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while a soldier volunteered the information that he was just from Vienna, where the workers had stormed the Arsenal, and armed swarms were out against the country: they were already fighting at Pozsony, some military detachments had surrendered, some had resisted. . . .
An old peasant assured me at the Gizellaplatz that he had come to Budapest with the single object of seeing the Crown Prince Rudolf. Seeing the puzzled expression of my face, he assured me that out there in the country it was perfectly well known that the whole revolution was the work of none but the Crown Prince Rudolf, who, hitherto kept a prisoner by King Karl, had now been set free, and under the name "Count Kàrolyi" was making a Republic. The good man would not be convinced of the senselessness of his account of things, insisted upon the certainty of his version, kept on repeating that Count Kàrolyi and the Crown Prince were one, and now finally he himself wanted to see the Crown Prince. . . .Vexed at my laughing, he moved away, and I saw his form -vanish into the Dorotheerstrasse. He was obviously really going to Ofen. to look up the Crown Prince. . . .
An incident, this, which shows how much the phantasy of the common people clings round a person in whom is centred anything even a little legendary. The destiny of the Crown Prince Rudolf, the shadows over Mayerling—all this, mere Court history, if seen with cold eyes, nothing romantic—draws the man from the country. He will not have his mental picture taken from him. And he is content with the Republic—without drawing into any closer contact with it—because what is extraordinary in the moment makes legend-building possible to him.
Really serious news arrived in the afternoon.
In Muraköz, in South-western Hungary, the flag of misrule was beginning to fly. Little news came to hand, and that was proportionately exaggerated. What I myself hears was from railway travellers who said that insecurity reigned along the Croatian lines, Croatian bands were seizing the trains, and many castles were being plundered. Unfortunately, a considerable proportion of these tidings proved true later on; and it will be one of the saddest chapters in the
