falling snow confined him to his room. He detested the winter
greatly. When the first snowflake fell, his ill-humor turned to the
agony of despair; he loathed the atmosphere of his rooms and everything
to be found within the four walls. We so strongly advised him to winter
in Italy, that he finally gave in to the proposal. We carefully packed
his trunks; ordered his post-chaise. One morning, as everything stood
ready for departure, he said that, before going for this long journey,
he would once again take leave of his brothers. In his travelling-suit
he came down here to the vault, and closed the iron door after him,
enjoining that no one should disturb him. So we waited behind; and, as
hour after hour passed by and still he did not appear, we went after
him. We forced open the closed door, and there found him lying in the
middle of the tomb--he had gone to the country where there is no more
winter.

"He had shot himself in the heart, with the same pistol as his brother,
as he had foretold.

"Only two male members of the family remained: my son and the son of
Akos. Loerincz--that was the name of Akos' son--was reared too kindly by
his poor, good mother; she loved him excessively, and thereby spoiled
him. The boy became very fastidious and sensitive. He was eleven years
old when his mother noticed that she could not command his obedience.
Once the child played some prank, a mere trifle; how can a child of
eleven years commit any great offence? His mother thought she must
rebuke him. The boy laughed at the rebuke; he could not believe his
mother was angry; then, in consequence, his mother boxed his ears. The
boy left the room; behind the garden there was a fishpond; in that he
drowned himself.

"Well, is it necessary to take one's life for such a thing? For one
blow, given by the soft hand of a mother to a little child, to take such
a terrible revenge! to cut the thread of life, which as yet he knew not;
How many children are struck by a mother, and the next day received into
her bosom, with mutual forgiveness and a renewal of reciprocal love?
Why, a blow from a mother is merely one proof of a mother's love. But it
brought him to take his life."

The cold perspiration stood out in beads all over me.

That bitterness I, too, feel in myself. I also am a child, just as old
as that other was; I have never yet been beaten. Once my parents were
compelled to rebuke me for wanton petulance; and from head to foot I was
perv