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 to pass once more to our affairs), captain Knotek swiftly rose to his feet and took the floor.

He was a pensioner who had joined the Opposition for no other reason than because it was an opposition. He passed in the town for a tactful and many-sided man, who always knew what to do, and who always spoke interestingly upon any subject. His opinion carried weight. He had entered the military career from pique. He was one of those old sons of Mars, who everywhere impress people by their rounded culture,—they attentively read Weber’s “Democritos” five or six times,—the only book they ever read through.

He spoke solemnly and deliberately of the Armada, by two or three leaps passed over to Temesvár, where, he said, he had stayed ten years, then led up to Hungary, to their sharp political contest, to their nobility who were always in the van of every action. He made comparisons and similes, and finished,