rive him to despair. He said to his
wife and children: 'Till now we were our own masters; now we shall be
the servants of others. Labor is not a disgrace. I shall go and act as
steward to some landowner.' The other two brothers, when they heard of
their elder's misfortune, conferred together, went to him, and said:
'Brother, still two-thirds of our father's wealth is left; come, let us
divide it anew.'

"And each of them gave him a third of his property, that they might be
on equal terms again.

"That night Akos shot himself in the head.

"The stroke of misfortune he could bear, but the kindness of his
brothers set him so against himself that when he was freed from the
cares of life he did not wish to know further the enjoyments thereof.

"Akos left behind two children, a girl and a boy.

"The girl had lived some sixteen summers--very beautiful, very good.
Look! there is her tomb: 'Struck down in her sixteenth year!' She loved;
became unhappy; and died.

"You cannot understand it yet!

"So already three lay in the solitary vault.

"Geroe was your grandfather--my good, never-to-be-forgotten husband. No
tear wells in my eyes as I think of him; every thought that leads me
back to him is sweet to me; and I know that he was a man of high
principles; that every deed of his--his last deed, too--was proper and
right, it is as it should be. It happened before my very eyes; and I did
not seize his hand to stay his action."

How my old grandmother's eyes flashed in this moment! A glowing warmth,
hitherto unknown to me, seemed to pervade my whole being; some
glimmering ray of enthusiasm--I knew not what! How the dead can inspire
one with enthusiasm!

"Your grandfather was the very opposite of his own father; as it is
likely to happen in hundreds, nay, in thousands of cases that the sons
restore to the East the fame and glory that their fathers gathered in
the West.

"But you don't understand that, either!

"Geroe was in union with those who, under the leadership of a priest of
high rank, wished at the end of the last century, to prepare the country
for another century. No success crowned their efforts; they fell with
him--and fell without a head. One afternoon your grandfather was sitting
in the family circle--it was toward the end of dinner--when a strange
officer entered in the midst of us, and, with a face utterly incapable
of an expression of remorse, informed Geroe that he had orders to put him
under guard. Ger