"Yes, certainly, she is a woman also--more's the pity!"
Hugo had gone across into his brother's study, where he found him alone. The piano stood open, but Reinhold himself lay extended on the couch, his head thrown back on the cushions. The face, with its half-closed eyes and high forehead, with its dark hair falling over it, looked alarmingly pale. It was an attitude, not of repose, but of the most supreme fatigue and exhaustion, and he barely changed it at his brother's entrance.
"Reinhold, really this is too bad of you," said the latter, coming up to him. "Half the town is in commotion with your opera; in the theatre everything is in a whirl; people openly fight for tickets. His Excellency the Director does not know where his head is, and Donna Beatrice is in a regular state of nervous excitement. And you, the real promoter of all this disturbance, dream away here in dolce far niente. as if there were no public nor operas in the world."
Reinhold turned his head towards the new comer with a feeble, indifferent movement; his face showed that his dreams had been anything but sweet.
"You were at the rehearsal?" asked he. "Did you see Cesario?"
"The Marchese? Certainly, although he was no more at the rehearsal than I was. This time he preferred to give a performance himself in the higher equestrian art; I have just paid a high tribute of admiration to his bravery."
"Cesario? How so?"
"Well, he rode no less than three times up and down the same street, and regularly under a certain balcony; let his horse curvet so senselessly that one dreaded an accident every moment. He will break his own and his beautiful animal's neck too, if he should try that often. Unfortunately this time mine was the only, probably not much wished for, physiognomy which he saw at the window."
The evidently irritable tone of these words caught Reinhold's attention--he half raised himself up.
"At which window?"