While Herr Freudenberg talked the sommelier had gravely served the champagne in some tall and wonderful glasses brought from a private cabinet by Monsieur Albert himself to honor his most treasured visitors. Herr Freudenberg raised his glass, clinked it against the glass of mademoiselle, clinked it against Julien's glass.
"Come," he cried, "to our better acquaintance, to our better understanding! Mademoiselle," he added, lowering his tone, "to the eternal continuance of those things which lie between you and me!"
Estermen had departed and Julien breathed the freer for it.
Mademoiselle Ixe chattered to him for a few moments, and Herr
Freudenberg whispered in the ears of Albert, who withdrew at once.
"One must eat," Herr Freudenberg declared. "Albert has some peaches, wonderful peaches from the gardens where the sun always shines. Peaches and macaroons—afterwards coffee. Ah! my friend, you remember those somber banquets when we all hated one another because we all fancied that the other wanted what we had a right to? Ugh! When I think of Berlin in those days, when no one smiled, when one's sense of humor was there only to be kept down with an iron hand, why, it gives one to weep! Mademoiselle, I have a prayer to make."
"It is granted," she assured him softly.
"Presently the orchestra shall play the music of Faust. You will sing to us? Tonight is one of my nights, never really perfect unless some minutes of it move to the music of your voice."
She laughed softly.
"Yes, monsieur, I will sing," she answered, "but not the Jewel Song tonight. Send the chef d'orchestre to me."
At the merest signal he was there with his violin under his arm. Mademoiselle whispered a word in his ear and he departed, all smiles. The selection which they were playing suddenly ceased. Monsieur le chef alone played some Italian air, which no one wholly recognized but every one found familiar. Slowly he walked around the tables, playing still, always with his eyes upon Mademoiselle Ixe, and when at last he stood before her, she threw her head back and sang.
The clatter of crockery diminished, the waiters paused in their tasks or crept on tiptoe about the place. Men and women stood up at their tables that they might see the singer better; conversation ceased. And all the time the chef d'orchestre drew music from his violin, and mademoiselle, with half-closed eyes, her head thrown back, filled the whole room with melody. Even she herself knew that she was singing as she never sang at the Opera, as she had never sung when a great impressario had come to try her voice, as one sings only when the heart is shaking a little, and as she finished, the fingers of her left hand slowly crept across the table into the hand of Herr Freudenberg, the toymaker, and her last notes were sung almost in a whisper into his ears. The room rose up to applaud. The chef d'orchestre went back to his place, bowing right and left. Herr Freudenberg raised the fingers that lay between his hand to his lips.