fact that life, with all its cares and its terrors, is no such
great thing after all, but merely a bubble upon the surface
of a river, a thing that one may toss about and play with
as a juggler tosses his golden balls, a thing that one may
quaff, like a goblet of rare red wine. Thus having known
himself for the master of things, a man could go back to
his toil and live upon the memory all his days.

Endlessly the dancers swung round and round -- when
they were dizzy they swung the other way. Hour after
hour this had continued -- the darkness had fallen and the
room was dim from the light of two smoky oil lamps.
The musicians had spent all their fine frenzy by now, and
played only one tune, wearily, ploddingly. There were
twenty bars or so of it, and when they came to the end
they began again. Once every ten minutes or so they
would fail to begin again, but instead would sink back
exhausted; a circumstance which invariably brought on
a painful and terrifying scene, that made the fat police~
man stir uneasily in his sleeping-place behind the door.

It was all Marija Berczynskas. Marija was one of those
hungry souls who cling with desperation to the skirts of
the retreating muse. All day long she had been in a state
of wonderful exaltation; and now it was leaving -- and
she would not let it go. Her soul cried out in the words
of Faust, "Stay, thou art fair!" Whether it was by beer,
or by shouting, or by music, or by motion, she meant that
it should not go. And she would go back to the chase of
it -- and no sooner be fairly started than her chariot would
be thrown off the track, so to speak, by the stupidity of
those thrice-accursed musicians. Each time, Marija would
emit a howl and fly at them, shaking her fists in their
faces, stamping upon the floor, purple and incoherent with
rage. In vain the frightened Tamoszius would attempt
to speak, to plead the limitations of the flesh; in vain
would the puffing and breathless ponas Jokubas insist, in
vain would Teta Elzbieta implore. "Szalin!" Marija would
scream. "Palauk! isz kelio! What are you paid for,
children of hell?" And so, in sheer terror, the orchestra

[[15]]

p014 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p015w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p016

v?