"By Jove!" he exclaimed; "have you broken it, doctor?"
"Broken it?" repeated the doctor in mild surprise.
"You don't mean to tell me that all that noise of broken crockery and foghorns was deliberately put together by a human brain?"
"You know nothing about it," said the doctor. "This negro music is excellent stuff. Negroes are much finer artists than we are; they alone can still feel the holy delirium which ranked the first singers among the gods...."
His voice was drowned by the sinister racket of the jazz, which made a noise like a barrage of 4.2 howitzers in a thunderstorm.
"Jazz!" shouted the general to his aide-de-camp, bostoning majestically the while. "Jazz—Dundas, what is jazz?"
"Anything you like, sir," replied the rosy-cheeked one. "You've just got to follow the music."
"Humph!" said the general, much astonished.
"Doctor," said Aurelle gravely, "we may now be witnessing the last days of a civilization which with all its faults was not without a certain grace. Don't you think that under the circumstances there
might be something better for us to do than tango awkwardly to this ear-splitting din?"