She fell in love once with a captain in the French army, one Buridan, and invited him to one of her little receptions. The disappearance of so many of her gallants had made the youth in the neighborhood rather wary of her, and Buridan was advised not to go, and good reason was given. An intimate friend of his had disappeared mysteriously a little while before, and the last that was ever heard of him was when he entered the tower.
Hearing of this, Buridan determined to go anyhow, and find out whether this friend had really dropped out of the way, via the tower. He went and supped with the fair Margaret, with whom he fell in love in the regular French fashion. For reasons of her own, Margaret did not want him to take the regular walk over the trap-door, but desired to let him out another way. All would have been well had not Buridan discovered, inopportunely, that his friend had been in the same room, and had stepped on and gone through the trap, and that the lime had finished him. Margaret confessed it, whereupon Buridan drew his sword and killed her to avenge his friend. Before Margaret passed out she informed Buridan that he was her son! Buridan then immediately killed somebody else, and that one, before dying, stabbed another, and so on, till the entire company, fifteen in all, were piled upon the stage like cord-wood, which ended the play, there being no living actors to continue it.
My friend, the German physician, rose and remarked:
“My frendt, dere ish shoost one ding lacking to make dish blay gomplete. Der beople on der stage ish all deadt. De first violin shood now stab der second violin mit his bow, and gommit soocide mit himself by schwallowing his fiddle. Dot wood endt de entire gompany.”
As we were leaving the hall a young man named Smith, who was always blatting about art, and music, and the drama, and such things, having been in New York once, seized the doctor and said, “Was it not a good performance? There is power in this company. Have you anything better in Germany?”
The doctor looked at him pityingly.
“My tear young man, you are not to plame. I pity you. When de Almighty rained common sense, de Schmidt family all shtood unter umbrellas.”
THE GRAND OPERA.
“La Tour de Nesle,” as lurid as is its plot, would be mild meat for the frequenters of the minor theaters of Paris. They would insist upon seeing the actual trap-door, and the lovers of Margaret falling through it, and I am not sure but what they would demand real spikes and lime.
You pay enormous prices in the one class and next to nothing at the other; but in both the standard of performance is a very high one, and is rigidly maintained. The Parisian, gamin or marquis, will have no bad music or acting. He may tolerate adulteration in his food, but none in his amusements.