five o'clock in the afternoon
Marosfalva boasts of a railway station and it is from here that at nine o'clock in the morning the lads will be entrained ; so all day on the thirteenth there has been a pilgrimage along the cross-roads from the outlying villages and hamlets round Marosfalva -- a stream of men and women and young children all determined to forget for a few hours the coming separation of the morrow ; by five o'clock in the afternoon all those had assembled who had meant to come and dancing in the barn had begun . Ignácz Goldstein 's barn has always been the setting in which the final drama of the happy year is acted . After that night spent there in dancing and music and merry-making , down goes the curtain on the comedy of life and the tragedy of tears begins . Since five o'clock in the afternoon the young people have been dancing -- waltzing , polkaing , dancing the csárdás -- mostly the csárdás , the dance of the nation , of the people , the most exhilarating , most entrancing , most voluptuous dance that feet of man have ever trod . The girls and lads are indefatigable , the slow and languorous Lassu -LRB- slow movement -RRB- alternates with the mad , merry csárdás , they twirl and twist , advance , retreat , separate and reunite in a mad , intoxicating whirl . Small booted feet stamp on the rough wooden floor , sending up clouds of dust . What matter if the air becomes more and more stifling ?