“Ah!  I used to have so many hopes and dreams for her future,” said Andras; “but idealists have no chance in the world of to-day; so now I am a man who expects nothing of life except its ending.  And yet I would like to see once again that old stone castle where I grew up, full of hopes!  Hopes?  Bah! pretty bubbles, that is all!”

One morning they walked along the cliffs, past the low shanties of the fishermen, as far as Havre; and, as they were sauntering through the streets of the city, Varhely grasped the Prince’s arm, and pointed to an announcement of a series of concerts to be given at Frascati by a band of Hungarian gipsies.

“There,” he said, “you will certainly emerge from your retreat to hear those airs once more.”

“Yes,” replied Andras, after a moment’s hesitation.

That evening found him at the casino; but his wound seemed to open again, and his heart to be grasped as in an iron hand, as he listened to the plaintive cries and moans of the Tzigani music.  Had the strings of the bows played these czardas upon his own sinews, laid bare, he would not have trembled more violently.  Every note of the well-known airs fell upon his heart like a corrosive tear, and Marsa, in all her dark, tawny beauty, rose before him.  The Tzigani played now the waltzes which Marsa used to play; then the slow, sorrowful plaint of the “Song of Plevna;” and then the air of Janos Nemeth’s, the heart-breaking melody, to the Prince like the lament of his life:  ’The World holds but One Fair Maiden’.  And at every note he saw again Marsa, the one love of his existence.

“Let us go!” he said suddenly to Yanski.

But, as they were about to leave the building, they almost ran into a laughing, merry group, led by the little Baroness Dinati, who uttered a cry of delight as she perceived Andras.

“What, you, my dear Prince!  Oh, how glad I am to see you!”

And she took his arm, all the clan which accompanied her stopping to greet Prince Zilah.

“We have come from Etretat, and we are going back there immediately.  There was a fair at Havre in the Quartier Saint-Francois, and we have eaten up all we could lay our hands on, broken all Aunt Sally’s pipes, and purchased all the china horrors and hideous pincushions we could find.  They are all over there in the break.  We are going to raffle them at Etretat for the poor.”

The Prince tried to excuse himself and move on, but the little Baroness held him tight.

“Why don’t you come to Etretat?  It is charming there.  We don’t do anything but eat and drink and talk scandal—­Oh, yes!  Yamada sometimes gives us some music.  Come here, Yamada!”

The Japanese approached, in obedience to her call, with his eternal grin upon his queer little face.

“My dear Prince,” rattled on the Baroness, “you don’t know, perhaps, that Yamada is the most Parisian of Parisians?  Upon my word, these Japanese are the Parisians of Asia!  Just fancy what he has been doing at Etretat!  He has been writing a French operetta!”