and less droll, but far more scientific and difficult .
Every now and then he drops the handkerchief,
and picks it up in a certain ecstatic moment
of the dance, without losing time, and this feat
is rewarded by storms of laughter and applause.
His little booted legs shake about as pliant
as a harlequin's, and his sly vain face
preserves one steady expression of crafty
determination. He ends a series of impossibilities by
a gigantic effort in double shuffling. "That
boy," I said to Herr Grabe, "if he isn't hung
prematurely for picking pockets, will become a
world-known ballet-master."

"No," said he, "it is wunderbar; but these
people have refused offers to travel that would
have brought them hundreds and hundreds of
pounds. They are proud; they are free as
Tartars; they like their own ways. Have you
not heard how Catalani once, after hearing one
of their women sing, took off a shawl, worth
thousands of roubles, that some emperor had
given her, and threw it over the gipsy's
shoulders, exclaiming: 'I am dethroned—this
is the Queen of Song!' It may be true: I tell
it you for true. Why not?"

And all this time Marscha sat queenly in her
white attire. Now the chief stepped to her, and
handed her a gipsy guitar. It seemed impossible
to approach that woman without reverence.
She took it, and threw the blue band across her
left shoulder. Instantly a tremulous tune rose
from the strings of the wild instrument.

The great finale of the gipsy entertainment
was approaching. There was to be a duet sword-
dance between the chief and that tall stately
buxom girl on the right of Marscha. Now I
had heard gipsy music in Spain, where the
antiquarians declare it to be partly Phœnician and
partly Grecian in character. I had found it to
resemble in many respects the Arab music, being
monotonous, quaint, and full of minute
inflections, almost too subtle to be distinguished
except by a practised ear; at times exciting
and passionate, yet generally more like an
incantation than pure honest music, and there can
be no doubt profoundly corrupt in its mystic
significance.

The guitar, and the incessant hand-clapping,
furnished a fitting music for such a dance, which
is probably of Tartar origin and of extreme
antiquity. The chief, girding himself up, and
looking down at his boots to see if he was in
sound dancing trim, stepped forward to the
footlights, and addressed some words in Russian,
that I could not hear, to an officer in white
uniform, who sat in the front row.

The officer rose, bowed, and unbuckling his
heavy cavalry sword, handed it up in its glittering
steel sheath to the gipsy dancer. He took it,
drew the blade from its sheath, and returned
the sheath to the owner.

Then, holding the sword in his hand, and over
his head, he advanced to the girl who, wrapped
in her shawl, paced forward to oppose him in
the dance. They challenge each other, they
cross and interchange with the gravity of minuet
dancers. She points at his feet and marks out the
figures with the agility of a Highlandman
exulting in the Fling, but with more lithe and crafty
neatness. He is so quick, you can hear nothing
but the tap of his heel and toe, and the soft
low beat of his companion's toe and heel. Now
and then, as the band shout in a jerky ecstatic
way, he slashes the sword through the air, and
cuts figures of light before the girl's unflinching
eyes, she all the time playing graceful antics
with her shawl, that she alternately loosens and
tightens. There is no violence about the dance,
but it is full of a robust Spanish spirit, and is
defiant in its character. Suddenly the music
quickened, the dancers redoubled their efforts,
and approached each other more closely; swift
as lightning that horrible menacing sword flew
round the girl's head, whistled over and around
her on left and right, close, close—one hair's
breadth more—one instant of haste or panic, or
of thoughtless and excited eagerness, and the
gipsy girl had fallen dead on the stage.

"Whish—whish!" went the sword, glittering
through the air, the dance growing every second
faster and madder. Suddenly, an uncontrollable
thirst for blood seemed to seize the swordsman;
he passed his hand upward through his hair, and
it stood on end in a maniacal, Corybantic way.
Then, tossing the sword behind his back, he
raised it to cleave that proud and smiling
antagonist to the breast-bone; he raised the
sword——that instant the music stopped, the
dance was over, and the applause broke forth
like thunder in a Brazilian forest.

I wiped the hot dew from my forehead, and
gave a sigh of relief.

"It is divaine, it is divaine!" exclaimed my
German friend; "come, let us hurry off to the
fireworks."

And so we did. The people, ungratefully eager
for new amusement, were crowding in black
masses on the dark edge of the garden lake.
They looked like ghosts waiting for Charon on
the banks of Lethe's fat and sullen stream.

Here and there a spark rose up on the opposite
shore, and by that spark we could see black
figures moving about with lights.

"Bang!" went the maroons, with a cracking
detonation; up went a golden line, and
broke into a star of burning diamonds. "Bang!
bang!" with spiteful and abrupt reports.

"Hiss, hiss!" like flying serpents, went the
fireworks, and branched into saffron-coloured,
starry fire; into golden willows, into branching
threads, each tipped with a star of brilliants.

Up went other fireworks, that, high up, blossomed
into blue, and crimson, and green, and
melted into the cold unruffled darkness.

"Whiz! hiss! whiz!" spread the fire over
the frameworks, and broke out into circles, and
letters, and crowns, and laurel-leaves, and the
emperor's name, and " God protect the Czar!" and
burnt away at last into black revolving scaffolding,
with here and there a lingering spark.

Out on the water too, like flying serpent-fire,
burst out the fireworks, and ran and blazed and
hissed and discharged their very lives in breath
of flame and showers of golden sparks.