Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/281

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

XVII RECENT WRITERS THE Fiume express wh ich rattled into the station of Károlyváros at noon on Sunday, November 5, 1899, did not leave it again until after some delay. A disturbing incident had occurred. Someone had committed suicide in a second- class carriage just before the train reached the station. A crowd quickly gathered, a nd wh en the body was removed from the trai n, they saw that the dead man's bands still grasped a revolver, a shot from which had penctrated his right temple. By means of documents he was found to be EUGENE PÉTERFY (184<)-1899), a pro­ fessor a the high school in Budapest. No one at the station was aequainted with the name nor knew that it was one of Hungary's most talented and cultivated writers who had th1.1s. flung his life away. Three days later this H ungarian author, for whom his own country was not to provide a gra,• e, was buried in a littie Croatian viliage in the presence of a fe w of his friends who had come in haste to show bim this last mark of their affection. On the sea coast , wh en the waves wash ashore the bodies of the unknown dead, the fishermen's wives are a ceus­ torned to say a prayer and light a candie over their grave. So, too, did the Croatian maidens, who, moved by pity, twined their wreaths around the grave of the stranger, cast up by the ocean of life. 11 What then is the value of