Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/75

Rh tried to bewilder me and set me wrong. The triangle of Monsieur Turlutu tittered many a time mockingly, while Madame the mother beat so angrily on her great drum that her face beamed out of the cloud of black hood round her face like a blood-red Northern light.

"Long after the troupe had departed, I remained standing in the same place wondering what this dance could mean. Was it some national dance of the South of France or of Spain? These were recalled by the irrepressible energy with which the dancer threw her body to and fro, and the wildness with which she often threw her head backwards in the mad manner of the bold Bacchantæ whom we see with amazement on the reliefs of antique vases. Her dance had in it something of intoxicated unwilfulness, something gloomily inevitable or fatalistic, for she danced like destiny itself. Or was it a fragment of some primævally ancient, forgotten pantomime? Or a secret tale of life, set to motion? Very often the girl bent to the earth, with listening ear, as if she heard a voice calling up to her. Then she trembled like an aspen leaf, sprang quickly to the other side, and there indulged in her maddest gambols. Then she inclined her ear again to the earth, listened more anxiously than before, nodded with her head, grew sad and pale, shuddered, stood awhile