"Summer and winter, the puszta[10] is my dwelling,"
[10] The Hungarian heath.
and so sweetly, so enchantingly did she sing, that I quite forgot my surroundings and fancied I was in a private box at the Budapest casino. I actually began to applaud.
The robber-chief also applauded. And now he said he would teach the Countess his favourite song. And then the madcap rascal roared out some rustic melody which certainly I had never heard before.
"Well, old chap," he said, when he had finished, "it is now your turn to sing us something."
I was in a terrible pother. I sing? I sing in that hour of mortal anguish? I, who didn't know a single note except "Home, Sweet Home."
"I can't sing at all," I said. And that wicked, frivolous woman began laughing at me frightfully, as involuntarily I fell a-humming an air from some opera. I may mention I have a horrible hoarse sort of voice, not unlike a peacock's.
"If you won't sing," she said to me in French, "we shall all be insulted, see if we don't."
What could I do? With the dart of terror in my heart, and the pressure of mortal fear in my throat, I piped forth my "Home, Sweet Home." I felt all along I was making a woeful mess of it. Up to the middle of the song the Countess behaved with great decorum; but just as I was working my way up to the most pathetic part, and brought out a most cruel flourish, she burst out laughing, and the whole band of robbers began to laugh with her, till at last I also was obliged to smile, though, oddly enough, there was no joke in it at all, as far as I could see.
Then they fell to dancing again. The Countess was indefatigable. And so it went on till broad daylight. When the sun shone through the windows she said to the robber how obliged she was for the entertainment, but enough was as good as a feast, and would he, therefore, put to the horses and let us be off?