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Suddenly, in the stillness around, rose the voices of the dancers returning and singing the refrain of the rondelay: I had a rose On my heart it lay Will those who are young Be married, or nay? Yea, yea! "There are our people," said Reine, softly, "I am going to them; adieu do not follow me!"
Within the café was a crowd of Arabs, real nomads, some in rags, some richly dressed, all gravely attentive to the dancers, who entered from a court on the left, round which their rooms were built in terraces, and danced in pairs between the broad divans.
They seemed to see nothing, to feel nothing, to know nothing; there was no animation in their looks; no speculation in their eyes; nothing but a dead stare, as if the dancers were under a spell, only to be released when the music was at an end. Generally speaking, I think the ball-rooms of continental cities are the curses and abominations of the Sunday.
Although it was more comfortable, the rest of our journey was made in silence and the Blairs dropped us at our apartment with many expressions of cordiality as we left them to proceed to their own. "Of one thing I'm sure," I remarked, entering the room where only a few short hours before Mrs. Blair had related her strange tale. "Whatever the cause of it, the devil dancers don't sham."
Some dances are performed by men only, some by women only, and in others the sexes mingle. In one of them I have seen the men drop on their hands and knees and kiss the earth with the greatest fervor, between the kisses looking up to Heaven. They also frequently throw up their arms, exactly in the manner in which the dancers of the Friendly Islands are depicted in one of the plates of Mr.
They would all come a little later into this quarter to drink many cups of coffee, and to spend their money on the dancers. As Stephen went by on horseback, the girls on the balconies and in the doorways looked at him steadily without smiling, but their eyes sparkled under their golden crowns, or scarlet headkerchiefs and glittering veils.
In the first kind one person only dances, or two, or three at most. While during their performance, the rest, who are seated round them in a ring, sing as loud as they can scream, and ring their little bells. Sometimes the dancers themselves sing, dart terribly threatening looks, stamp their feet upon the ground, and exhibit a thousand antic postures and grimaces.
I admired also the silence of the audience, a thing truly wonderful to an Italian, for it is with great reason that people complain of the noise made in Italy while the artists are singing, and ridicule the silence which prevails through the house as soon as the dancers make their appearance on the stage. One would imagine that all the intelligence of the Italians is in their eyes.
I had soon seen sufficient; the gestures and movements of the dancers were beyond all description unbecoming, and I could but pity the children, whose natural modesty cannot fail to be nipped in the bud by witnessing the performance of these dances.
Farther on, Marmaduke started to behold what seemed to him the heads of giants at least six yards high; but on a nearer approach these formidable apparitions resolved themselves to a company of dancers upon stilts.
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