an evening. He would go without his dinner (he often did) to pay for his concert-ticket or standing-place in the Royal Opera. He did not care for the society of professional musicians or of the theaterfolk in general. "They really are not worth while," he used to say... "art is one thing to me and artists another—or nothing at all—off the stage." As for more general society, why, he said frankly that nowadays the N.... family simply were too poor to go into it, and that he had no time for it. So he was to be met in only a few of the Szent-Istvánhely drawing rooms. Yet he was passionately fond of dancing... anything from a waltz to a csárdás. But, à-propos of Imre's amusement, let me note here (for I dare say, the incredulity of persons who have stock-ideas of what belongs to soldier-life and soldier-nature) that three usual pleasures were not his; for he abominated cards, indeed never played them; he did not smoke; and he seldom drank out his glass of wine or beer, having no taste for liquors of any sort. This in a champion athlete and an "all-round"
