as he sped up
the mountain with Arline.

The old Count ran to the chasm to throw himself headlong into it, but
his friends held him back.

ACT II

Twelve years after that day of the hunt in Count Arnheim's forests,
the gipsies were encamped in Presburg. In those strange times gipsies
roved about in the cities as well as in the fields and forests, and it
was not at all strange to find the same old band encamped thus in the
public street of a city. There, the gipsy queen had pitched her tent,
and through its open curtains Arline could be seen lying upon a
tiger's skin, while Thaddeus, who had never left the band, watched
over her. There were houses on the opposite side of the street, and
the gipsy queen's tent was lighted only dimly with a lamp that swung
at the back, just before some curtains that formed a partition in the
tent.

It was all quiet when the city patrol went by, and they had no sooner
passed than Devilshoof entered the street, followed by others of the
gipsy band, all wrapped in their dark cloaks.

"The moon is the only one awake now," they sang. "There is some fine
business on foot, when the moon herself goes to bed," and they all
drew their daggers. But Devilshoof, who was a pretty decent fellow,
and who didn't believe in killing, whispered:

"Fie! Fie! When you are going to rob a gentleman, you shouldn't draw a
knife on him. He will be too polite to refuse anything you may ask, if
you ask politely"--which was Devilshoof's idea of wit. There was a
hotel across the street, and one of the gipsies pointed to a light in
its windows.

"It will be easy when our fine gentlemen have been drinking long
enough. They won't know their heads from their heels." They stole off
chuckling, to wait till they imagined every one to be asleep, but they
were no sooner gone than Florestein, that funny little fop who never
had thought of anything more serious than his appearance, reeled out
of the hotel. He was dressed all in his good clothes, and wore golden
chains about his neck--to one of which was attached a fine medallion.
Rings glittered on his fingers, and altogether, with his plumes and
furbelows, he was precisely the sort of thing Devilshoof and his
companions were looking for. He was so very drunk that he could not
imagine what a fool he was making of himself, and so he began to sing:

Wine, wine, if I am heir,
To the count, my uncle's line;
Wine, wine, wine,
Where's the fellow wi