“Come, come, take courage; here comes the Herr Director;” and with that he entered with two candles in large gilt candlesticks.
“Now, friend,” said he, “where will you sit? My advice is, the orchestra; take a place near the middle, behind the leader’s bench, and you’ll be out of the draught of wind. Stauf, do you hold the candles, and sit in the ‘pupitre.’ You’ll excuse my lighting the foot lights, won’t you?—well, what do you say to a greatcoat; you feel it cold—I see you do.”
“If not too much trouble——”
“Not at all—don’t speak of it;” and with that he slipped behind the flats, and returned in an instant with a huge fur mantle of mock sable. “I wear that in ‘Otto von Bohmen,’” said he proudly; “and it always produces an immense effect. It is in that same ‘peltzer’ I stab the king, in the fourth act; do you remember where he says, (it is at the chess table,)—‘Check to the Queen;’ then I reply, ‘Zum Koënig, selbst,’ and run him through.”
“Gott bewahr!” piously ejaculated Stauf, who seemed quite beyond all chance of distinguishing fiction from reality.
“You’ll have to wait ten or twenty minutes, I fear,” said the Director. “Der Catinka can’t be found, and Der Ungedroht has just washed his doublet, and can’t appear till it’s dry; but we’ll give you the Krfihwinkel in good style. You shall be content; and now I must go dress too.”
“He is a strange carl,” said Stauf, as he sat upon a tall bench, like an office stool; “but I wish from my soul it was over!”
I can’t say I did not participate in the wish, notwithstanding a certain curiosity to have a peep at the rest of the company. I had seen, in my day, some droll exhibitions in the dramatic way; but this, certainly, if not the most amusing, was the very strangest of them all.
I remember at Corfu, where an Italian company came one winter, and gave a series of operas; amongst others, “II Turco in Italia.” The strength of the corps did not, however, permit of their being equal to those armies of Turks and Italians, who occasionally figure “en scene;” and they were driven to ask assistance from the Commandant of the Garrison, who very readily lent them a company of, I believe, the eighty-eighth regiment.
The worthy Director had sad work to drill his troops; for unhappily he couldn’t speak a word of English; and as they knew little or no Italian, he was reduced to signs and pantomime. When the piece, however, was going forward, and the two rival Armies should alternately attack and repulse each other, the luckless Director, unable to make them fight and rally, to the quick movement of the orchestra, was heard shouting out behind the scenes, in wild excitement, “Avanti Turki!—Avanti Christiani!—Ah, bravo Turki!—Maledetti Christiani!” which threw the whole audience into a perfect paroxysm of laughter.