In the middle of a verse, he dropped his instrument hopelessly.
“Oh, Signor! These terrible Americans! Listen!”
The quiet of that matchless night was being assailed by the awful refrain of: “There’ll be a hot time in the old town to-night.”
“Ah, me, Signor! This will be my ruin! All the young men are at that man’s house drinking like beasts; they no more care for me, or for the heroic songs of their ancestors, and while they used to give me kreutzer, they now give me heller, if they give me anything.”
The old minstrel sighed profoundly and disappeared into the darkness, his gusla under his arm; while from the tin horn poured a medley of songs, the climax of which was: “A nice young man that lives in Kalamazoo.”
The sorrowful old man and his grief made me feel guilty, as if I were responsible for that terrible, torturing, unmusical outburst which disturbed the peace of the wonderful night.
After the guslar had left us, the newspaper man rowed me in his father’s barquetta across the shallow harbour, as far as the shadow cast by the gigantic palm trees on the shore. Every time his oars dipped into the water they brought to the surface a flame of fire; yet amid all the splendour of that night, I could think of nothing but the sad old musician.
Many months passed and I had quite forgotten the guslar of Ragusa. Again I was at the seashore; but it was the turbulent Atlantic—not the sunny Adriatic; Coney Island—not Lacroma.
Many confusing strains of music were in deadly conflict with one another; myriads of glowing lights encircled grotesque buildings of all descriptions; through streets given over to pleasure, crowded in one day nearly as many people as there are inhabitants in all Dalmatia.
I certainly did not think of Dalmatia, until I stood before an “Oriental Palace of Pleasure,” in front of which I saw the man from Brooklyn, resplendent in a gorgeous Oriental costume, “barking” to the multitude the sensuous pleasures which could be enjoyed within “for the small sum of one dime, only ten cents.”