"We do not dance the minuet in our days," interrupted Steven, with bashful resentment.
John of the Viol's delicate measures, that had rung half humorous, half pathetic, wholly sweet, as memories of past delights must ever be, ceased abruptly. He gave the young man a dark look as he held his bow aloft.
"No," said he, "you are right. The minuet has gone to the guillotine. France has brought new dances into fashion: Ça ira, Ça ira ... Dansons la carmagnole!" His face grew terrible as he struck the notes of the blood-stained gutter-song into his strings. "New dances for France, that she may dance to her death!..."
"Fie, the ugly tune!" said Countess Betty. No shadow of the musician's tragic passion was reflected upon her face. "Monsieur le Marquis, play us a valse!" She caught joyfully at her own suggestion as a child its ball. "A valse, a valse! Beau Cousin of Kielmansegg, they tell me 'tis the rage. A pin for your old minuets!"
"A valse be it!" said Geiger-Hans. Anger was upon him, and he made his violin chant it, setting it and the brutal irony of the "Ça ira" to the rhythm of a fantastic valse. "Twirl, vapid heart and empty head! Hold her, prance round with her, feel your goat's legs growing, you who might have lifted your head with the gods and known the matchless rapture of the heights! Is it for this that you are young?"
Faster and faster went the music, fevered, with mad, shrill skirl; and faster the whirling. Beau Cousin began to pant. He held Belle Cousine so close to him that she, too, scarce could breathe. Loose flew her hair—one little sleeve almost broke across the heaving shoulder. Sidonia could look no longer; she turned to the window and leaned her hot cheek against the pane, staring at the stars with burning eyes. Something clutched at her heart and throat with a fierce grip.
Without warning, Geiger-Hans brought his bow across his strings with a tearing sound, and, as if a sharp sword had fallen between them, the dancers fell apart, astonished and not a little confused.
Steven staggered and caught at the chair behind him. The Burgrave's lady put a hand to her dishevelled tresses, then to the laces at her bosom and grew scarlet: brow and cheek, throat and shoulder.
"You no longer dance the minuet?" said Geiger-Hans, with a little laugh, picking at his now placid strings; and Steven thought that the man had the laugh of a devil and that it was echoed by his instrument. "Oh, you have a thousand reasons, sir, and so has madame, for the valse is a fuller measure. Gracious lady, you are out of breath. May I sit beside you awhile? And you, sir, will you not expound the first principles of this—this graceful and elegant pastime to mademoiselle yonder, whose youth has yet to learn the new fashion? Is it not right, Burgravine, that these young things, after all, should foregather, while you and I look on—you, the staid, married woman; I, the old man?"
She answered him not, save by a look of wondering offence.