"I have sent to Iglo for them in honor of you. Let the music sound, and the wine flow; who knows when we will see each other again?"He put his face into his palm. The Cziganys played old Magyar songs. Balint glanced at me now and then, and filled the glasses;we clinked them together, but he always seemed to be worried.
It was dawning. The soft sound of a church bell rose to us.
Balint put his hand on my shoulder and bent to my ear.
"Do you know how my father died?" he asked in a husky voice. "He killed himself."I looked at him with amazement; I wanted to speak, but he shook his head, and grasped my hand.
"Do you remember my father?" he asked me. Of course; while Ilooked at him it seemed as if his father were standing before me.
The very fibrous, skinny figure, the muscles and flesh seeming peeled off. Even through his coat arm I felt the naked, unveiled nerves.
"I always admired and honored my father, but we were never true intimates; I knew that he loved me, but I felt as if it was not for my own sake; as if he loved something in my soul that was strange to me. I never saw him smile; sometimes he was so harsh that I was afraid of him; at another time he was unmanageable.
"I did not understand him, but the older I became the better did Ifeel that there was a sad secret germinating in the bottom of his soul, where it grew like a spreading tree, the branches of which crept up to the castle and covered the walls, little by little overshadowed the sunlight, absorbed the air, and darkened everyone's heart. I gritted my teeth in vain; I could not work; Icould not start to accomplish anything. I struggled with hundreds and hundreds of determinations; to-day I prepared for this or that;tomorrow for something else; ambition pressed me within; I could not make up my mind. Behind every resolution I made, I noticed my father's countenance, like a note of interrogation. The old fables that we heard together in our childhood were renewed in my memory.
Little by little the thought grew within me, like a fixed delusion, that my father's fatal secret was locked up in the tower room.
After that I lived by the calendar and dwelt on the passing of time on the clock. And when the sun that shone on me when I was born arose the twenty-fourth time, I pressed my hand on my heart and entered my father's room--this very room.
"'Father,' I said, 'I became of age to-day, everything may be opened before me, and I am at liberty to know everything.' Father looked at me and pondered over this.
"'Oh, yes!' he whispered, 'this is the day.'
"'I may know everything now,' continued I;' I am not afraid of any secrets. In the name of our family tradition, I beg of you, please open the tower-room.'
"Father raised his hand, as if he wanted to make me become silent.
His face was as white as a ghost.
"'Very well,' he murmured, 'I will open the tower-room for you.'
"And then he pulled off his coat, tore his shirt on his breast, and pointed to his heart.
"'Here is the tower-room, my boy!' did he whisper in a husky voice.
'Here is the tower-room, and within our family secret. Do you see it?'
"That is all he said, but when I looked at him I immediately perceived the secret; everything was clear before me and I had a presentiment that something was nearing its end, something about to break.
"Father walked up and down; and then he stopped and pointed to this picture; to this very picture.
