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Updated: May 20, 2025
As he thought this, a strain of sweet and solemn music stole through the room, Louis Valdor had risen to his feet, and holding the violin tenderly against his heart, was coaxing out of its wooden cavity a plaintive request for sympathy and attention. Such delicious music thrilled upon the dead silence as might have fitted Shelley's exquisite lines.
They put me in rooms, and there came to me men who rubbed and oiled me and loosened my muscles. The next day I wrestled with a great dwarf they called Valdor. He was a mighty man, and long we struggled, and at last I broke his back. And Lugur was pleased, so that I sat with him at feast and with the Russian, too. And again, not knowing that I understood them, they talked.
Some of them gave her odd, half-laughing glances now and then, being more or less amazed at the unusual vigour with which she sang, in her pure childish soprano, the few strophes of recitative and light song attached to her part; the very prima-donna herself caught fire, and the distinguished tenor, who had travelled all the way from Buda Pesth in haste, so that he might 'create' the chief role in the work of his friend Valdor, began to feel that there was something more in operatic singing than the mere inflation of the chest, and the careful production of perfectly-rounded notes.
"There you are right!" said Valdor; "Your words remind me of a conversation I overheard once between a great writer of books and a certain Prince of the blood Royal. 'Life is a difficult problem! said the Prince, smoking a fat cigar. 'To the student, it is, Sir, replied the author; 'But to the sensualist, it is no more than the mud-stye of the swine, he noses the refuse and is happy!
Valdor began to play, and with the first wild chords the childish figure swayed, circled, and leaped forward like a young Amazon, the dagger brandished aloft, and gleaming here and there as though it were a snaky twist of lightning. Very soon Pasquin Leroy found himself watching the evolutions of the girl dancer with fascinated interest.
I received neither 'pay, nor jewel of recognition, I had played 'for the honour' of appearing before their Majesties! but my bow was a wand to wake the little poisoned asp of despair that stings its way into the heart under every Royal mantle of ermine, and that sufficed me!" "Sometimes," said Leroy, turning towards him; "I pity kings!" "I' faith, so do I!" returned Valdor. "But only sometimes!
Every man sat motionless and mute, listening; Paul Zouche, with his head thrown back and eyes closed as in a dream, Johan Zegota's hard, plain and careworn face growing softer and quieter in its expression, while Sergius Thord, leaning on one elbow, covered his brow with one hand to shade the lines of sorrow there. When Valdor ceased playing, there was a burst of applause.
You complain, and justly, that a king is over-flattered; do not then flatter him yourselves by insisting on such convenience for him as he does not even demand at your hands!" "You take us too literally, Sir," said Louis Valdor; "Even Revolutionists owe respect to their chief!" "Sergius Thord is your Chief, my friend!" replied the monarch; "And, from a Revolutionary point of view, mine!
"You know what to play?" Valdor nodded in return, and took up his violin. The company drew back their seats, and sat, or stood aside, from the centre of the room.
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