Dance, dance, daughters of Hungary! 
        Tread now the measure so long delayed. 
        Murdered our sons by the shot or the hangman! 
        In this land of pleasure, oh! be not dismayed;—­
        Now is the time, brown daughters of Hungary,
        To dance to the measure of true hearts betrayed!

And then, these melancholy words calling up the memory of disaster, all would revive before Andras Zilah’s eyes—­the days of mourning and the days of glory; the exploits of Bem; the victories of Dembiski; the Austrian flags taken at Goedolloe; the assaults of Buda; the defence of Comorn; Austria, dejected and defeated, imploring the aid of Russia; Hungary, beaten by the force of numbers, yet resisting Paskiewich as she had resisted Haynau, and appealing to Europe and the world in the name of the eternal law of nations, which the vanquished invoke, but which is never listened to by the countries where the lion is tearing his prey.  And again, Zilah would remember the heroic fatherland struck down at Temesvar; the remnants of an armed people in refuge at Arad; and Klapka still holding out in the island of Comorn at the moment when Georgei had surrendered.  Then, again, the obscure deaths of his comrades; the agonies in the ditches and in the depths of the woods; the last despairing cries of a conquered people overwhelmed by numbers: 

Dance, dance, daughters of Hungary!

All this bloody past, enveloped as in a crimson cloud, but glorious with its gleams of hope and its flashes of victory, the Prince would revive with old Varhely, in the corner of whose eye at intervals a tear would glisten.

They both saw again the last days of Comorn, with the Danube at the foot of the walls, and the leaves of the trees whirling in the September wind, and dispersed like the Hungarians themselves; and the shells falling upon the ramparts; and the last hours of the siege; and the years of mournful sadness and exile; their companions decimated, imprisoned, led to the gallows or the stake; the frightful silence and ruin falling like a winding-sheet over Hungary; the houses deserted, the fields laid waste, and the country, fertile yesterday, covered now with those Muscovite thistles, which were unknown in Hungary before the year of massacre, and the seeds of which the Cossack horses had imported in their thick manes and tails.

Beloved Hungary, whose sons, disdaining the universe, used proudly to boast:  “Have we not all that man needs?  Banat, which gives us wheat; Tisza, wine; the mountain, gold and salt.  Our country is sufficient for her children!” And this country, this fruitful country, was now covered with gibbets and corpses.

CHAPTER IV

“When Hungary is free!”

All these bitter memories Prince Andras, in spite of the years that had passed, kept ever in his mind one sad and tragic event—­the burial of his father, Sandor Zilah, who was shot in the head by a bullet during an encounter with the Croats early in the month of January, 1849.