and shady celebrities, an
amusing, bustling crowd, half Bohemian, half aristocratic, entirely
cosmopolitan. Prince Andras remembered once having dined with a staff
officer of Garibaldi's army on one side of him, and the Pope's nuncio on
the other.

On a certain evening the Baroness was very anxious that the Prince should
not refuse her latest invitation.

"I am arranging a surprise for you," she said. "I am going to have to
dinner"--

"Whom? The Mikado? The Shah of Persia?"

"Better than the Mikado. A charming young girl who admires you
profoundly, for she knows by heart the whole history of your battles of
1849. She has read Georgei, Klapka, and all the rest of them; and she is
so thoroughly Bohemian in heart, soul and race, that she is universally
called the Tzigana."

"The Tzigana?"

This simple word, resembling the clank of cymbals, brought up to Prince
Andras a whole world of recollections. 'Hussad czigany'! The rallying cry
of the wandering musicians of the puszta had some element in it like the
cherished tones of the distant bells of his fatherland.

"Ah! yes, indeed, my dear Baroness," he said; "that is a charming
surprise. I need not ask if your Tzigana is pretty; all the Tzigani of my
country are adorable, and I am sure I shall fall in love with her."

The Prince had no notion how prophetic his words were. The Tzigana, whom
the Baroness requested him to take in to dinner, was Marsa, Marsa Laszlo,
dressed in one of the black toilettes which she affected, and whose
clear, dark complexion, great Arabian eyes, and heavy, wavy hair seemed
to Andras's eyes to be the incarnation, in a prouder and more refined
type, of the warm, supple, nervous beauty of the girls of his country.

He was surprised and strangely fascinated, attracted by the incongruous
mixture of extreme refinement and a sort of haughty unconventionality he
found in Marsa. A moment before, he had noticed how silent, almost rigid
she was, as she leaned back in her armchair; but now this same face was
strangely animated, illumined by some happy emotion, and her eyes burned
like coals of fire as she fixed them upon Andras.

During the whole dinner, the rest of the dining-room disappeared to the
Prince; he saw only the girl at his side; and the candles and polished
mirrors were only there to form a sparkling background for her pale,
midnight beauty.

"Do you know, Prince," said Marsa, in her rich, warm contralto voice,
whose very accents were