A tramcar
runs through the island, giving one tantalising vistas of glorious
stretches of woodland. Altogether Budapest would be an ideal place for a
honeymoon but for the beauty of the women, which might make the
bridegroom dissatisfied.
But the Pesth part of Budapest is a disappointment. One expects to feel
the first breath of the East, and one gets a modern, a Western, almost an
American town, with an electric underground railway and a telephonic
newspaper which reads itself out all day long to whosoever will clap the
cups to his ears--the old town crier in terms of modern science. But it
rounds off the day, poetically enough, with music, so that when I sought
to hear the latest news, I was treated to Handel's "Hallelujah." How much
more soothing than our own "extra special," with its final crop of
horrors! Music, indeed, is ever resounding: the gipsy bands are
everywhere playing--Hungarian, not gipsy music, as Liszt imagined, for
they never play to "the white men." The splendid "Rakoczi" March, which
Berlioz introduced into his "Faust," is, however, of gipsy origin, having
been invented, says tradition, by Cinka Panna, the faithful gipsy girl of
Rakoczi II., after his defeat. There are also Betjar melodies, the songs
of the brigand cavaliers, the romantic robbers who took from the rich to
give to the poor, like our Robin Hood.
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