"I should think they began with that--at least, according to my notion. No, I can't accept. I can't afford to loiter about in Budapest, and have everything here go to the dogs."
"What a greenhorn you are! You need not live in Budapest at all. If the chief of the party telegraphs you that some great division is coming on with respect to some important question, you go up, find the seat with your name on it, sit down, and, when your name is called, you shout 'yes' or 'no,' according to the party's views, and then you travel home again, and make your famous 'Lipto cheese.'"
"I have no intention of becoming a voting machine."
"There you are right. You are too spirited and much too talented for that. You will deliver your maiden speech amid universal applause, and become famous at once. You will be hated by the opposite parties, hated and feared, and that will only stimulate your courage. You will be a great man, and a blessing to your country. You can engage a trustworthy man to manage your estate, and do well under such an arrangement; and you will give your talent and your faculties to your country and your party. It is your duty, and you are not the man to shrink from an acknowledged duty. Besides, out of friendship for me, you cannot refuse. I have positively staked my word on your acceptance; and then there is a request from the party, with a hundred and twenty signatures. Look here!"
He showed me a sheet of writing, with a long list of badly-scrawled names underneath a few lines of writing. I still hesitated, when Siegfried smiled, and, taking from his pocket a little bit of a letter, perfumed with heliotrope, handed it to me.
I broke the rose-coloured wax, and drew out a tiny piece of bristol-board with the signature of Countess Diodora Vernöczy. Its contents were as follows:--
That was all. But what all the persuasions, all the allusions to country, race, patriotism, and religion had not effected, these few Hungarian words, written in a fine, aristocratic hand, did at once. They persuaded me, and I accepted. Yet I had never seen the lady who had written these words, and did not even know whether she was young or old, beautiful or ugly! She was a woman, and that sufficed. No! the Devil is not dead; here is his hoof.