Baroness Orczy

“ If it was not too great a sacrifice to give up bits of land, one’s ancestors had owned for hundreds of years, in order to handle some of these gold pieces, why then, since they had, as it were dropped in his lap, he would try and learn, study to find out, what was the best use to be made of it. The lord of Bideskút parted with his land to obtain gold, why should not he, Kemény András, the peasant, the son of the eccentric old miser of Kisfalu, part with the gold to gain the land? ”

“ And those mountains of gold and silver, jingling and glittering, seemed so poor, so tawdry in comparison with those nightly day-dreams. Presently, however, the shrewd mind, inborn in every peasant, rose to the conception, still weak, and far distant, of all that riches might mean. ”

“ The peasant mind in Hungary is a merry one, full of love for pretty girls, gay dancing, poetic music, but it is obstinate and tenacious, and that tenacity András—who knew little of love or pleasure—applied entirely to the furtherance of his aim. ”