by a bony, red-faced woman with bad-tempered nostrils, rained hard notes
like hail through the tempest of fiddles. The small platform was filled
with white muslin dresses and crimson sashes slanting from shoulders
provided with bare arms, which sawed away without respite. Zangiacomo
conducted. He wore a white mess-jacket, a black dress waistcoat, and
white trousers. His longish, tousled hair and his great beard were
purple-black. He was horrible. The heat was terrific. There were perhaps
thirty people having drinks at several little tables. Heyst, quite
overcome by the volume of noise, dropped into a chair. In the quick time
of that music, in the varied, piercing clamour of the strings, in the
movements of the bare arms, in the low dresses, the coarse faces,
the stony eyes of the executants, there was a suggestion of
brutality--something cruel, sensual and repulsive.

"This is awful!" Heyst murmured to himself.

But there is an unholy fascination in systematic noise. He did not
flee from it incontinently, as one might have expected him to do. He
remained, astonished at himself for remaining, since nothing could have
been more repulsive to his tastes, more painful to his senses, and,
so to speak, more contrary to his genius, than this rude exhibition
of vigour. The Zangiacomo band was not making music; it was simply
murdering silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy. One felt as if
witnessing a deed of violence; and that impression was so strong that it
seemed marvellous to see the people sitting so quietly on their
chairs, drinking so calmly out of their glasses, and giving no signs
of distress, anger, or fear. Heyst averted his gaze from the unnatural
spectacle of their indifference.

When the piece of music came to an end the relief was so great that he