War-horse! war-horse! Old friend, who now stand tethered in the pasture, do you remember your youth?

Do you remember the day of the battle? You sprang forward, as if you had been borne on wings, your mane fluttered about you like waving flames, on your black haunches shone drops of blood and frothy foam. In harness of gold you bounded forward; the ground thundered under you. You trembled with joy. Ah, how beautiful you were!

It is the gray hour of twilight in the pensioners’ wing. In the big room the pensioners’ red-painted chests stand against the walls, and their holiday clothes hang on hooks in the corner. The firelight plays on the whitewashed walls and on the yellow-striped curtains which conceal the beds. The pensioners’ wing is not a kingly dwelling,—no seraglio with cushioned divans and soft pillows.

But there Lilliecrona’s violin is heard. He is playing the cachucha in the dusk of the evening. And he plays it over and over again.

Cut the strings, break his bow! Why does he play that cursed dance? Why does he play it, when ?rneclou, the ensign, is lying sick with the pains of gout, so severe that he cannot move in his bed? No;[80] snatch the violin away and throw it against the wall if he will not stop.

La cachucha, is it for us, master? Shall it be danced over the shaking floor of the pensioners’ wing, between the narrow walls, black with smoke and greasy with dirt, under that low ceiling? Woe to you, to play so.

La cachucha, is it for us,—for us pensioners? Without the snow-storm howls. Do you think to teach the snow-flakes to dance in time? Are you playing for the light-footed children of the storm?

Maiden forms, which tremble with the throbbing of hot blood, small sooty hands, which have thrown aside the pot to seize the castanets, bare feet under tucked-up skirts, courts paved with marble slabs, crouching gypsies with bagpipe and tambourine, Moorish arcades, moonlight, and black eyes,—have you these, master? If not, let the violin rest.

The pensioners are drying their wet clothes by the fire. Shall they swing in high boots with iron-shod heels and inch-thick soles? Through snow yards deep they have waded the whole day to reach the bear’s lair. Do you think they will dance in wet, reeking homespun clothes, with shaggy bruin as a partner?

An evening sky glittering with stars, red roses in dark hair, troublous tenderness in the air, untutored grace in their movements, love rising from the ground, raining from the sky, floating in the air,—have you all that, master? If not, why do you force us to long for such things?

Most cruel of men, are you summoning the tethered war-horse to the combat? Rutger von ?rneclou is lying in his bed, a prisoner to the gout. Spare him[81] the pain of tender memories, master! He too has worn sombrero and bright-colored hair-net; he too has owned velvet jacket and belted poniard. Spare old ?rneclou, master!

But Lilliecrona plays the cachucha, always the cachucha, and ?rneclou is tortured like the lover when he sees the swallow fly away to his beloved’s distant dwelling, like the hart when he is driven by the hurrying chase past the cooling spring.

Lilliecrona takes the violin for a second from his chin.
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