Page:Heinrich Karl Schmitt - The Hungarian Revolution - tr. Matthew Phipps Shiel (1918).djvu/33

 down. And they have not the excuse of sudden passion. They murdered in cold blood and like common murderers.

Count Kàrolyi sent to the dead man a wreath with the noble words: "I esteem it my human duty to express my most sincere and honest sympathy in respect of the tragic death of my greatest political opponent."

All stood in amazement then at the murder. The event itself happened as follows: three soldiers appeared at Tisza's, whose villa in the Herminenstrasse was protected by gendarmerie concealed in the cellar. The rôle of these guardians is still not clear. Anyway, the soldiers were able to make their way quite into the living rooms. As things were, Tisza could have fled: but did not. With a Browning revolver in his hand he stepped to confront the intruders. And here let it be asserted that Tisza was one of the best fighters and shots in the country. With a Browning, armed with seven shots, a door may well be defended against more than three men. But he did not do it. One of the soldiers expressed the wish that Tisza's wife and sister-in-law should leave the room. This they refused to do. The soldier said to Tisza that he might put away the revolver. Tisza answered: "You have weapons, too." And then, nevertheless, he laid the revolver aside. He gave himself up to the assassins, as God made him, defenceless.

In the presence of his wife, who was his truest companion, who never budged from his side, who accompanied him to Parliament and to office, who was his best comrade and his truest, fell Count Stefan Tisza, that man of iron and oak, that last representative of a happily dead epoch, struck by two shots (of which one grazed his sister-in-law after it had passed through his body).

At the crack the Count chopped upon his knee.

His last words were:

"I am hitit had to become"

With the stiffening hand in hers the Countess remained by the dead. No tears could express this grief

Tisza died like a man who is at one with his destiny. Hungary can always be proud to have had such a despot, who knew not only how to