transylvania, oddly enough, remind me of Hardy.

Bánffy is a born storyteller. There are plots, intrigues, a murder, political imbroglios and passionate love affairs, and though this particular counterpoint of town and country may sound like the stock-in-trade of melodrama, with a fleeting dash of Anthony Hope; it is nothing of the kind. But it is, beyond question, dramatic. Patrick Thursfield and Kathy Bánffy-Jelen have dealt brilliantly with the enormous text; and the author's life and thoughtful cast of mind emerges with growing clarity. The prejudices and the follies of his characters are arranged in proper perspective and only half-censoriously, for humour and a sense of the absurd, come to the rescue. His patriotic feelings are totally free of chauvinism, just as his instinctive promptings of tribal responsibility have not a trace of vanity. They urge him towards what he thought was right, and always with effect. (He was Minister of Foreign Affairs at a critical period in the 1920s.) If a hint of melancholy touches the pages here and there, perhaps this was inevitable in a time full of omens, recounted by such a deeply civilized man.

Chatsworth, Boxing Day, 1998

* John Murray, 1980.

Chapter One

Balint Abady stepped quietly into the family box at the theatre at Kolozsvar. Even though he knew it well, for the Abadys like all the other old families in the district rented the same box every year, he still had to grope his way in the darkness to hang up his coat. Still somewhat blinded by the light from the stage he sat down in the best seat facing the stage, for his mother had stayed at home at Denestornya. Balint himself had driven up from the country, just for one night, because he wanted to see the gala performance of Madam Butterfly that was being given that evening, and especially the Butterfly herself, the famous Yvonne de Treville, who often came from the Opéra Comique to sing in Kolozsvar.

He was late and the great love duet that closes the first act was just beginning. The music throbbed with passion, with love and desire; the sweet tones of the violins carried Puccini's soaring melodies and above it all was the pure smooth voice of the French diva.

Balint was on the point of surrendering to the music when he felt himself overcome by a strange feeling of agitation, as if he were in the presence of an overpowering force, a force even more potent than the storm of emotion that was being enacted before him on the stage. It was like an electric shock to his nervous system and something, he knew not what, made him turn round.

Adrienne Miloth was sitting in the next box, almost directly behind him.

He was startled to see her there because he had heard that she had gone to Switzerland with her daughter and he had not thought she would have returned so soon. This evening he saw that she and her sister Margit were guests in the kindly old Countess Gyalakuthy's box. There she sat; and though she was so close she seemed as insubstantial as a phantom.

Her face was lit only by the moonlight from the stage which cast the faintest glow on her delicately aquiline nose, her cheeks and her generous mouth. Balint could just see the pale sheen of her skin where the neck and shoulders merged into the deep décolleté of her silver dress. Everything else was hidden in the darkness of the theatre.

She was looking straight ahead, quite motionless, as still as a marble statue. In the reflection of the cunningly contrived moonlight on the stage Adrienne's eyes shone emerald green; and she sat there rigidly, without moving a muscle, though he could hardly believe that she had not seen him come in because he had sat down just in front of her. They were so close that with only the slightest movement their arms would have touched.

Balint felt that he could not stay there another moment. It would be impossible for him, for them both, to sit next to each other and behave as if they were strangers. How could they listen together to that passionate music which spoke so eloquently of desire and love and desperate yearning? No! No! No! He must not stay! He could not stay!

The memories of their love so overwhelmed him that he found himself trembling. He got up silently and slipped out of the box, reeling slightly like a man who has been struck a heavy blow.

Though he could not sit next to her he still could not leave the theatre in which she sat; so he descended the great stair, crossed to the other side of the auditorium and, with his coat on, stepped through one of the doors and stood at the side of the stalls in the shadow of the balcony. No one would be able to see him there, he thought, so he would remain until the act came to an end and then slip out before the lights went up. From there, too, he could gaze at Adrienne whom he had not seen for more than a year: and even then it had been a mere glance from afar.

