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Updated: September 24, 2025
I have heard somewhere a story of an elderly gentleman who was pursued by a bear that had gotten loose from its muzzle, until completely exhausted. In a fit of desperation, he faced round upon Bruin and lifted his cane; at the sight of which the instinct of discipline prevailed, and the animal, instead of tearing him to pieces, rose up upon his hind-legs and instantly began to shuffle a saraband.
Instead of the former vast repertory, the stately pavone, the graceful and dignified saraband, the wild salterrelle, the bourree with song and strong rhythm, the light and skippy bolero, the courtly bayedere, the dramatic plugge, gavotte, and other peasant dances in costume, the fast and furious fandango, weapon and military dances; in place of the pristine power to express love, mourning, justice, penalty, fear, anger, consolation, divine service, symbolic and philosophical conceptions, and every industry or characteristic act of life in pantomime and gesture, we have in the dance of the modern ballroom only a degenerate relict, with at best but a very insignificant culture value, and too often stained with bad associations.
"I suppose I ought to have said I would have given it gladly to such a romantic figure, and perhaps have got out and danced a saraband or bolero with you if that is the thing to do nowadays. Well!" she said, after a dangerous pause, "consider that I've said it." He had been walking a little before her, with his face turned towards the distant mountain. Suddenly he stopped and faced her.
They move with perfect balance and remarkable grace, racing through a figure like a farandole. They neither romp nor hug in our manner. At the first full close they clap their hands to stop the musicians, who recommence with a saraband, during which a strange figure appears on the path beyond the temple.
They have been very frank about it, as they are about everything in Altruria, and they have not concealed their anxieties about their unwelcome guests. They got on without much trouble in the case of the few sailors of the Little Sally, but the crew of the Saraband is so large that it is a different matter.
This Francisco had composed a saraband, which either charmed or infatuated every person; for the whole guitarery at court were trying at it; and God knows what an universal strumming there was. The Duke of York, pretending not to be perfect in it, desired Lord Arran to play it to him. Lady Chesterfield had the best guitar in England.
In other towns, on the festivals of the Virgin, a saraband is slowly danced round Her statue, with striking of sticks, and the rattle of castanets; and to close the ceremony by way of Amen the people fire off squibs. "All this, however, is of no great interest, and I cannot help wondering what meaning can have been attributed to cutting capers and spinning round.
You know the history of the Saraband?" "PARDIEU! Know it!" replied d'Artagnan, who knew nothing about it, but who wished to appear to know everything that was going on. "So that now it is no longer hatred, but vengeance." "Indeed!" "And the queen believes " "Well, what does the queen believe?" "She believes that someone has written to the Duke of Buckingham in her name." "In the queen's name?"
And he laughed, and he rubbed his hands, and he would willingly have danced a wild saraband, if he had not been afraid of making a noise. He listened in the next room where his uncle was in bed, and heard his loud breathing. And the hag who is watching still beneath the limes! And the father who is at Vic, and who, I doubt not, is snoring too. Come, all goes well! all goes well!
Dinner was served in a vast and sombre hall whose darkly panelled walls and high-beamed ceiling bred a multitude of shadows that danced about the table a weird, spasmodic saraband, without meaning or end, restlessly advancing and retreating as the candles flickered, failed and flared in the gusty draughts. Electric lighting she would never countenance.
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