As they strolled and talked together here, it seemed to Andras that this
grief was, for the moment, carried away by the fresh, salt breeze; and
these two men, in a different manner buffeted by fate, resembled two
wounded soldiers who mutually aid one another to advance, and not to
fall by the way before the combat is over. Yanski made special efforts
to rouse in Andras the old memories of his fatherland, and to inspire in
him again his love for Hungary.
“Ah! I used to have so many hopes and dreams for her future,” said
Andras; “but idealists have no chance in the world of to-day; so now I
am a man who expects nothing of life except its ending. And yet I would
like to see once again that old stone castle where I grew up, full of
hopes! Hopes? Bah! pretty bubbles, that is all!”
One morning they walked along the cliffs, past the low shanties of the
fishermen, as far as Havre; and, as they were sauntering through the
streets of the city, Varhely grasped the Prince’s arm, and pointed to an
announcement of a series of concerts to be given at Frascati by a band
of Hungarian gipsies.
“There,” he said, “you will certainly emerge from your retreat to hear
those airs once more.”
“Yes,” replied Andras, after a moment’s hesitation.
That evening found him at the casino; but his wound seemed to open
again, and his heart to be grasped as in an iron hand, as he listened to
the plaintive cries and moans of the Tzigani music. Had the strings of
the bows played these czardas upon his own sinews, laid bare, he would
not have trembled more violently. Every note of the well-known airs fell
upon his heart like a corrosive tear, and Marsa, in all her dark, tawny
beauty, rose before him. The Tzigani played now the waltzes which Marsa
used to play; then the slow, sorrowful plaint of the “Song of Plevna;”
and then the air of Janos Nemeth’s, the heart-breaking melody, to
the Prince like the lament of his life: ‘The World holds but One Fair
Maiden’. And at every note he saw again Marsa, the one love of his
existence.
“Let us go!” he said suddenly to Yanski.
But, as they were about to leave the building, they almost ran into a
laughing, merry group, led by the little Baroness Dinati, who uttered a
cry of delight as she perceived Andras.
“What, you, my dear Prince! Oh, how glad I am to see you!”
And she took his arm, all the clan which accompanied her stopping to
greet Prince Zilah.
“We have come from Etretat, and we are going back there immediately.
There was a fair at Havre in the Quartier Saint-Francois, and we have
eaten up all we could lay our hands on, broken all Aunt Sally’s pipes,
and purchased all the china horrors and hideous pincushions we could
find. They are all over there in the break. We are going to raffle them
at Etretat for the poor.”
The Prince tried to excuse himself and move on, but the little Baroness
held him tight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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