They Were Found Wanting

by Miklos Banffy

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Balint Abady is forced to part from the beautiful and unhappily married Adrienne Uzdy. Laszlo Gyeroffy is rapidly heading for self-destruction through drink and his own fecklessness. The politicians, quarrelling among themselves and stubbornly ignoring their countrymen's real needs, are still pursuing their vendetta with the Habsburg rule from Vienna. Meanwhile they fail to notice how the Great Powers - through such events as Austria's annexation of Bosnia-Herzagovina in 1908 - are moving ever closer to the conflagration of 1914-1918 that will destroy their world for ever. Banffy's portrait contrasts a life of privilege and corruption with the lives and problems of an expatriate Romanian peasant minority whom Balint tries to help. It is an unrivalled evocation of a rich and fascinating aristocratic world oblivious of its impending demise.

Release date: July 9, 2009

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 381

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

One day in the autumn of 1906 the Budapest Parliament was unusually well attended. In fact the Chamber was packed, with not an empty seat to be seen. On the front benches, the government was there in full force. It was, of course, an important day for that morning the budget was to be presented and everyone knew that, for the first time since 1903, it was bound to be passed and, more important still, passed by a massive majority. For the previous three years the country's finances had been ordered by ‘indemnities’ – unconstitutional decrees, which had mockingly become known in pig Latin as ‘ex-lex’ for the sake of the rhyme, and which had had a disastrous effect on the economy.

At last, and this had been the great achievement of the Coalition government, the nation had put its house in order.

Pal Hoitsy, the Speaker, ascended the podium, his handsome grey head and well-trimmed imperial looking well against the oak panelling behind the platform. In stilted words he commented on the importance of this blessed situation in which confidence had been restored between the nation and the King, the Emperor Franz-Josef in Vienna.

A few meagre ‘hurrahs’ came from a handful of enthusiastic members, though the rest of the House remained silent, stony-faced and stern. None of the political groups – not even the minorities party whose leader, the Serbian Mihaly Polit, was to propose acceptance of the budget – gave the smallest sign of believing the Speaker's words. The reason was that that morning, September 22nd, an article had appeared in the Viennese newspaper Fremdenblatt baldly stating that this much-vaunted harmony was nothing more than a cynical and dishonest political fiction.

The article concentrated on the resolution which had been drafted on the previous day by the legal committee of the Ministry of Justice and which, so everyone had been led to believe, would be incorporated into law at today's session.

It was a delicate and disagreeable situation.

The difficulties had started two days before when a member of the People's Party had proposed that the recently resigned government of General Fejervary should be impeached. The new government, much though it would have liked to do so, could not now avoid a debate on the proposal (as it had done the previous July when similar propositions had been put forward by the towns and counties at the time of the great debate on the Address), especially as the proposer was a member of Rakovsky's intimate circle. Naturally the government suspected that the latter was behind this latest move and it was believed too that the whole manoeuvre had been plotted in Ferenc Kossuth's camp of treachery and was intended to breed such confusion and doubt that the newly achieved harmony of the Coalition would be endangered. This was indeed a direct attack just where the new administration was most vulnerable. Everyone now professed to know that one of the conditions of the recent transfer of power had been that no harm should come to members of the previous government. The leaders of the Coalition had accepted this condition since their object was to restore good relations between the nation and the ruler – and the government of General Fejervary had been appointed by the King. That this agreement had been made was not, until now, public knowledge and indeed had been expressly denied during the summer when Laszlo Voros, Minister of the Economy in Fejervary's so-called ‘Bodyguard’ government, had first announced the existence of the Pactum, the settlement of differences between the royal nominees and the elected representatives. These denials had then been in somewhat vague terms, but now the matter had been brought out into the open. The new government's problem was how openly to face the situation provoked by the People's Party representative, offer a solution that would content the opposition, and at the same time keep their word to the King.

