is what
keeps the world going. The veselija has come down to them from a far-off
time; and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the cave
and gaze upon shadows, provided only that once in his lifetime he could
break his chains, and feel his wings, and behold the sun; provided that
once in his lifetime he might testify to the fact that life, with all
its cares and its terrors, is no such great thing after all, but merely
a bubble upon the surface of a river, a thing that one may toss about
and play with as a juggler tosses his golden balls, a thing that one may
quaff, like a goblet of rare red wine. Thus having known himself for
the master of things, a man could go back to his toil and live upon the
memory all his days.

Endlessly the dancers swung round and round--when they were dizzy they
swung the other way. Hour after hour this had continued--the darkness
had fallen and the room was dim from the light of two smoky oil lamps.
The musicians had spent all their fine frenzy by now, and played only
one tune, wearily, ploddingly. There were twenty bars or so of it, and
when they came to the end they began again. Once every ten minutes or so
they would fail to begin again, but instead would sink back exhausted; a
circumstance which invariably brought on a painful and terrifying scene,
that made the fat policeman stir uneasily in his sleeping place behind
the door.

It was all Marija Berczynskas. Marija was one of those hungry souls who
cling with desperation to the skirts of the retreating muse. All day
long she had been in a state of wonderful exaltation; and now it was
leaving--and she would not let it go. Her soul cried out in the words of
Faust, "Stay, thou art fair!" Whether it was by beer, or by shouting, or
by music, or by motion, she meant that it should not go. And she would
go back to the chase of it--and no sooner be fairly started than her
chariot would be thrown off the track, so to speak, by the stupidity of
those thrice accursed musicians. Each time, Marija would emit a howl and
fly at them, shaking her fists in their faces, stamping upon the floor,
purple and incoherent with rage. In vain the frightened Tamoszius would
attempt to speak, to plead the limitations of the flesh; in vain would
the puffing and breathless ponas Jokubas insist, in vain would Teta
Elzbieta implore. "Szalin!" Marija would scream. "Palauk! isz kelio!
What are you paid for, children of hell?" And so, in sheer terror, the