ehearsal."

"I cannot: I have too much to do."

Pepi laughed loudly. "Very well, old fellow."

His laughter did not affect me in the least.

"But when you have learned all there is to learn will you come again?"

"No. For then I shall write a letter to my mother."

Some good spirit must have whispered to this fellow not to laugh at
these words, for he could not have anticipated the box on the ears I
would have given him, because he could not for an instant forget that I
was a grammar-school boy, and he a first-year law student.

CHAPTER VII

THE SECRET WRITINGS

One evening Lorand came to me and laid before me a bundle of papers
covered with fine writing.

"Copy this quite clearly by to-morrow morning. Don't show the original
to any one, and, when you have finished, lock it up in your trunk with
the copy, until I come for it."

I set to work in a moment and never rose from my task until I had
completed it.

Next morning Lorand came for it, read it through, and said: "Very good,"
handing me two pieces of twenty.

"What do you mean?"

"Take it," he said, "It is not my gift, but the gift of someone else: in
fact, it is not a gift, but a fixed contract-price. Honorable work
deserves honorable payment. For every installment[42] you copy, you get
two pieces of twenty. It is not only you that are doing it: many of your
school-fellows are occupied in the same work."

[Footnote 42: _i. e._, A printed sheet of sixteen pages.]

Then I was pleased with the two pieces of twenty.

My uneasiness at receiving money from anybody except my parents, who
alone were entitled to make me presents, was only equalled by my
pleasure at the possession of my first earnings, the knowledge that I
was at last capable of earning something, that at last the tree of life
was bearing fruit, which I might reach and pluck for myself.

I accepted the work and its reward. Every second day, punctually at
seven o'clock in the evening, Lorand would come to me, give me the
matter to be copied, 'matter written, as I recognized, in his own hand
writing,' and next day in the morning would come for the manuscript.

I wrote by night, when Henrik was already asleep: but, had he been
awake, he could not have known what I was writing, for it was in Magyar.

And what was in these secret writings?

The journal of the House of Parliament. It was the year 1836. Speeches
held in Parliament could not be read in print; the provisional censor