e
after another, his fiddle-bow ran through all those rhapsodies of the
last century, those compositions of the "Gipsy-Beethoven," Bihari, and
other great popular masters, with the most classical variations. Princes
listen not to such a concert as now resounded through that wretched,
desolate _csarda_. Even Henrietta arose from her couch the better to
enjoy these melancholy airs. If ever in her life, it was at this moment
that she beheld her husband in an aureole of dazzling light which
irresistibly attracted, overpowered, subdued.

One thing, however, struck her as strange, incredible--how could a
fashionable man brought up in the atmosphere of elegant saloons, find
any pleasure in playing _bravoura_ pieces in the tap room of a miserable
_csarda_ to an audience of half-tipsy vagabonds? Was this an habitual
diversion of these wealthy magnates, or was it only Hatszegi's bizarre
humour?

However, when "the lads" began to chime in a little too vigourously,
Hatszegi restored the violin to its case, took out his pocket-book,
opened it before them all and nonchalantly displayed as he did so the
bundles of thousand-gulden notes which it contained. Nay, he searched
among them for stray ten-gulden notes and gave one to each of the four
vagabonds "for the fine song they had taught him"--that was the way he
put it--at the same time requesting them to quit the tap-room, as the
ladies in the adjoining chamber wanted to sleep and must not be kept
awake by any further noise. The vagabonds must seek a couch elsewhere.

The vagabonds, without the slightest objection, arose, drank up the
dregs of the wine, pocketed the bank-notes without so much as a "thank
you!" and settled down for the night on the roof of the coach-house--to
the great terror of Margari, who was concealed in one of the coaches and
did not have a wink of sleep all night, his teeth chattered so.

But Hatszegi, when the drinkers had withdrawn, spread out his hunting
pelisse on the long table, laid down thereon and quietly fell asleep. He
did not even shut the door, nor did he have his pistols by him.

In the adjoining chamber, meanwhile, the _csarda_-woman had brought out
her spindle, set all its many wheels a-working and began to tell her
ladyship a lot of those wondrous tales that have neither beginning nor
end, _puszta_ adventures, the atrocities of vagabonds and their
fellows, the sad love stories of poor deserted maidens and such like.
And all the while the whee