THE NOVEL
would introduce the Bill for Jewish emancipation. When the master demanded of the boys the reason of their conduct, they declared that they were not going to sit on the same bench with the grandson of the traitor to their country. The traitor, whose name was known and hated even by the children of the land, was the grandfather of Joseph Eőtvős, a man who had served the Court at the time when Francis, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, endeavoured to destroy the Hungarian Constitution, and refused to summon a Parliament. The provinces strove to defend the Constitution, and Eőtvős helped the Court against them. But the little boy whom his schoolfellows treated so badly did not lose heart. Once when lessons were over, he mounted the master's desk and in brave words vowed before all his companions that he himself would always be a good patriot and serve his country faithfully, and make them forget the unpopular sound of his name. And what the boy promised the man fulfilled.
Baron Joseph Eőtvős was one of the noblest figures in the world of Hungarian literature. He distinguished himself as a statesman, a novelist, a poet and a scientific writer. His literary activity, like his life, had an idealistic tendency. He was a man of reflection rather than of action, but his reflections were penetrated with feeling, and his logic was infused with warmth of heart. His personality presents the feature, so rare in authors, which is expressed in the words of Vauvenargues: Les grandes pensées viennent du cœur.
Though not primarily a man of action, Eőtvős was twice Minister of Public Instruction, in the first Hungarian ministry and in the Andrássy ministry of 1867. As a statesman he was chiefly a highly intellectual and
