THE SWEET-SCENTED NAME
and behind it stood a short elderly man waving his conductor's stick calmly, confidently, and as mechanically as the players moved their hands. He too had a sunburnt neck and hands. When he moved a few steps from the stand he was seen to be very lame. And it seemed as if his lameness had been planned by an ignorant but artistic workman, fashioning this fine toy so as to be more suitable for the music of the dance.
The sounds of the music seemed extraordinarily regular and monotonous. One could have wished for some slight inaccuracy or capricious interruption of the rhythm; but afterwards one remembered that it could not be otherwise, that such was the law of this methodically gay and yet melancholy measure.
The young men and girls sat on benches on the other two sides of the square. The fourth side had a light fence beyond which the ground sloped upward, and here upon the grass lay some onlookers who did not dance but had come to watch others dance and to listen to the music.
All the people present seemed to be under the spell of the devilishly-monotonous and inhumanly precise rhythm of this wonderfully executed music. All the young folks danced
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