"This mad springing may please you," said Althea contemptuously; "it is just calculated for the taste of a drunkard; but to me it seems like the wild dance of fiends about a lost soul. It grates me to see that a woman can so far forget the female dignity as to expose herself thus." "Heaven deliver me from a tribunal where you preside," said Francis laughing; "why, it must be worse than that of the emperor at Prague. Your virtue is of so fierce a nature, there's no reasoning with it. That which is to please must be a little free: your decorum and modesty are the most tedious things on the face of the earth." The trio was at an end. The gipsies fanned themselves with their motley-coloured handkerchiefs, but they would not move their masks, and on that account rejected the wine which was proffered to them by the master of the feast. "These girls seem to be buttoned up to their chins," said Francis, "but for all that I'll have a peep behind their black masks, or die for it. Above all, I must try the fair-haired witch." And in the delirium of the moment, he dashed his goblet through the window, and leaped upon a chair, shouting "Huzza! huzza! away with the tables; we have had enough of eating, and will dance you one till the floor shakes, and the rafters crack again." "Man! are you alone here?" exclaimed Tausdorf indignantly; but in his frenzy, Francis heard him not, and, springing from the chair over the table with a neck-breaking leap, alighted again just before the mask with the auburn hair. "Take away," said Christopher with vexation. "When once he breaks out, there is no managing with him." The tables were removed, the seats placed close to the walls, and the guests made room for the dancers. Passing over the usual forms of courtesy, Francis seized his chosen one with a rude grasp, and shouted to the musicians, "A waltz! a waltz! but quick! quick!" The music began, and the feet of the dancers kept pace with its rapidity. The space about them grew wider and wider, for the spectators could hardly get their feet out of the way in time from the stamping of the intoxicated Francis, who kept clapping his hands, and shouting, "Faster! faster! I can stand it, and so can she." At last the piper stopped from want of breath; in a little time too the triangle was unable to follow; and now only the tambourine gave a fit measure to this bacchanalian revel. "And this is called pleasure?" said Althea to Tausdorf, who had retreated to a bow-window. "Where the soul is incapable of enjoyment," he replied, "pleasure must be sensual, or the vulgar mind would have no joy on earth whatever."