Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 423, January 1851

"Yonder is Rosa Sandor," said the Betyár, pointing to the distant light: "there we shall find him."

Another hour brought them to the place. As they drew near, the horses that stood round the fire neighed aloud, and the figures of three men were visible. Their attitude was one of watchfulness and determination.

A peculiar whistle from the lips of the old Betyár warned them of the approach of friends.

One of the three men at the fire was the robber chief, Rosa Sandor.

"What bring you?" asked Rosa.

"Your pardon!" cried George; and, springing from his steaming horse, he handed a sealed packet to his interrogator. "Read and rejoice!"[27 - Rosa Sandor was less a highwayman than a cattle-lifter, and pursued his vocation in the neighbourhood of Szegedin. "He was never in prison," says Schlesinger, "but repented his misdemeanours of his own free will, and wrote to the magistrates stating that he would leave their cattle alone, if they would pardon him for the past and allow him to pursue the Austrians." The Hungarian Government granted his request, and he did good service, especially against Jellachich and the Serbs; and also repeatedly entered Pesth and Komorn with despatches, when those places were closely invested by the Austrians. – See Schlesinger, i. 226-8, for other particulars of this Hungarian Robin Hood, who was at the head of a band of three hundred men, and was further remarkable by his abstinence from bloodshed.]

The robber turned to the firelight, and unfolded the document, which quivered in his hand as he read it. One tear and then another fell upon the paper; slowly he bent his knees, and turned his glistening eyes to heaven. "My Lord and my God!" he exclaimed, his utterance choked by sobs, "for sixteen years I have been hunted like a wild beast, but Thou vouchsafest to me to be once more a man!"

He turned to his companions. "To horse!" he cried; "let the troop assemble."

They sprang to their horses, and soon upon all sides the signal-whistle was heard. In ten minutes, a hundred and eighty men, well mounted and armed, mustered round the fire.

"Friends and comrades," cried Sandor, "that which we have so long desired has come to pass. We are no longer robbers – our country pardons us. It is granted us to atone our crimes by an honourable death. Is there one amongst you who does not repent his past life, and rejoice to be allowed to end it in honour?"

"Not one!" was the unanimous shout.

"Will you follow me to the battle?"

"Everywhere! To death!"

"Swear it."

The vow was brief. "We joyfully swear to shed our blood for our fatherland!"

"Add," said George to Rosa, "and to give no quarter!"

NOSTALGIA

The soldier is dying of home-sickness.

On a sudden an epidemic broke out amongst the Hungarian troops stationed in foreign lands.

A mysterious man wandered from place to place, visiting the wine-houses frequented by the hussars, and joining in their conversation. The words he spoke, repeated from mouth to mouth, spread far and wide amongst the light-hearted soldiers, whose light-heartedness then suddenly left them. The stranger told them of things which had happened in their native land; and, when he departed, he left behind him printed verses and proclamations. These the privates took to their serjeants to have read to them. When they heard them read they wept and cursed, and learned by heart both verse and prose, from the first word to the last, and repeated them from morning till night.

Then many took to their beds, and neither ate nor drank; and when the doctors asked what ailed them, they pointed to their hearts, and said, "Home! home! – let us go home!"

Many died, and no one could say what had killed them. The rough uneducated soldiers were pining away in home-sickness, like flowers transplanted to a foreign and ungenial soil.

An experiment was tried. Some of the sick men received leave to go home. The next day – they were well and hearty.

It became known that some one was at work secretly inoculating the soldier with this strange malady; but it was impossible to detect the person.

The soldiers! – oh, not one of them would betray him; and all snares were laid in vain. With the officers he never meddled. The private soldiers were his men. With them he felt himself secure from treachery. And the seed he scattered abroad produced an abundant harvest.

The dejection of the troops became daily more striking. The soldiers grew wild and intractable. No longer, when riding their horses to water, did they sing, as had been their wont, joyous ditties in praise of wine and women. Their songs were now sad and strange-sounding; mournful words to yet more dismal tunes. They sang of their country, of their dear native land, and of strife and bloodshed, in dirge-like strains; and the burden of every couplet was "Eljen Magyar!" Like the last accents of a dying man were the tones they uttered, sinking deeper and deeper, and ending in piteous long-protracted cadences.

Still are such songs to be heard in Hungary's forests, and around her villages, in the silent night-time. Now, more than ever, do they sound like funeral dirges, and their long sad notes like wailings from the grave.

In a small Gallician town was quartered a division of hussars – splendid fellows, for whom the heart of many a Polish maiden beat quicker than its wont. The most beautiful woman in all the neighbourhood loved the best blade amongst the hussars – the Captain.

Countess Anna K – nsky, the lovely Polish widow, had been for six months betrothed to the bold hussar officer, and the wedding-day was near at hand. A single night intervened. On the eve of the happy day, the bridegroom went to visit his bride. He was a tall slender man, with the bloom of youth still upon his face; but his high forehead was already bald; – "Sun and moon together," as the Hungarian proverb says.

