Page:Imre.pdf/16

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14

us must be satisfied to wish for considerably more than we receive. And in return, without any more questions from me than I had from him—each of us carried along by that irresistible undercurrent of human intercourse that is indeed, the Italian simpatia, by the quick confidence that one's instinct assures him is neither lightly-bestowed, after all, nor lightly-taken—did I begin, during even those first hours of our coming-together, to know no small part of the inner individuality of Imre von N..., hadnagy (Lieutenant) in the A... Honvéd Regiment, stationed during some years in Szent-Istvánhely.


Lieutenant Imre's concrete story was an exceedingly simple matter. It was the every day outline of the life of nine young Magyar officers in ten. He was twenty-five; the only son of an old Transylvanian family; one pour now as never before, but evidently quite as proud as ever. He had had other notions, as a lid, of a calling. But the men of the N.... line had always been in the army, ever since the