Everyone's face was saved by the intervention of Ferenc Kossuth, who boldly risked his reputation in the discussion in the committee when he declared that no Pactum existed since secret agreements of that sort were unconstitutional. This was a dangerous statement to make since everyone knew that for the King to have made the new appointments, agreement must have been reached on specific points such as this; but it sounded well and so dignity had been maintained by oratory. As a result it was planned that the House would reject the impeachment proposal and instead give its approval to an official statement which branded Fejervary and his cabinet as ‘disloyal counsellors of the King and nation’ and delivered them to the ‘scornful judgement of history’. It was further decided that this official statement should be everywhere displayed on posters.

The formula was a good one and all the committee members had left the meeting satisfied in their own ways; the radicals because the hated ‘Bodyguard’ government would be publicly degraded, and the new cabinet because they were no longer faced with a constitutional obligation to initiate an impeachment which would be most embarrassing to them.

But now, when everyone had breathed a sigh of relief and thought that the difficulties had been solved, the bomb had been exploded in the leading article of the Fremdenblatt, which was known to be the semiofficial mouthpiece of the Court in Vienna. Here it was declared that, ‘according to well-informed sources in Budapest’, the previous day's committee decision would not be presented in its agreed form since it was unthinkable that those who enjoyed the ruler's confidence should be put publicly in the pillory. It was further declared, and this was said to have come from someone ‘close to Fejervary’, that the former Minister-President would himself speak at the next session of the House of Lords and that he would then explain the full details of the Pactum.

No more. No less.

There was an atmosphere of gloom in the Chamber. The weather outside was grim and autumnal and little light filtered down through the glass-covered ceiling. The lamps were lit that illuminated the galleries on the first floor and the seats reserved for the press, and these too added to the lacklustre effect for, although here and there faint reflection could be caught from all the panels of imitation marble and the gilding on the capitals, there were great areas of shadow which made the vast hall seem even darker than it was. Even the painted plaster statues could hardly be seen. Only the Speaker's silvery hair shone on the platform.

Out of bored good manners the members remained seated in their places; but everyone was preoccupied with their own thoughts and they hardly heard the Speaker's rolling phrases. In many parts of the Chamber five or six heads were bent towards each other as little groups discussed in whispers the new turn of events revealed by the Fremdenblatt and the menace that lurked between the lines of the article. Only Minister-President Wekerle leaned back calmly in his chair, his handsome face, which was so reminiscent of that of an ancient Roman emperor, turned attentively in the direction of the Speaker. As the architect of the budget which was everywhere acclaimed he was, no doubt, contemplating the triumph of its acceptance; but his manner was that of a man who has weathered many a storm and whose nerves were firmly under control.

How the world has changed, thought Balint Abady who, as an independent, sat high up in the seats opposite the Speaker. What storms would have raged here a year and a half ago! How everyone would have jumped about shouting impromptu phrases, raging against the accursed influence of Vienna and the sinister ‘Camarilla’ that ruled the Court. Then even the Speaker would have made some reference to the ‘illegal interference by a foreign newspaper!’ Perhaps they saw things more clearly now that they knew more of what is really going on ... perhaps at last they were beginning to learn.

With these thoughts in his head he listened to what the Speaker was saying.

As the speech was coming to an end someone from the seats of the 1848 Party came over and sat beside him. It was Dr Zsigmond Boros, the lawyer who was Member for Marosvasarhely. Dr Boros's political career had started well. After his election in 1904 he had become one of the chief spokesmen for the extreme left and when the Coalition government was formed he had been appointed an Under-Secretary of State under Kossuth. After two months of office, however, he had suddenly resigned without giving any reason. Gossip had it that his legal practice was involved in some shady dealings, though no one knew anything specific about the matter. Nevertheless, he found himself cold-shouldered by many of his fellow members for, in those days, while any amount of political chicanery would be tolerated, people were puritanically strict about personal honesty. Boros had only occasionally been seen in the House since his resignation from office and it had been assumed that he had been busy putting his affairs in order. Two days before the present session he had reappeared. Abady had noticed that since his return he had held little conferences with one group or another, obviously explaining something and then moving on to talk to other people. Now he had come to Abady and sat down next to him. He must have some special reason, thought Balint.

