ALEXANDER PETŐ FI 193 poets, and made verses about a pretty girl wh o lived in the neighbourhood, whom, however, he never dared to look in th e face. Petőfi was now sixteen years of age, of medium height, with a dark olive ca mplexion and a thick and somewhat stubborn growth of brown hair ; his eyes were full of fire and indomitble spirit, and his long n:eck was usually bare of collar and necktie. · But his relative soon gave bim up as hopeless. He declared that the boy would never become anything but a comedian . Petőfi sullenly, and despondingly, went to Sopron and joined the army. There never was a soldier who .loathed comput sio n more, or loved freedom more dearly than he, yet he remained in the army for eighteen months. ln 1840 his regiment was ordered to Graz, where he was struck down with typhoid fever. His military life was full of hardships. Even in the severest winter weather, he had to do the roughest kind of work in the courtyard of the barracks. " It is only now and then," he writes in one of his letters, 11 that with the aid of sacred, heavenly poetry, I am Iifted out of this heU . If it were not for this treasure enshrined in my bosom , despair would kill me." At last, through the interventien of a kind -hearted doctor, he was declared unfit for service, and sent home. ln 1841 he left Zágráb, the capital of Croatia, for Hungary. Weak, haggard, his countenance of an ashen pallor, and in a worn-out uniform, Petőfi erossed the frontier of his country. Once more there stretched before the fevered, sunken eyes of the poor soldier the land of his fathers, which he was soon to leave again. Here, at this eritical point in his life, Fate seems to have said to bim : 11 l will give thee eight full and rich years, a time of vigorous youth ; eight years in which to attain the summit of genius. During N
