a jibe? These were some of the questions Budapest debated while the play languished through thirty or forty performances and was withdrawn.
Almost ten years passed before it was revived. This time it was an immediate and overwhelming triumph. Perhaps the wide circulation of the play in printed form had made its beauty and significance clearer. Perhaps the tragedy of the war had made Molnar's public more sensitive to spiritual values. Whatever the reason, Budapest now accepted ecstatically what it had previously rejected, and Molnar was more of a popular hero than ever. From which it may be gleaned that Hungary takes its drama and dramatists more seriously, disapproves them more passionately and praises them more affectionately than we Americans can conceive. In Paris I once saw an audience rise en masse, because the sculptor Rodin had entered the auditorium, and remain on its feet cheering until he had taken his seat. Something of the kind greets Molnar whenever he appears in public, and nothing is more certain than that he is the hero, the oracle, the spoiled darling of club, salon and coffee house in which artistic Hungary foregathers.
But the years immediately following the first production of LILIOM were for him a period of eclipse. It was the first time that even the threat of failure had cast its shadow across his career. He became
