Magdaléna két élete
- 1 online resource : multiple file formats
Release date is 2025-12-27
Albert László from page images generously made available by the Google Books Library Project Albert László from page images generously made available by the Google Books Library Project
"Magdaléna két élete" by Ferenc Herczeg is a novel written in the early 20th century. Set in the Austro‑Hungarian world, it interweaves psychological drama, social comedy, and crime around Videczky Flóris, a proud Temesvár patrician and amateur criminologist, and Csákó Magdaléna, a mysterious woman whose loyalty and lies collide. Themes of chance, class, and moral responsibility drive the plot from an old inheritance to a modern scandal. Readers who enjoy character‑driven tension and ethical dilemmas will likely be drawn in.
The opening of the novel frames fate with an heirloom: an austere matriarch tests two boy cousins with a dropped yarn ball, and the cautious child’s line inherits the Grál fortune. Fifty years later her beneficiary’s descendant, the wealthy Videczky Flóris, broods over “perfect crime” scenarios when a rain‑soaked stranger, Csákó Magdaléna, slips into his rooms, pledging silent devotion and staying near his small son. Suspicions rise; a search uncovers skeleton keys and a lover’s letter from the adventurer Paulusz Kamilló urging her to steal the family diamonds—already missing. Under martial law, Flóris informs the authorities yet hesitates to intervene when soldiers arrive; another letter then reveals Kamilló has fled abroad with the jewels. A drumhead court condemns Magdaléna, and the auditor’s dossier turns to her “first life”: an orphaned girl in Pozsony, briefly infatuated with a jurist, nearly married off to a dour confectioner before fleeing, then swept to Vienna by the persuasive Paulusz—who quickly shows himself to be a practiced con man. (This is an automatically generated summary.)