The bride was a fair and delicate lady, with abundant black locks, a pale nervous countenance, and blue eyes of that unusual lustre which one finds only in Polish blue eyes. At sight of her lover, her alabaster cheek was overspread with the roses of love's spring-time, and her eyes beamed like the rising sun.

The bridegroom would fain have appeared cheerful; but it is hard to deceive the gaze of love, which reads the beloved one's trouble in each fold of the brow, in each absent glance of the eye. Tenderly she approached him, smoothed his forehead's wrinkles with her hand, and imprinted a kiss in their place. But again they returned.

"What ails thee, dearest? How is this? Sad on the eve of our wedding-day?"

"I? Nothing ails me. But I am annoyed at an incident – a casualty – which I cannot postpone. The court-martial has condemned a man to death. I have just now signed the sentence. The man is to be shot to-morrow: just on our bridal-day! I would it were otherwise!"

"The man is doubtless a criminal?"

"According to military law. He has been debauching soldiers from their duty – exciting them to desert and return home to fight the Serbs. Death is the penalty of his crime."

"And you have signed the sentence? Are you not a Magyar? Love you not your native land?"

"I am a soldier before everything. I respect the laws."

"Impossible! You, who love so well, cannot be devoid of that most ennobling kind of love – patriotism."

"I can love, but I cannot dream. Of the maxims and principles of revolutionists, I understand not a word; but thus much I know, revolutions never end well. Much blood, little honour, eternal remorse."

"Say not eternal remorse, but eternal hope. Hope that a time must come, which will compensate all sufferings and sacrifices."

The fair enthusiast quitted her bridegroom's side, seated herself at the piano, and played with feverish energy the well-known song, her eyes flashing through tears. Her lover approached her, removed her hand, which trembled with emotion, from the keys of the instrument, and kissed it.

"Noch ist Polen nicht verloren!"

"Poor Poland! Well may thy daughters weep over thy fate; but alas! in vain. I was lately in Pesth. Passing along a street where a large house was building, I noticed amongst the labourers a woman, carrying stones to and fro upon her head, for the use of the masons. Twice – thrice – I passed before her. The sweat streamed from her face; her limbs could scarcely support her. She was no longer young, and the toil was severe. This woman once possessed a palace in Warsaw – far, far more magnificent than the house she was then helping to build. Its portals were surmounted by a prince's coronet; and many are the joyous hours I have spent beneath its hospitable roof… When, at the sound of the noonday bell, she seated herself at her wretched meal, I accosted her. For a long time she would not recognise me; then she turned away her head and wept. The other women only laughed at her. I offered her money; she thanked me, and took very little. She, once the mistress of millions, besought me to send the remainder to her little daughter, whom she had left a dependant on a rich family in a distant town. I promised to seek out her daughter. When I had last seen her she was a lovely child, six years of age. Eight years had elapsed, bringing her to the verge of womanhood. I reached the house. In answer to my inquiries, a girl appeared – not that fair and delicate being whose sweet countenance still dwelt in my memory, but a rude creature, with hard coarse features and wild eyes. She did not recognise me, often though she had seen me. I spoke to her in Polish; she understood not a word. I asked after her mother; she stared vacantly in my face… Truly, the fate of Poland is a terrible example of what a nation may expect from its neighbours when it engages in a struggle with one more powerful than itself; and woe to the Magyar if he does not profit by the warning!"

"Ah! it is no Magyar who can talk thus!"

"Anna! thy first husband fell in battle on the morrow of thy wedding day. Wouldst thou lose thy second bridegroom on its eve?"

"I? With contrition I avow my culpable weakness; I love you more than my country, more than liberty. Until to-day, no man ever heard these words from a Polish woman. I wish you to sacrifice yourself? Did you seek to do so, I should surely hold you back – which no Polish wife ever yet did to her husband. All I crave of you is to leave that man his life, whose patriotism was stronger than your own. On our bridal eve, I ask you for a man's life as a wedding-gift."

"And a soldier's honour!"

"Punish him otherwise."

"There is but one alternative. The man has instigated mutiny and desertion; the law has doomed him to death. I must execute the sentence, or fly with him to Hungary. And thence, I well know, I should never return. In a case like this, the judge punishes, or is an accomplice of the criminal. In one hand I have the sword of justice, in the other the banner of insurrection. Choose! which shall I raise?"

The sky was scarcely reddened by the dawn when the prisoner was led forth to execution. Silently, without other sound than that of their horses' hoofs, marched the square of hussars. In the centre, on an open cart, was the chaplain, a crucifix in his hand; and beside him, in a white shirt, bare-headed and with fettered hands, the culprit, George of St Thomas.