But you only get the fringe of it, until you come down to Moskowitz's cellar on Rivington Street. And though the wine there is not as good as the music, the place is always full--to the glory of the Roumanians who know that no wine could be so good as to surpass the quality of the music one hears there. The place is literally filled every night. You see, the real difference between the Russians and the Roumanians is--the Russians talk politics, literature and philosophy when they come together, while the Roumanians like to hear good music and drink wine in company. So they come, whole parties, whole families, children and all, to Moskowitz's. And Moskowitz himself presides over his instrument, the cimbalon, and striking the tense wires with two little wooden sticks he draws out from them the weirdest sounds, the saddest chords, dissolving into the wildest dances. Of course Moskowitz plays regular stuff also; hits and misses of the popular repertoire of the vaudeville, etc., but he does this only when his guests are eating--orders from Mrs. Moskowitz, you know, who does not want food compared with her husband's Roumanian music. Marco, the young Roumanian painter, was in love with Fay Roberts, a gifted American girl from up-State, who had made Greenwich Village her abode. She was so gifted in many directions that she was a failure at everything--except being loved. In this she had succeeded very well. A dozen artists and two dozen business men were in love with this possessor of a beautiful head from which brains mirrored through two blue eyes. Of all the men Marco loved her best and most truly. She knew it. She liked him. But he was dull. He cut no figure anywhere. He took no part in discussions. He never cited Dostoiewsky. He never tiraded against the lack of understanding of the people. He once angered everybody by saying that the people, the plain common ordinary people, were the creators of everything worth while. She hated him for saying that. He had a way of his, of burying his bushy head in his pipe and looking from underneath his eyebrows, that angered her very much. He loved her, he adored her, and as time went by, he became more dull. Some people's tongues are loosened by love as by wine, and others are stricken dumb. Marco lost speech whenever he faced Fay, lost it more and more as his love for the girl grew. "What's the matter with your Roumanian savage?" friends asked the girl. "I don't know. He is getting duller every day," the girl answered. Then, one day, as Fay and a party of friends planned a merry evening, Marco flared up enthusiastically. "Come with me, somewhere." "Where?" they all asked. "With me, to a place I know." And thus it was that a dozen American young men and women descended the stairs of Moskowitz's cellar.