e d'hotel beamed with his nightly smile and
jotted down the orders.

The snug supper room glittered with light, clean linen and shining
glass. Now that the theatres were out, it had become awake with the
chatter with which these little midnight suppers begin--suppers that so
often end in confidences, jealousy and even tears, that need only the
merriest tone of a gipsy's fiddle to turn to laughter.

Boldi is an expert at this. He watches those to whom he plays, singling
out the one who needs his fiddle most, and to-night he was watching de
Savignac.

We had finished our steaming dish of lobster, smothered in a spiced
sauce that makes a cold dry wine only half quench one's thirst, and were
proceeding with a crisp salad when Boldi, with a rushing crescendo
slipped into a delicious waltz. De Savignac now sat with his chin sunk
heavily in his hands, drinking in the melody with its spirited
accompaniment as the cymballist's flexible hammers flew over the
resonant strings, the violins following the master in the red coat, with
that keen alertness with which all real gipsies play. I realized now,
what the playing of a gipsy meant to him. By the end of the waltz De
Savignac's eyes were shining.

Boldi turned to our table and bowed.

"Play," said I, to him in my poor Hungarian (that de Savignac might not
understand, for I wished to surprise him) "a real czardas of your
people--ah! I have it!" I exclaimed. "Play the legend and the mad dance
that follows--the one that Racz Laczi loved--the legend of the young man
who went up the mountain and met the girl who jilted him."

Boldi nodded his head and grinned with savage enthusiasm. He drew his
bow across the sobbing strings and the legend began. Under the spell of
his violin, the chatter of the supper room ceased--the air now heavy
with the mingled scent of perfume and cigars, seemed to pulsate under
the throb of the wild melody--as he played on, no one spoke--the men
even forgetting to smoke; the women listening, breathing with parted
lips. I turned to look at de Savignac--he was drunk and there was a
strange glitter in his eyes, his cheeks flushed to a dull crimson, but
not from wine.

Boldi's violin talked--now and then it wept under the vibrant grip of
the master, who dominated it until it dominated those to whom it played.

The young man in the legend was rushing up the mountain path in earnest
now, for he had seen ahead of him the girl he loved--now the melody
swept on