She did not seem changed. Maybe her face was a little thinner, perhaps there was a trace of bitterness about the lines of her mouth, but she was still supremely beautiful, every aspect of her as lovely as when she had been his love, his friend, his companion in body and spirit, in those days when they had planned to become husband and wife. But an implacable fate had separated them.

In his imagination he saw her stripped of that shining metallic gown, bright as a suit of armour, standing naked before him as she first had five long years before in Venice, then so often afterwards in their little hut in the forest, or at the Uzdy villa, or at her father's house at Mezo-Varjas, or in Budapest, indeed anywhere their homeless love could find refuge. Balint's heart contracted with bitterness when he thought once again of how he had been forced to abandon her and how she had ordered him to marry Lili Illesvary whom she herself had picked out for him.

Adrienne had then made her conditions: their affair must cease, and she would not even meet him socially unless he got married and so erected a barrier between them. He had found he could not comply and so they had not seen each other again.

The love duet continued, growing ever more intense, more impassioned. For a moment its message of love and desire was overshadowed by two brief echoes deep in the orchestral texture of the music with which the Shinto priest had cursed the lovers’ happiness; and when he heard it Balint felt most poignantly that it symbolized the story of their own doomed love. However this sad reflection did not last long, for that song of yearning flowed out from the stage, stronger than ever, irresistible and triumphant. It was as if the whole wide world was composed of spring and moonlight, blossom and sublime melody. As the music mounted to its stormy climax Balint felt as moved and shattered as by the climax of love. It was the music of their past, now forever denied them.

The curtain fell to a tornado of applause, and Balint slipped quietly out.

The October night air was already cold. The sky was clear and the pavements glistened from the light rain that had fallen that afternoon. Without thinking where he was going Balint started to walk towards the centre of the town. He walked at random, with no object except to be alone, alone with the torment of all those thoughts by which he had been assailed that evening. Glancing at his watch he saw that it was just a quarter past nine. This gave him nearly three hours of freedom, for at midnight he was expected to go to supper at the house of the prefect, who, as general director of the Kolozsvar theatres, was giving a party after the performance in honour of the French diva. For three hours, then, he could try to walk off his chagrin, to master that surge of bitterness that had been stirred up by the sight of Adrienne sitting so close to him.

As he wandered aimlessly along the dark streets he was assailed so fiercely by a torrent of haphazard memories that he felt like a man pursued by the Fates from whom it was impossible to hide. And yet hide he must! It had been the same the previous summer, on the only other occasion that he had seen Adrienne since their parting. Then he had just been leaving the hospital, after bringing in one of the stable lads from Denestornya, when he caught sight of Adrienne through the bars of a tall iron fence. He had shrunk back into the shade of the doorway so that he shouldn’t be seen: but from there he followed her with his eyes as, with head held high and looking straight ahead of her without a glance to left or right, she strode determinedly up the path which led to the lunatic asylum or, as most people euphemistically called it, the House with the Green Roof.

Of to see that mad husband, Balint had thought bitterly, he whom she had never loved and who had never loved her.

His heart had swelled, like that of an exile who catches a glimpse of his forbidden home from far away.

As he had hidden then, so he felt impelled to run now, to escape from the theatre and wander anonymously through the town. Without realizing where he had been heading Balint found himself in the main square, and here he was almost overcome by a strange lassitude. It was as if that impulse which had hurled him out of the theatre had sapped all his reserves of energy.

He walked on, without taking note of where he was going, until, at the corner of the marketplace, he almost knocked over the charcoal grill of an old woman roasting chestnuts. Ashamed of himself, he stopped and in an attempt to pull himself together, and to make amends for his clumsiness, he bought a paper cone of nuts that the woman held out to him. As he started absent-mindedly to peel them he remembered that he had been invited out to supper and had better not arrive with stained fingers. Abruptly he shoved the warm paper cone deep into one of his coat pockets, deciding to give it to the first child he might meet: but although he passed several hanging about near the iron bridge or in front of the cinema, by then the chestnuts had been forgotten.

