"No matter," he cried after a short consideration, "it does not become me to judge her--may she find happiness!"
And quickly springing up he said, whilst his face cleared up:
"This was the last cloud that threatened to veil my star."
He rang for his servant, made a hasty toilette, and drove in his cab to the house of the Countess Frankenstein.
In the afternoon the most varied life filled the wide alleys of the Prater. Upon the broad turf beneath the trees of this enormous park some of the cavalry regiments recalled to Vienna were still encamped, and the different scenes of camp life were picturesquely displayed. There stood the horses picketed, as if on actual service, neighing and whinnying with impatience, here lay a circle of soldiers around a smouldering fire, on which, in the field kettle, their meal was cooking; booths were erected in which food and drink, the Vienna sausage, and camp beer, were offered for sale; and the Viennese streamed in and out in countless numbers. Now that the real war was over with its fears and anguish, they liked to gaze here on the last picture of it, which only offered to the eye its romantic charm, and not its dreadful earnest. But the groups of lookers-on were the thickest around an open space girt in by tall trees, where the brown sons of Hungary were displaying their fantastic national dance--the Czardas. A man played, upon an old violin, one of those peculiar melodies, half wailing, half wild dithyrambic movements, which even when thus executed sounds upon the ear with a strange mysterious charm; the others pursued a peculiar dance, with its strange pantomimic evolutions, sometimes jingling their spurs together, sometimes stamping on the ground with their feet, sometimes twisting the body into strange but always graceful attitudes.
Amongst one of these groups stood old Grois, the comic actor Knaak, and the ever-merry Josephine Gallmeyer.
"Pepi's" beautiful eyes sparkling with fun and mirth attentively followed all the movements of the Czardas. She slightly nodded her head, and beat time with her hand, to the sharply accentuated music.
"Look, old Grois," she then said, turning to her companion, who watched the moving picture with sad and doleful eyes, "those are capital fellows; I should like to choose a sweetheart from amongst them, they please me better than all our fade cavaliers put together."
"Yes," said the old actor gloomily, "there they dance, and when it came to fighting for Austria they let them stay behind, eighty regiments of our glorious cavalry have never been in action; it almost breaks one's heart to think of it all."
"Fie! old blood-thirsty tiger," cried the Gallmeyer; "let us be glad they are still left to dance, and that they have not been under those cursed needle-guns--there would not have been many of them left!"