After some ten minutes had passed in which he had seemed respectfully to be following the closing phrases of the Speaker's address, he turned to Abady and said, ‘May I have a few words with you?’ They got up and went out through the long corridor outside the Chamber where members were gathering in heated discussion and into the great drawing room, which was almost as dark as the Chamber itself and where little groups of chairs and sofas were separated from each other by columns and heavy curtains as if the room had been designed for conspiracy and intrigue.

As they sat down Boros started the conversation. ‘I would like to ask your advice,’ he said, ‘on an important matter which affects the whole nation. I really am extremely worried as I don’t know where my duty lies. If you don’t mind I’ll have to start some time ago, with the circumstances of my resignation.’

Balint tried to remember what he had heard, but all he could recall were some half-expressed insinuations. Now, sitting next to the man, he wondered if they could be true. It was hard to believe.

Zsigmond Boros was a handsome man with a high forehead, smooth as marble. He looked at you with a straight clear eye and a calm expression. His pale complexion was set off by a well-groomed beard somewhat reddish in tinge. His clothes, which were exceptionally well-cut, only accentuated his air of reliability. His voice was melodious and he chose his words carefully and well. Firstly he spoke about the time when Voros had made the statements about the Pactum.

‘I don’t think you were here then?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Abady in a somewhat reserved tone. ‘I was abroad.’

‘Ah, yes. I heard that you were in Italy. You don’t mind if I go over again what happened then?’

Boros then repeated what, as a minister in office, he had stated at the time. He said that during the preliminary discussions there had been talk of an ad hoc cabinet which would take over the administration and introduce general suffrage and that this temporary government would consist exclusively of members of the 1848 Party and members of the former government. The presiding minister had to be Laszlo Voros and, so Boros said, the proposition had been accepted by Ferenc Kossuth.

‘But that's when I went to see Kossuth. I wanted to know exactly what was in his mind. I needed a clear picture and I felt, as one of his confidential advisers, that I had a right to know. Kossuth admitted that such a plan had been discussed but that he personally took it only ad referendum, as a basis for discussion. He said that as the other two parties of the Coalition in opposition, the Constitutional and People's Parties – which had formerly been against the universal suffrage proposals – now seemed to accept this reform, it had seemed to him that any other combination had become superfluous. He then showed me the actual text of the Pactum. That is the reason why I handed in my resignation. It had nothing to do with the slanderous stories that I hear were circulated about me as soon as I had resigned my ministry. As they did not know the truth I suppose it was inevitable that some people would believe the worst of me!’

Boros paused for a moment as if he were expecting some reaction from Balint. Then he went on:

‘So, you see, the Pactum really does exist. At the committee meeting yesterday Kossuth – well, to put it mildly – made a statement that hardly accorded with the truth. The question which worries me is this: should the matter be hushed up? Should we allow the country to believe in a lie? Is it, or isn’t it, our duty to intervene and stop the people from being misinformed? Is it, to be specific, my duty to tell the truth as I know it? I don’t know where I stand. On the one side I am not bound to secrecy by any promise: on the other I was in office at the time. Of course this is a political matter, not merely a question of professional discretion. But if I tell the House what I know the government will collapse like a house of cards.’

Boros looked questioningly at Balint.

‘Why do you turn to me, of all people?’ asked Abady.

‘Because I know that you accept no party whip and that you look far further in these matters than do most of our colleagues. I know all about your work in establishing the co-operatives in Transylvania and I much admire what you have achieved. Therefore allow me to explain how I view the present situation and why I believe it to be so serious, even, perhaps, fatal.’

As he spoke a new Boros appeared, quite different to the man Abady had known up to this moment. Until now Balint had seen only the elegant, somewhat bombastic orator who had a talent for the well-r