“Rome,” he continued, “is indeed a thing of beauty, I have run through the churches, have taken in the art collections, have crawled through every catacomb, have seen a couple of cardinals, the Pope, and in the Parliament have witnessed a fine sally of the Opposition, have wearied myself in walking through the Campagna, have cursed its stage-coaches, its heat, its flies, the radishes, and the garlic,—the terror of the Italian cuisine,—suddenly one’s breast is torn by a painful longing for one’s smoky Prague, and the fastest express that takes one north seems to one to be moving at a snail’s pace. . . .”
Here the sharp, whirling sounds from the piano interrupted my hero. They were playing a waltz.
The wave of tones brought new life to the company. One of the maidens marked time with her foot, another clapped her hands; a young fellow with a big shock of hair put his arm around the waist of a slen-
