try and filled with pictures which the
conquerors had respected, before those portraits of magnates superb
in their robes of red or green velvet edged with fur, curved sabres by
their sides and aigrettes upon their heads, all reproducing a common
trait of rough frankness, with their long moustaches, their armor and
their hussar uniforms--Marsa Laszlo, who knew them well, these heroes
of her country, these Zilah princes who had fallen upon the field of
battle, said to the last of them all, to Andras Zilah, before Ferency
Zilah, before Sandor, before the Princesses Zilah who had long slept in
"dull, cold marble," and who had been no prouder than she of the great
name they bore:

"Do you know the reason why, equal to these in devotion and courage, you
are superior to them all! It is because you are good, as good as they
were brave.

"To their virtues, you, who forgive, add this virtue, which is your own:
pity!"

She looked at him humbly, raising to his face her beautiful dark eyes,
as if to let him read her heart, in which was only his image and his
name. She pressed closely to his side, with an uneasy, timid tenderness,
as if she were a stranger in the presence of his great ancestors, who
seemed to demand whether the newcomer were one of the family; and
he, putting his arm about her, and pressing to his beating heart the
Tzigana, whose eyes were dim with tears, said: "No, I am not better than
these. It is not pity which is my virtue, Marsa: it is my love. For--I
love you!"

Yes, he loved her, and with all the strength of a first and only love.
He loved her so that he forgot everything, so that he did not see
that in Marsa's smile there was a look of the other side of the great,
eternal river. He loved her so that he thought only of this woman,
of her beauty, of the delight of her caresses, of his dream of love
realized in the air of the adored fatherland. He loved her so that he
left without answers the charming letters which Baroness Dinati wrote
him from Paris, so far away now, and the more serious missives which he
received from his compatriots, wishing him to utilize for his country,
now that he had returned to it, his superior intelligence, as he had
formerly utilized his courage.

"The hour is critical," wrote his old friends. "An attempt is being made
to awaken in Hungary, against the Russians, whom we like, memories
of combats and extinct hatreds, and that to the profit of a German
alliance, which is repugn