rden, devoted
to concerts, beer, and cigars, is said to be capable of containing three
thousand people; before I left it it held about five thousand. I knew
not why this unwonted crowd had assembled; when I found the cause I was
astonished, with reason. At the gate was a bill, on which I read "Les
Bohemiennes de Moscow."

"Some small musical comedy, I suppose," I said to myself. "But let us
see it." We pressed on.

"Look there!" said my companion. "Those are certainly gypsies."

Sure enough, a procession of men and women, strangely dressed in gayly
colored Oriental garments, was entering the gates. But I replied,
"Impossible. Not here in Paris. Probably they are performers."

"But see. They notice you. That girl certainly knows you. She's
turning her head. There,--I heard her say O Romany rye!"

I was bewildered. The crowd was dense, but as the procession passed me
at a second turn I saw they were indeed gypsies, and I was grasped by the
hand by more than one. They were my old friends from Moscow. This
explained the immense multitude. There was during the Exhibition a great
_furor_ as regarded _les zigains_. The gypsy orchestra which performed
in the Hungarian cafe was so beset by visitors that a comic paper
represented them as covering the roofs of the adjacent houses so as to
hear something. This evening the Russian gypsies were to make their
debut in the Orangerie, and they were frightened at their own success.
They sang, but their voices were inaudible to two thirds of the audience,
and those who could not hear roared, "Louder!" Then they adjourned to
the open air, where the voices were lost altogether on a crowd calling,
"_Garcon_--_vite_--_une tasse cafe_!" or applauding. In the intervals
scores of young Russian gentlemen, golden swells, who had known the girls
of old, gathered round the fair ones like moths around tapers. The
singing was not the same as it had been; the voices were the same, but
the sweet wild charm of the Romany caroling, bird-like, for pleasure was
gone.

But I found by themselves and unnoticed two of the troupe, whom I shall
not soon forget. They were two very handsome youths,--one of sixteen
years, the other twenty. And with the first words in Romany they fairly
jumped for joy; and the artist who could have caught their picture then
would have made a brave one. They were clad in blouses of colored silk,
which, with their fine dark complexions and great black eyes