he found awaiting him a letter from Petöfi, informing him that he had just married Julia Szendrey, and begging Jókai to seek out a convenient lodging where they and he could live together. That a newly married husband should invite his faithful bachelor comrade to live with him under the same roof was, as Jókai well remarks, a fact belonging to the realm of fairy-tale. Jókai immediately hunted up a nice first-floor apartment in Tobacco Street, consisting of three rooms and their appurtenances, the first room being for the Petöfis, the second for himself, while the intermediate one was to be a common dining-room, each with a separate entrance. The young couple came in during the autumn; they kept one maid, and Jókai had an old man-servant to wait upon him. The furniture was primitive. Mrs. Petöfi, who had left the mansion of her wealthy and eminent father without either dowry or blessing—the family utterly opposing the match, and visiting the enamoured young lady with the full weight of their heavy displeasure—had not so much as a fashionable hat to put on, and sewed together a sort of head-dress of her own invention, which, when finished, she had not the courage to wear. They had nothing, and yet were perfectly happy, and so was Jókai. Their dinners were sent in from a tavern, the Golden Eagle, close at hand, and their chief amusement was to learn English and laugh at each other's blunders.

A quarrel with the naturally irritating and overbearing Petöfi put an end to this symposium, and, doubtless to every one's relief, Jókai started a bachelor establishment of his own, consisting of a couple of rooms, which he furnished himself. Properly speaking, it only became a bachelor's establishment when he entered it. Previously thereto it had been occupied by a little old woman, popularly known as Mámi, who kept a well-known registry office for servants, and the consequence was that a whole mob of cooks, parlour-maids, and nursery-maids invaded Jókai's premises at all hours, under the persuasion that he could provide them with places. This constant flow of petticoats to his door not only disturbed his work terribly, but was sufficient to have brought a less studious and conscientious man into disrepute. It was at this time that Jókai became the responsible editor of the Életképek during the temporary absence of Frankenburg, and so began his political career. The Életképek was one of the most widely read journals of those days. Under Frankenburg's able editorship it had become the leading radical print, and it was no small glory for Jókai that, despite his youth, he should have been thought worthy of directing it. It numbered among its contributors some of the most brilliant names in the Hungarian Literature, from Vörösmarty to Arany. His literary colleagues assembled regularly at Jókai's lodgings to discuss current political events, and more than one idea of reform was hatched under the wing of the Életképek. It was in this occupation that the stormy, headlong month of March, 1848, found our hero. It was to tear him away from his moorings and cast him upon a veritable sea of troubles; but it was also to arouse and develop his capabilities in the school of life and action.

On February 23, 1848, a revolution broke out at Paris, and in a couple of days Louis Philip was a dethroned exile. Such a facile victory of liberal principles encouraged other liberty-loving nations to follow the example of the mother of constitutions, and the Hungarians were among the first to rise. In the Diet, Louis Kossuth eloquently demanded equality before the law, a popular representative parliament, and an independent, responsible ministry; but the new wine of nineteenth-century liberalism speedily burst the old bottles of obsolete, if picturesque, constitutional forms, and the direction of the movement, which became more and more impetuous every moment, slipped from the control of the cautious diplomatists and politicians at Vienna into the hands of the enthusiastic journalists and demagogues of Budapest. Amongst these, young Jókai, from the first, took a leading part. Early in the morning of March 15, he and his friends, Petöfi, Vasváry, and Bulyovszky, met in Jókai's room, by lamplight, and his comrades entrusted him with the framing of a manifesto, based upon the famous Twelve Points, or Articles of Pest, drawn up the day before by Joseph Irinyi, embodying the wishes of the Hungarian nation. This done, they rushed out into the public squares and harangued the mob, which had assembled in thousands. But speech-making was not sufficient; they wanted to do something, and the first thing to be done was, obviously, to give practical application to the doctrine of a free press. So they determined to print forthwith the Twelve Articles, the Manifesto, and Petöfi's incendiary song, "Talpra Magyar," without the consent of the censor. What followed must be told in Jókai's own words:—

"The printing-press of Landerer and Heckenast was honoured with this compulsory distinction. The printers, naturally, were not justified in printing anything without the permission of the authorities, so we turned up our sleeves and worked away at the hand-presses ourselves. The name of the typewriter who set up the first word of freedom was Potemkin! While Irinyi and other young authors were working away at the press, it was my duty to harangue the mob which thronged the whole length of Hatváni Street. I had no idea how to set about it, but it came of its own accord. My worthy and loyal contemporary, Paul Szontagh, occasionally quotes to me, even now, some of the heaven-storming phrases which he heard me utter on that occasion, e.g. '. . . No, fellow-citizens! he is no true hero who can only die for his country; he who can slay for his country, he is the true hero!' That was the sort of oratory I used to practise in those days. Meanwhile the rain was beginning to fall, and rain is the most reactionary opponent of every revolution. But my people were not to be dispersed by the rain, and all at once the whole street was filled with expanded umbrellas. I was outraged at the sight. 'What, gentlemen!' I thundered, from the corner of the street, 'if you stick up your umbrellas now against mere rain-drops, what will you stick up against the bullets which will presently begin to fall?' It was only then that I noticed that there were not only gentlemen around me, but ladies also. I exhorted the ladies to go home. Here they would get dripping wet, I said, and some other accident might befall them. 'We are no worse off here than you are,' was the reply. They were determined to wait till the printed broad-sides were ready. Not very long afterwards, Irinyi appeared at the window of the printing-office, for to get out of the door was a sheer impossibility. He held in his hands the first printed sheets from the free press. Ah, that scene, when the very first few sheets were distributed from hand to hand! . . . And now a young county official was seen forcing his way through the dense crowd right to the very door of the printing-office, and from thence he addressed me. The Vice-Lieutenant of the county, Paul Nyáry, sent word that I was to go to him at the town hall. 'Why should I go?' I cried, from my point of vantage. 'I'll be shot if I do! If the Vice-Lieutenant of the county wants to speaks to me, let him come here! We are "the mountain" now.' And Mohammed really did come to 'the mountain,' and, . . . what is more, he came to approve of what we had done hitherto, and then to go along with us to the town hall to ratify the articles of the liberal programme. . . . The town hall was crammed to suffocation. Those who were called upon to speak, stood upon the green table, and remained there afterwards, so that at