Pimpernel and Rosemary by Emma Orczy

Budapest had been baking all day under a merciless sun in late July. But at this hour the coolness of a clear moonlit evening sent everyone out of doors. The Corso was crowded.

Rosemary Tarkington, on the terrace of the café sat sipping delicious coffee and lazily watching the throng. Now and then she would look straight out before her, and her eyes would lose all sense of fatigue as she gazed on the incomparable panorama before her: the ornate palace of the Hapsburgs, and the cathedral of St. Matthias, and on the left, towering above all, high upon the rock, the great grim fortress that for over a century had held the Turks at bay and saved Europe from the hordes of Islam. One by one tiny lights began to wink and to blink in the houses that rose tier upon tier on the slopes across the river, whilst down below gaily illuminated boats flitted to and fro upon the turbulent waters of the Danube, carrying a burden of merry- makers home from the shady island of Ste. Marguerite close by. The whole scene before Rosemary's eyes was one of unrivalled picturesqueness and animation. No town in Europe presents quite so enthralling a spectacle, and one whose charm is still further enhanced by the strains of those half-sad, half-voluptuous Hungarian melodies which come to the ear from out the shadows, or from the passing river boats, gentle as a caress, soothing to nerves and senses by their sweet melancholy rhythm, or exhilarating when they break into their peculiarly harmonious syncopated cadences.