changed.

After the famous scandal, Topandy's dwelling was very quiet--no guest
crossed its threshold: while at Sarvoelgyi's house there was an
entertainment every evening, sounds of music until dawn of day.

They wished to show that they were in a gay mood.

Sarvoelgyi began to win fame among the gypsies. These wandering musicians
began to reckon his house among one of their happy asylums, so that even
the bands of neighboring towns came to frequent it, one handing on the
news of it to the other.

The young wife loved amusement, and her husband was glad if he could
humor her--perhaps he had other thoughts, too?

Sarvoelgyi himself did not allow his course of life to be disturbed:
after ten o'clock he regularly left the company, going first to
devotions and these having been attended to, to sleep.

His spouse remained under the care of her mother--in very good hands.

And, after all, Sarvoelgyi was no intolerable husband: he did not
persecute his young wife with signs of tenderness or jealousy.

In reality he acted as one who merely wished, under the guise of
marriage to save a victim, to free an innocent, caluminated, unfortunate
girl in the most humane way from desperation.

It was a good deed,--friendship, nothing more.

Sarvoelgyi's bedroom was separated from the rest of the dwelling house by
a kind of corridor, bricked in, where the musicians were usually placed,
for the obvious reason that the sun-burnt artists are passionately fond
of chewing tobacco.

This mistaken arrangement was the cause of two evils: firstly, the
master of the house, lying on his bed, could hear all night long the
beautiful waltzes and mazurkas to which his wife was dancing; secondly,
being obliged to pass through the gypsies on his way from the ball-room
to his bedroom, he came in for so many expressions of gratitude on their
part that his quiet retirement gave rise to a most striking uproar,
disagreeable alike to himself, to his wife, and his guests.

He called the brown worthies to order often enough: "Don't express your
gratitude, don't kiss my hand. I am not going away anywhere:" but they
would not allow themselves to be cheated of their opportunity for
grateful speeches.

One night in particular an old, one-eyed czimbalom-player, whose sole
remaining eye was bound up--he had only joined the band that day--would
not permit himself to be over-awed: he seized the master's hand, kissed
every finger of it in turn, then every