ng to the Tsiganes whom I saw impressed me as a fugitive from
Fate. To look back was impossible; of the present he was careless; the
future tempted him on. In their music one now and then hears hints of
a desire to return to some far-off and half-forgotten land. But this
is rare.

There are a large number of "civilized gypsies," so called, in the
neighborhood of Orsova. I never saw one of them without a profound
compassion for him, so utterly unhappy did he look in ordinary attire.
The musicians who came nightly to play on the lawn in front of the
Hungarian Crown inn belonged to these civilized Tsiganes. They had
lost all the freedom of gesture, the proud, half-savage stateliness of
those who remained nomadic and untrammelled by local law and custom.
The old instinct was in their music, but sometimes there drifted
into it the same mixture of saint and devil which I had seen in the
"composite" faces.

[Illustration: BOATS ON THE DANUBE.]

As soon as supper was set forth, piping hot and flanked by flagons of
beer and wine, on the lawn, and the guests had assembled to partake
of the good cheer, while yet the afterglow lingered along the Danube,
these dusky musicians appeared and installed themselves in a corner.
The old stream's murmur could not drown the piercing and pathetic
notes of the violin, the gentle wail of the guzla or the soft
thrumming of the rude tambourine. Little poetry as a spectacled and
frosty Austrian officer might have in his soul, that little must have
been awakened by the songs and the orchestral performances of the
Tsiganes as the sun sank low. The dusk began to creep athwart the
lawn, and a cool breeze fanned the foreheads of the listeners. When
the light was all gone, these men, as if inspired by the darkness,
sometimes improvised most angelic melody. There was never any loud
or boisterous note, never any direct appeal to the attention. I
invariably forgot the singers and players, and the music seemed a
part of the harmony of Nature. While the pleasant notes echoed in the
twilight, troops of jaunty young Hungarian soldiers, dressed in red
hose, dark-green doublets and small caps sometimes adorned with
feathers, sauntered up and down the principal street; the refugees
huddled in corners and listened with delight; the Austrian officials
lumbered by, pouring clouds of smoke from their long, strong and
inevitable cigars; and the dogs forgot their perennial quarrel for a
few instants at a time.

T