He also visited the houses wherein Goethe,
Chopin, and Wagner had dwelt. It was four o'clock when he entered the
garden of the Bellevue establishment and secured a table. The waiter at
his request removed the other chairs, so he had a nook to himself. Not a
very large crowd was scattered around; visitors at Marienbad do not care
to pay for their diversions. In a few minutes, after a march had been
banged from a wretched piano--were pianos ever tuned on the Continent,
he wondered?--the sextet appeared, looking as it did in the morning, and
sang an Austrian melody, a capella. It was not very interesting.
The women stood in front and yelled with a hearty will; the men roared
in the background. Krayne saw his young lady, holding her apron by the
sides, her head thrown back, her mouth well opened; but he could not
distinguish her individual voice. How pretty she was! He sipped his
coffee. Then came a zither solo--that abominable instrument of plucked
wires, with its quiver of a love-sick clock about to run down; this
parody of an aeolian harp always annoyed Krayne, and he was glad when the
man finished.
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