"Yes, he is a fine boy, the Cziko," she said, "swift like a squirrel, and brave like a wild-cat, and he plays the cymbal like no other."
"Is that a cymbal hanging on the tree there?" asked Oswald, somewhat surprised that the instrument was really existing somewhere else but in Holy Writ and poetry.
"Go, Cziko, show the gentleman what you know," said the woman.
The boy took the instrument down, laid it carefully on the stump of a tree, and, seizing the two sticks, began a most wondrous music, striking first slowly and then quicker and quicker. His heart seemed to be overflowing with music; his hollow brown cheeks flushed up; his dark eyes, which he raised now and then dreamily to the tree-tops, shone brightly. Then he fell into another movement and another air, and after a few bars, the woman, who had in the mean time made a brisk fire under a kettle, began to sing, in a low, melodious voice, one of those Sclavonic national songs, whose plaintive air is apt to make the heart melancholy and the eyes tearful. Oswald sat there, leaning his head on his hand and listening as in a dream. He felt as if the sad notes, such as he had never heard before, were calling forth entirely new feelings in his bosom; as if they excited deep sympathy in him with his own life, and the life of all other beings, and made him long and yearn after an infinite, nameless happiness.
The song came to an end. Oswald started up. He looked at his watch. Three hours had passed away since he had entered the forest; if he wished to see Melitta to-day he must not lose another moment.
"Can Cziko show me the way to Berkow?" he said, going up to the woman and offering her a few pieces of money. The gypsy swept the money from his open hand, as if she only wanted to see the lines in it better, and holding it by the tips of the fingers, she seemed to study them eagerly.
"Well," said Oswald, "not much that is good there?"
"Much good, much evil," said the gypsy, shaking her head.
"That is the way of life," said Oswald, "and what is the good?"
"Much good, much evil," repeated the woman. "Every good line crossed by a bad line; cannot tell you the good without the evil."