“Ach Grott! that was fine, that was noble!”
Now, how any man’s enterprising a five-franc piece or two gulden-müntze, could, deserve such epithets, would have puzzled me at another moment; but as the dramatist said, I wasn’t going to “mind squibs after sitting over a barrel of gunpowder,” and I didn’t pay the least attention to it.
“Give me your hand!” cried he, in a rapture, “and let me call you friend.”
The Director’s mad as a March hare! thought I, and I wished myself well out of the whole adventure.
“But as there’s no play,” said I, “another night will do as well; I shall remain here for a week to come, perhaps longer——”
But while I went on expressing the great probability of my passing a winter in Erfurt, he never paid the least attention to my observations, but seemed sunk in meditation, occasionally dropping in a stray phrase, as thus—“Die Wurtzel is sick, that is, she is at the music garden with the officers; then, Blum is drunk by this; der Ettenbaum couldn’t sing a note after his supper of schinkin. But then there’s Grundenwald, and Catinka, to be sure, and Alte Kreps—we’ll do it, we’ll do it! Come along, mien aller Liebster, and choose the best ‘loge du premier,’ take two, three, if you like it—you shall see a play.”
“What do you mean? you are surely not going to open the house for me!”
“Ain’t I though! you shall soon see—it’s the only audience I ever had in Erfurt, and I’m not going to lose it. Know, most worthy friend,” continued he with a most melodramatic tone and gesture, “that to-night is the twelfth time I have given out an announcement of a play, and yet never was able to attract—I will not say an audience—but not a row—not a ‘loge’—not even a ‘stalle’ in the balcon. I opened, why do I say I opened? I advertised, the first night, Schiller’s Maria Stuart, you know the Maria—well, such a Madchen as we have for the part! such tenderness—such music in her voice—such grace and majesty in every movement; you shall see for yourself, Catinka is here. Then I gave out ‘Nathan der Weise,’ then the ‘Goetz,’ then ‘Lust und Liebe,’—why do I go on? in a word I went through all our dramatic authors from Schiller, Göthe, Leasing, Werner, Grillparzer, down to Kötzebue, whose two pieces I advertised for this evening—”
“But—pardon my interruption—did you always keep the doors closed, as I found them?”
“Not at first,” responded he, solemnly; “the doors were open, and a system of telegraphs established between the bureau for payment and the orchestra, by which the footlights were to be illuminated on the arrival of the first visiter; but the bassoon and the drum, the clarinette and the oboe, stood like cannoneers, match in hand, from half-past six till eight, and never came the word ‘fire!’ But here we are.”