He scrambled to his feet, and, turning to the escort of the
woman, heatedly blamed him for the accident. They exchanged a series of
tense, bitter insults, which spatted back and forth between them like
pellets. People arose from their chairs and stretched their necks. The
musicians stood in a body, their faces turned with expressions of keen
excitement toward this quarrel, but their fingers still twinkling over
their instruments, sending into the middle of this turmoil the
passionate, mad, Spanish music. The proprietor of the place came in
agitation and plunged headlong into the argument, where he thereafter
appeared as a frantic creature harried to the point of insanity, for
they buried him at once in long, vociferous threats, explanations,
charges, every form of declamation known to their voices. The music, the
noise of the galloping horses, the voices of the brawlers, gave the
whole thing the quality of war.
There were two men in the _cafe_ who seemed to be tranquil. Hollanden
carefully stacked one lump of sugar upon another in the middle of his
saucer and poured cognac over them. He touched a match to the cognac and
the blue and yellow flames eddied in the saucer. "I wonder what those
two fools are bellowing at?" he said, turning about irritably.
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