When the Catholics demurred and brought up the religious disqualification the cardinal silenced them in his strong Slovakian accent, saying: ‘I know best: I am the cardinal!’ As no one could think up any argument stronger than that, the storm abated and was heard of no more.

At the time I knew very little of all this directly, for I was so involved in a thousand different worries and running to and fro from place to place and office to office that these things only reached me like a far distant echo. The committee of administration had decided that all of the traditional ceremonies should be carried out in the quarter of old Buda where the royal palace was situated. However, no details were settled, and so I was given the task of proposing where each of the different ceremonies should be held.

There was no problem, of course, about the actual crowning: that would take place as tradition demanded, in the Coronation Church. Likewise St George’s Square was the obvious choice for the Ceremony of the Sword. I still had to find a place for the moment when the sovereign has to take his coronation oath in full view of the assembled populace. I thought that the most beautiful site would be the Halasz Bastya – the Fishermen’s Bastion – which looked out over the whole city behind the Coronation Church itself. Unfortunately, the chief of police was nervous about a possible demonstration of outrage and declared that such a place was impossible, as it could not adequately be provided.

But how beautiful it would have been!

I envisaged the invited guests placed under the arches of the outward curving wings of the bastions, the members of parliament and representatives of the country districts grouped on the steps with their multicoloured local banners, everyone in traditional Hungarian gala costume and, lower down, beyond the statue of Hunyadi, there would be room for thousands upon thousands of ordinary spectators. Above everyone would be the balcony, and right in the centre, under the white wreath of intricately carved stonework and flanked by the Prince-Cardinal and the Palatine, the king would step out, his hand raised as he took the solemn oath. It would be a sublime moment, unforgettable too for the monarch himself as, St Stephen’s crown upon his head, he appeared before his people to dedicate himself to their service. At his feet would be the Danube, behind it the sprawling capital and, further away, the great ocean-like expanse of the Hungarian Plain. If the oath could have been taken there it would truly have been given before the whole nation.

Since I was unable to carry out my dream I had to look for some other solution, and I at length suggested the votive column in Trinity Square on one side of which stands the Coronation Church. This was accepted and on the same day I sketched out draft designs for the balustraded podium, which Móric Pogány was to realize so brilliantly and which to this day shows off the great baroque votive column to such advantage. For the day of coronation the podium was constructed in wood, but this structure was afterwards rebuilt in stone and, unhappily, in so doing several small errors which had slipped into the original sketches failed to be eliminated and so have been perpetuated for all time in the permanent edifice.

The building of an artificial hillock in St George’s Square for the sword ceremony presented few problems. Only the placing of the public stands round the square had to be settled. We looked up the dimensions of the one erected for the 1867 coronation and then made the top somewhat wider for I had been told by my father – and heard it from others too – that everyone had been filled with alarm and anxiety when Franz Joseph had taken his horse up the mound at an imposing gallop. With just two strides he reached the top and when, with St Stephen’s Sword in his hand, he slashed to the north, to the east, to the south, and to the west – to the four corners of the world – his grey charger, confused by the cheering and the crowds and by the blasts of cannon-shot, reared up four times. Everyone nearby was afraid that the animal would jump clear over the balustrades and into the square below, but Franz Joseph had been a superb horseman who kept his foaming terrified steed turning upon the same spot, his hands, calming and masterful, close to the animal’s withers, and his own bearing, cool and royal and fully in command, never for an instant changed or faltered.

The task that presented the greatest challenge was the decoration of the inside of the Coronation Church itself. With Jenö Lechner as chief designer, we selected the motifs of the decorations from medieval illustrated manuscripts and decided to clothe the entire interior of the church in dark red, which we felt would give the finest possible background to the multicoloured dresses and uniforms of the crowd who would fill every corner of the building. We ordered great bolts of the same material as would cover the church walls to drape the columns which, as they were covered with frescoes painted in a most stylish but agitated manner, would have clashed unbearably with the other decorations if left in sight. The builder of the church, old Schulek, was still alive and, having been the prime instigator of these murals, decided to be deeply offended, running everywhere denouncing us as ‘vandals’ and threatening to make an appalling scandal if an inch of his beloved frescoes was not to be seen. If I remember correctly, it was on the last evening but one before the ceremony that I received official ‘advice’ – although no actual order – that the drapery had best be removed from the columns.

I did not know what to do and certainly did not want to make any decision without having consulted Lechner who had been the originator of the whole scheme of decoration. He could not be found until late that evening, and so at the close of the performance, he came to see me in my box at the opera. Sitting side by side on the sofa in the little drawing-room behind the box we commiserated with each other at this last-minute interference in our plans. At last, resigned to the unfairness of life, we decided to go just once more and look at our handiwork for the last time before it was all changed.

It was eleven o’clock at night when we got there and found that the men were still hard at work, assiduously attending to last-minute details in the dimly lit church. They were bathed in a strange almost mythical atmosphere. We looked around. The ogival baldaquines over the two thrones, the drapes behind the altar and the sweeping folds of the material with which all the pillars had been swathed made the roof seem at an infinite height; and the dark-red velvet material contributed so much to this effect of sublime beauty, so human, so warm and yet so regal, that we realized that it would have been ‘vandalism’ indeed to do anything which might spoil it. On the spot I decided to change nothing and brave the consequences – for I was convinced that anyone who saw what we had achieved would agree that we had been right.

And so it turned out. The interior of the Coronation Church was the most successful of all our decorative efforts, and everyone who was there would never afterwards forget the effect it made. In the last week we had so much to do and were so feverishly busy that I hardly spoke to a soul who was not one of my fellow-workers.