He stopped short, his face alight with doubt and interrogation.
"I am Heinrich Fischer, an actor—now," I replied.
The last word was quite enough, and the tough old man almost broke down in the delight of recognition. When I explained to him the elaborate processes by which I had changed my figure, looks, and voice, he grew intensely interested in me as a strange experiment, and declared that not a soul in all the world would recognize me.
My visit was a brief one, though he pressed me earnestly to stay with him; and when I would not he said he would come to me at Frankfort, and that I must be his adopted son. But he never came, and we never met again. A letter or two passed between us—I had altered even my handwriting—and then a year later came the news to me that he was dead—had died suddenly in the midst of his work—and that I was left his heir.
This again changed my life, for his fortune gave me abundant means; and as I considered my actor training had been sufficient, I resolved to close that chapter of my life.
It would have been a commonplace affair enough, with an accompaniment of nothing more than a few mutual personal regrets, but for one incident. One of the actresses—a handsome, passionate woman, named Clara Weylin—had done me the quite unsolicited honor to fall violently in love with me; and when, at the time of parting, I could not tell her that we should ever meet again—for I had not the least intention or wish to do so—she was first tearful, then hysterical, and at last vindictively menacing.
"There's a secret about you, Fischer," she cried passionately. "I've always thought so; and, mark me, I'll find it out some day; and then you'll remember this, and your treatment of Clara Weylin. Look to yourself."
I tried to reason away her somewhat theatrical resentment, but she interpreted my words as an indication that she had struck home; and she flung away, with a toss of the head, another threat, and a look of bitter anger. I thought no more of the incident then—though afterward I had occasion enough to recall it; and when the evening brought me a letter from her, couched in very loving terms, I tossed it into the fire with a feeling akin to contempt. The next morning I left the town early, and was off on a purposeless and once more planless ramble.
With the stage I dropped also my stage name, for I had no wish to be known as an ex-play-actor; and as the old doctor's original counsel chanced to occur to me, I turned English. I now let my beard and mustaches grow; and I was satisfied that, with my changed carriage and looks, not a soul in the whole fatherland would recognize in Henry Fisher, a sober-looking English gentleman, travelling for pleasure and literary purposes, the once well-known and dashing naval lieutenant and Court favorite, the Count von Rudloff.
I moved from point to point aimlessly for some months until the vapid, vacuous monotony of the existence sickened and appalled me. Then suddenly chance or Fate opened a gate of life.