Again the train came in with cold and anxious passengers, while outers pressed into the vacant seats; and many who had waited all day in vain, finding no places, were obliged once more to return weary and disconsolate.
Armed and official men alighted from the nearest coaches, and again the terminus was crowded. Women closely veiled and muffled, pale trembling girls, and little children were there also, taking a hurried farewell, or waiting anxiously for expected friends and relatives; and many were the unheeded inquiries--an hundred questions put for every answer.
And now the train was filled with military, whose wild songs chimed strangely with the noise of the machinery.
Meanwhile, all was hurry and confusion within the town: each individual seeming occupied by his especial grievances--each felt alone among the thousands who surrounded them. The new-comers went from house to house, asking lodgings and warmth from inmates more wretched than themselves. Powerful magnates, whose palaces had been scarcely large enough for their numerous guests and retinues, were glad to find shelter on the earthen floor of a reed cottage; while ancient enemies, whose feuds had made a kingdom too small to contain them, now shared their broken fortunes in one room; and high-born maidens, accustomed to every refinement, received with thankfulness the benches proffered by strangers, who found a scarcely harder bed upon the earthen floor.
On the other side of Szolnok, numerous vehicles pursued their course in long unbroken lines, moving with difficulty on the frozen uneven roads, and filled with men, women, and children--cold and anxiety depicted in every countenance. Whole caravans passed on foot, in miserable clothing, carrying empty sacks, and followed by carts loaded with iron machines and broken weapons, on the tops of which women and children lay huddled together in blankets and rugs. One or two noblemen's calèches, with the windows drawn up, were obliged to follow slowly in the rear of these creaking machines, which the badness of the roads, or the steep banks, made it impossible to pass.
Thus closed the last day of the old year, and the first day of the new was a weary repetition of similar scenes.