Of course, he reflected, he ought to have married Lili Illesvary. Everything would then have been different. He could have met Adrienne and, with no constraint between them, talked of their by now shadowy past in a way that could provoke no comment if overheard. They could have met as old friends, if nothing more. At least it would have meant that he would have seen her from time to time and touched her hand as he kissed her fingers. Also he would have had a home of his own, and a family to return to, instead of wandering aimlessly with nowhere he wanted to go. That was what he ought to have done, yet he had carelessly thrown away even the half-happiness such a marriage would have brought him. Now he had nothing; no love, no family, nothing! It had been entirely his own fault. The opportunity had been there, at Jablanka in the middle of December, and if he had failed to take the opportunity offered he had no one but himself to blame. But he had done nothing.

His host, Antal Szent-Gyorgyi, and his sons had welcomed him as warmly as ever, without being over-demonstrative which in that house was thought to be not very good form. His cousin Magda's greeting was a shade more enthusiastic, for she gave him a teasing smile and pressed his hand a little harder than was usual. His aunt Elise, Countess Szent-Gyorgyi, received him with maternal warmth and tenderness and somehow, though without ever alluding to the matter, contrived to let him know how much she approved of, and would encourage, his marrying Lili. It was clear to Balint that they all knew that that was why he had come to Jablanka, and that everyone was in favour. Canon Czibulka, or Pfaffulus as he was nicknamed in that house, an old and intimate friend of the Szent-Gyorgyis, also discreetly showed that he approved the match by giving a special antenna-like movement of his bushy eyebrows when he first shook Balint by the hand. Pfaffulus had already been at Jablanka for several days as the shoot had been held unusually late and, as Advent had already begun, he came over daily from Nagy-Szombat to say mass in the castle chapel. The priest's tacit approval warmed Balint's heart for it made him feel that in that house everyone knew about and looked kindly on his plans to ask Lili to marry him.

All the same he did not see her until all the guests assembled in the lofty stucco-decorated drawing room which had been the monks’ reflectory before the former monastery became the Szent-Gyorgyis’ country home. She came in from the library, which was at the opposite end of the room from where Balint was standing, seeming almost to glide weightlessly across the highly polished wooden floor. She was dressed in a flowing white tulle gown and she moved with that quiet assurance natural to girls brought up in the highest society. As she crossed the room she nodded to those other guests she had already seen and went up to greet two new arrivals, the guests of honour who had just come from Vienna. Once again Abady smiled as he admired the impeccable way in which she moved, reflecting how perfectly she fitted into those grand surroundings and what a perfect background was formed for her by the great white hall-like room, the crimson and gold furniture and the huge family portraits in their elaborate frames. For all the apparent frailty of the girl, as she moved slowly round that luxurious room in her diaphanous creamy white dress, her step as light as that of any butterfly, one could still sense that inner core of steel that was the mark of her race.

So this, thought Balint, is the girl who is going to be my wife! Infinitely well-bred, the scion of countless generations whose sons and daughters, being always rich and independent, had never needed to marry some ugly ducking for her dowry or accept anyone second-rate for his money. Now she had nearly come up to where he stood. She did not increase her speed nor for a moment change her demeanour; and yet there was something special in the movement she made in putting out her hand to him, in the yielding softness with which she took his, and in the joyful flash of her cornflower-blue eyes.

Balint sensed it all at once and knew exactly what it meant.

During the three days of shooting Lili was often to be found beside him and remained with him for the whole of the most important beat on the third day when once again Balint found himself allotted the place of honour at the extreme right hand end of the line of guns. They somehow seemed to spend hours together, and even on those long afternoon walks on which, of course, they were never alone but always accompanied by several other young people, the two of them often seemed to be left to walk some twenty or thirty paces behind the others. And then Lili, who otherwise was lively and talkative, would remain silent, leaving it to him to decide what they would talk about. She was hoping he would propose: and that is when he ought to have done so, either in the long hornbeam avenue or else when coming back from visiting the thoroughbred mares.

Recalling that moment Balint conjured up in his mind the thin layer of powdery snow that covered the frozen ground and which had crackled under their feet. The others had lingered by the fences of the paddocks and that is when he should have spoken. It was there that he ought to have uttered those few banal words that were the classic form of