walls of marble which were lovelier than those of Count Waldstein in Golden Prague.
What joy, what surprise and animation, when the guests looked up and saw the three fiddlers. A pock-marked, red haired man in a long dolman fastened with huge silver buttons jumped up, making the spurs upon his boots to ring. He drank gayly to their health, swinging his glass toward them.
“Hello—fellows! Just in the nick of time. Out with your fiddles!”
They did not wait to be asked the second time. And from the old strings, they lured all the enchanting melodies of Hungary, which they had learned upon its lonely highways. Young men jumped up from the banquet, and stately matrons, and charming maids, bearded old men, and stripling youths who were not bearded, began to dance and beat time, so that it was something amazing to see. The heels of their new boots rattled; trained, silken gowns twisted and hissed like serpents, and the marble floor groaned with dancing feet.
A little round, red-cheeked woman of some thirty years, who wore a lofty, powdered, 18th century coiffure, covered with a coquettish, jeweled
