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From the gallery of white-and-gold the famous band, every man of which was a musician, presently began to send forth the sweet strains of a Waldteufel waltz, and Stafford found Lady Clansford for the first dance.
This vanishing of gloom gave him strange sensations, akin to the sensations of a man who, after having worn gaiters into middle-age, abandons them. After the Waldteufel she began to tell him all about herself; how she went slumming in the East End, and how jolly it was. And how she helped in the Bloomsbury Settlement, and how jolly that was.
Missionaries translate the latter word 'devil, and make it signify an evil spirit living in the upper regions, or our popular heaven, and reigning over Abonsamkru, the last home of souls, or rather shades of the wicked. Thus sasabonsam would be equivalent to Erdgeist, Waldteufel, or Kobold, no bad nickname for a miner.
I cast my eyes round the table, and if I had not known that this was la serie amusante I should never have guessed it every one seemed so spiritless and "sans le moindre entrain," as my neighbor remarked. No excitement this evening but the dance. Waldteufel is suppressed!
From the music-stand came a Waldteufel waltz, with its ecstatic throb and its long, dreamy swing, its mingling of joy with foreboding of sadness. The tears streamed down her cheeks. "He's gone," she said miserably. She rose and went through the crowd, stumbling against people, making the homeward journey by instinct alone. She seemed to be walking in her sleep.
Waldteufel has an apartment in the town of Compiegne, where he fabricates his waltzes by day and comes here to play them by night. At ten o'clock their Majesties went into the Emperor's private salon with a selected few; then the dancing become general and livelier.
There are days like that when, for no apparent reason, the grotesque in people and things which in ordinary life passes unnoticed, suddenly leaps into view. The programme of the music included the Egmont overture, a valse of Waldteufel, Tannhaeuser's Pilgrimage to Rome, the overture to the Merry Wives of Nicolai, the religious march of Athalie, and a fantasy on the North Star.
Joe and Delia met in an atelier where a number of art and music students had gathered to discuss chiaroscuro, Wagner, music, Rembrandt's works, pictures, Waldteufel, wall paper, Chopin and Oolong. Mr. and Mrs. Larrabee began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome flat something like the A sharp way down at the left-hand end of the keyboard.
Their Majesties devoted themselves exclusively to the Army after dinner; but they sent word by a chamberlain that we were to commence dancing, though they had not finished the cercle. Waldteufel was already seated at the piano, waiting. The officers danced vigorously. The elder ones ventured on quadrilles, and danced them with great gusto.
We were invited for ten o'clock, and about half-past ten every one was there. The Emperor and Empress came at eleven o'clock. Waldteufel, with full orchestra, was already playing in the ballroom of the embassy, which was beautifully decorated.
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