Methought
she was much more winning, when sadness made her eyes downcast.

One could see from her eyes that she had been weeping, that she was even
now forcibly restraining herself from weeping. She spoke a few short
words to me, and then disappeared behind grandmother in the carriage.

The whip cracked, the horses started, and my substitute departed for my
dear home, while I remained in her place.

As I pondered for the first time over my great isolation, in a place
where everybody was a stranger to me, and did not even understand my
speech, at once all thought of the great man, the violin-virtuoso, the
first eminence, the P. C., the heroic lover, disappeared from within me;
I leaned my head against the wall, and would have wept could I have done
so.

CHAPTER IV

THE ATHEIST AND THE HYPOCRITE

Let us leave for a while the journal of the student child, and examine
the circumstances of the family circle, whose history we are relating.

There was living at Lankadomb an old heretic Samuel Topandy by name, who
was related equally to the Balnokhazy and Aronffy families;
notwithstanding this, the latter would never visit him on account of his
conspicuously bad habits. His surroundings were of the most unfortunate
description, and in distant parts it was told of him that he was an
atheist of the most pronounced type.

But do not let any one think that the more modern freedom of thought had
perhaps made Topandy cling to things long past, or that out of mental
rationalism he had attempted, as a philosopher, to place his mind far
beyond the visible tenets of religion. He was an atheist merely for his
own amusement, that, by his denial of God, he might annoy those
people--priests and the powers that be--with whom he came in contact.

For to annoy, and successfully annoy, has always been held as an
amusement among frail humanity. And what can more successfully annoy
than the ridiculing of that which a man worships?

The County Court had just put in a judicial "deed of execution," and had
sent a magistrate, and a lawyer, supported by a posse of twelve armed
gendarmes, for the purpose of putting an end, once for all, to those
scandals, by which Topandy had for years been arousing the indignation
of the souls of the faithful, causing them to send complaint after
complaint in to the court.

Topandy offered cigars to the official "bailiffs." The magistrate,
Michael Daruszegi, a young man of thirty, appeared to be s