If Kossuth had cautioned me that his correspondent was in hiding and wanted by the police, I should not have committed the grave error of going openly to find him, and under the eye of a cabman, who would probably report to the police my act.  Had he even after that informed his correspondent where I could be found and who I was (which was perfectly practicable, for he told me himself that he had received letters from the correspondent during my stay at Pesth), there could have been communication at once.  Kossuth said that I ought to have sought out the friends at the Tiger cafe, where they were in the habit of meeting publicly, though he knew that the city was swarming with spies, and that the state of siege existed (and of this, even, he did not warn me), and that my chief difficulty was to avoid being brought into contact with suspected Hungarians; nor did he recollect that he had given precise instructions to avoid anything which might lead any one to suppose that I was more than an objectless traveler.  I was most reasonably disgusted with having my life exposed in this careless way, and he, perhaps, as reasonably so with my want of resource, and the result was that he decided not to employ me again in such work, and I decided to wait for active insurrectionary movements, in which I could take my place.  As it happened, however, the Austrian government had recovered the crown jewels; some one in the secret—­Kossuth said Szemere—­having learned that Kossuth was sending an expedition to recover them, and, from jealousy of him, disclosed the hiding-place.

Kossuth’s practical incapacity for the minutiae of conspiracy in this case was, I judged from what I afterward learned of his compatriots, characteristic of him.  He continually neglected the details of important affairs, working by magnificent inspirations, which left out of consideration the defects of human nature.  His self-exaltation had offended many patriots who did not fall under his personal magnetism, and his assumption of authority in military matters where he had no knowledge to justify it, alienated the competent officers.  The treason of Goergey, as it was popularly considered, was probably due to the perception that Kossuth was an impracticable head for an active revolution, under whose dictature there was no hope of final success while he at the same time refused to abandon his impracticable ideals; and I heard from actual participants that there was great dissatisfaction amongst the officers with his assumption of dignity, out of place, and of command, for which he was incompetent.  The fact was that he could not distinguish between the practicable and the impracticable, and though not so visionary as Mazzini, he believed that his power of arousing the wild enthusiasm of the Honveds and masses of Hungarians, due to his marvelous eloquence, was enough to carry on war with, and he would not see that, from the moment that Russia intervened, it was only a question of