CHAPTER EIGHTEENA week later, I returned to Buda-Pest quite disgusted.
I had seen the King-Emperor, poor, gentle Ferdinand, open the Diet amid wild optimism and infectious enthusiasm. And then I watched it all collapse in a welter of furious heckling by the young men in the public gallery — led, inevitably, by Lajos and his friends — and in endless fights between the Upper and Lower Houses, between supporters of the Government and the Opposition, between Magyars and Croats and Serbs...
I gave up.
By the time Lajos returned to Pest, winter had closed in. The Danube had frozen over, the hills above Buda had turned white, and Pest sparkled with bright, cold frost. I loved the new beauty of the cities, especially in the early dusk — which was why I chose to walk home from an afternoon spent
