"I am but mortal!" cried the tempted man, in anguish. "I cannot attain unto such heights." And he buckled on his gold-mounted sword.
The crucified form, however, seemed to turn its eyes upon him in mild reproof and gentle encouragement. "I will lend you my aid," it seemed to say to him.
But Manasseh hastened from the room and turned his steps toward the commandant's quarters. Perturbed in mind and hardly master of himself, he started at the rattle of his own sword; and when some of his comrades saw him pass and cheered him with loud hurrahs, he hurried by and barely returned their salute.
The general received him in his breakfast-room, where he was engaged with his morning mail. Acknowledging Manasseh's greeting, he handed him an open letter. The Hungarian took it and read as follows:
"Villafranca. Peace has been concluded. The Hungarian battalion is to be disbanded, and its members allowed to return home."
This room, too, had its crucifix. It seemed to look down on Manasseh with the same gentle reproof, and to say, "Have I failed you in your hour of trial?"
With the first ripening of the fruit in the Toroczko orchards, Manasseh and his comrades were at home. Blanka came to meet her husband as far as Kolozsvar, bringing her little daughter Ilonka with her. Bela could not come, as he had just then a school examination. At the Borev bridge a splendid reception awaited the home-comers. A handsome little lad headed the receiving party, waving a flag.
"Who is that pretty boy?" Manasseh asked his wife.
She laughed merrily, and rebuked him for not knowing his own son. But he had not seen the child for six years.
His brother Aaron, too, he hardly recognised, so gray had his hair turned under the anxieties of the past few years. The speech of welcome which the elder brother was to have delivered proved a total failure, owing to the emotion aroused in the orator's breast at sight of the returned wanderer. But the most affecting part of it all to Manasseh was the appearance of his sister Anna. The poor girl, he could not fail to see, was sinking into an early grave.
Victory had neither glossed over nor defeat buried from sight those dishonest army contracts. Louder and louder grew the murmurs against the fraud that had contributed so disastrously to the unhappy issue of the war, until at last a high military officer opened his mouth and declared, emphatically, "The parties responsible for such an outrage deserve to be hanged!"