Then, on a sudden, while the
fascinated spectators watched her breathlessly,--she seemed to wake
from sleep,--and running forward wildly, began to toss and whirl her
scarlet skirts, her black curls streaming, her dark eyes flashing with
mingled defiance and scorn, while drawing from her breast an unsheathed
dagger, she flung it in the air, caught it dexterously by the hilt
again, twisted and turned it in every possible way,--now beckoning, now
repelling, now defending,--and lastly threatening, with a passionate
intensity of action that was well-nigh irresistible.
Caught by the marvellous subtlety of her performance, quite one half
the audience now rose instinctively, all eyes being fixed on the
strange evolutions of this whirling, flying thing that seemed possessed
by the very devil of dancing! The King at last attracted, leaned
slightly forward from his box with a tolerant smile,--the Queen's face
was as usual, immovable,--the Princes Rupert and Cyprian stared, open-
mouthed--while over the whole brilliant scene that remarkable silence
brooded, like the sultry pause before the breaking of a storm.
Triumphant, reckless, panting,--scarcely knowing what she did in her
excitement,--Pequita, suddenly running backward, with the lightness of
thistle-down flying before the wind, snatched the flag of the country
from a super standing by, and dancing forward again, waved it aloft,
till with a final abandonment of herself to the humour of the moment,
she sprang with a single bound towards the Royal box, and there--the
youthful incarnation of living, breathing passion, fury, patriotism,
and exultation in one,--dropped on one knee, the flag waving behind
her, the dagger pointed straight upward, full at the King!
A great roar,--like that of hundreds of famished wild beasts,--answered
this gesture; mingled with acclamations,--and when 'The Song of
Freedom' again burst out from the singers on the stage, the whole mass
of people joined in the chorus with a kind of melodious madness.
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