Then Andras entered with Marsa the abode of his ancestors.  And, in the great halls hung with tapestry and filled with pictures which the conquerors had respected, before those portraits of magnates superb in their robes of red or green velvet edged with fur, curved sabres by their sides and aigrettes upon their heads, all reproducing a common trait of rough frankness, with their long moustaches, their armor and their hussar uniforms—­Marsa Laszlo, who knew them well, these heroes of her country, these Zilah princes who had fallen upon the field of battle, said to the last of them all, to Andras Zilah, before Ferency Zilah, before Sandor, before the Princesses Zilah who had long slept in “dull, cold marble,” and who had been no prouder than she of the great name they bore: 

“Do you know the reason why, equal to these in devotion and courage, you are superior to them all!  It is because you are good, as good as they were brave.

“To their virtues, you, who forgive, add this virtue, which is your own:  pity!”

She looked at him humbly, raising to his face her beautiful dark eyes, as if to let him read her heart, in which was only his image and his name.  She pressed closely to his side, with an uneasy, timid tenderness, as if she were a stranger in the presence of his great ancestors, who seemed to demand whether the newcomer were one of the family; and he, putting his arm about her, and pressing to his beating heart the Tzigana, whose eyes were dim with tears, said:  “No, I am not better than these.  It is not pity which is my virtue, Marsa:  it is my love.  For—­I love you!”

Yes, he loved her, and with all the strength of a first and only love.  He loved her so that he forgot everything, so that he did not see that in Marsa’s smile there was a look of the other side of the great, eternal river.  He loved her so that he thought only of this woman, of her beauty, of the delight of her caresses, of his dream of love realized in the air of the adored fatherland.  He loved her so that he left without answers the charming letters which Baroness Dinati wrote him from Paris, so far away now, and the more serious missives which he received from his compatriots, wishing him to utilize for his country, now that he had returned to it, his superior intelligence, as he had formerly utilized his courage.

“The hour is critical,” wrote his old friends.  “An attempt is being made to awaken in Hungary, against the Russians, whom we like, memories of combats and extinct hatreds, and that to the profit of a German alliance, which is repugnant to our race.  Bring the support of your name and your valor to our cause.  Enter the Diet of Hungary.  Your place is marked out for you there in the first rank, as it was in the old days upon the battlefield.”

Andras only smiled.

“If I were ambitious!” he said to Marsa.  Then he added:  “But I am ambitious only for your happiness.”

Marsa’s happiness!  It was deep, calm, and clear as a lake.  It seemed to the Tzigana that she was dreaming a dream, a beautiful dream, a dream peaceful, sweet, and restful.  She abandoned herself to her profound happiness with the trustfulness of a child.  She was all the more happy because she had the exquisite sensation that her dream would have no awakening.  It would end in all the charm of its poetry.