“There is no need of accusing anyone,” said Marsa, turning away.

The gardener returned to the neighborhood of the pavilion, and, examining the red stains upon the ground, he said:  “All the same, this did not happen by itself.  I am going to inform the police!”

CHAPTER XIX

“A beautiful dream”

It was the eve of the marriage-day of Prince Andras Zilah and Mademoiselle Marsa Laszlo, and Marsa sat alone in her chamber, where the white robes she was to wear next day were spread out on the bed; alone for the last time—­to-morrow she would be another’s.

The fiery Tzigana, who felt in her heart, implacable as it was to evil and falsehood, all capabilities of devotion and truth, was condemned to lie, or to lose the love of Prince Andras, which was her very life.  There was no other alternative.  No, no:  since she had met this man, superior to all others, since he loved her and she loved him, she would take an hour of his life and pay for that hour with her own.  She had no doubt but that an avowal would forever ruin her in Andras’s eyes.  No, again and forever no:  it was much better to take the love which fate offered her in exchange for her life.

And, as she threw herself back in her chair with an expression of unchangeable determination in her dark, gazelle-like eyes, there suddenly came into her mind the memory of a day long ago, when, driving along the road from Maisons-Lafitte to Saint-Germain, she had met some wandering gipsies, two men and a woman, with copper-colored skins and black eyes, in which burned, like a live coal, the passionate melancholy of the race.  The woman, a sort of long spear in her hand, was driving some little shaggy ponies, like those which range about the plains of Hungary.  Bound like parcels upon the backs of these ponies were four or five little children, clothed in rags, and covered with the dust of the road.  The woman, tall, dark and faded, a sort of turban upon her head, held out her hand toward Marsa’s carriage with a graceful gesture and a broad smile—­the supplicating smile of those who beg.  A muscular young fellow, his crisp hair covered with a red fez, her brother—­the woman was old, or perhaps she was less so than she seemed, for poverty brings wrinkles—­walked by her side behind the sturdy little ponies.  Farther along, another man waited for them at a corner of the road near a laundry, the employees of which regarded him with alarm, because, at the end of a rope, the gipsy held a small gray bear.  As she passed by them, Marsa involuntarily exclaimed, in the language of her mother “Be szomoru!” (How sad it is!) The man, at her words, raised his head, and a flash of joy passed over his face, which showed, or Marsa thought so (who knows? perhaps she was mistaken), a love for his forsaken country.  Well, now, she did not know why, the remembrance of these poor beings returned to her, and she said to herself that her ancestors, humble and insignificant as these unfortunates in the dust and dirt of the highway, would have been astonished and incredulous if any one had told them that some day a girl born of their blood would wed a Zilah, one of the chiefs of that Hungary whose obscure and unknown minstrels they were!  Ah! what an impossible dream it seemed, and yet it was realized now.