The cook had seated himself decorously and was holding the mandolin in position. With his cap of white linen and his white linen jacket and apron, he cut a droll figure among those correctly dressed young men. Willy Snyders poured some vino nero for him into a tumbler, and he struck a few notes by way of prelude, though hesitating to interrupt Franck and begin. He kept his face, glowing from the kitchen fire, turned toward Franck with an expression of courteous waiting and politely besought him in Italian to keep on singing. Finally, since Franck, instead of answering, arose, gave him a comically commanding look, and waved his fork like a baton, he began, striking up an accompaniment with a catching rhythm, which titillated his auditors' nerves. He was an excellent singer and a master-hand at playing the mandolin. He gave those well-known street-ballads which one hears everywhere in Italy, especially in Naples: "Addio mia bella Napoli," "Funiculi Funicula," "L'altro ieri a Piedigrotta," "Margherita di Parete era sarta delle signore," and also more serious songs, such as the languishing "Ogni sera di sotto all' mio balcone sento cantar una canzon d' amore."
The cook's melodies undoubtedly charmed back his home to him, though in colours less glorious and alluring to himself, perhaps, than to the artists, whether they had been in Italy or not. Frederick leaned his head back and closed his eyes. The dining-room was filled with the fumes of cigars and cigarettes, and the electric bulbs shone as in a mist. Frederick's thoughts carried him far, far away. His arm hung at his side limply, while a Simon Arzt cigarette burned to a stump between his fingers—throughout his adventures, his silver cigarette case had remained safe in his pocket.
Before his inner vision rose the coasts and blue gulfs of Italy, the brown Doric temples of Pæstum and the cliffs of Amalfi, Sorrento, and Capri. He was standing on the Posilipo. He was with Doctor Dorn in the loggia of the zoologic station for deep-sea researches, which Hans von Marées had decorated. In Rome, Frederick had sat over many a bottle of wine with Hans von Marées and Otto, who died while working on the Luther Memorial in Berlin. He saw himself in the famous Est Est Café in Rome, or visiting the malaria patients in the hospital on the Capitol, or promenading in the sunshine on Monte Pincio with a deaf and dumb sculptor, with whom he then went to an afternoon concert. He had laughed because the artist explained that he did not hear the music with his ears, but felt it, or rather felt the drum alone, in his belly.
In that period of his life, Frederick had been undergoing a crisis. But a little more and his preoccupation with Goethe's "Italian Journey," his intercourse with the artists, and the vast number of his impressions of sublime art would have turned him aside from science. But one day he chanced to meet Mrs. Von Thorn and her daughter Angèle. He became engaged, and there was no question now of a change of profession. Angèle was beautiful, and those days, when he read aloud to her chapters from Goethe, or inspired and inspiring passages from Winckelmann, or recited Hölderlin, or held forth to her on the masterworks in the Vatican, were full of never-to-be-repeated romantic asininity. They bought engagement rings of a jeweller on the Corso. Where was his ring? He had removed it from his finger, and, like all his other possessions, it had gone down forever in the cabin of the Roland.
Frederick again felt that sensation of hot waves rising from his breast to his eyes. This time the emotion was a soft one, a feeling of reconciliation, of mourning over lost illusions. The second epoch of his life, if a second epoch were really to develop from this beginning, was not like the first, full of innocence and based upon illusions. Frederick was sorry for himself. He was moved almost to tears. For it is an all-too strong faith, an all-too certain hope in happiness that finally bring disillusionment.
It was in one of the intervals of clapping and applause punctuating the end of each of Brambilla's songs, that Petronilla came in and whispered something to Willy Snyders, which caused Willy in turn to whisper to Frederick, who immediately jumped up and left the room. Willy went with him.
Despite Petronilla's protestations, a gentleman and a stately, rather gorgeously dressed lady had forced their way into Ingigerd's room. Frederick and Willy arrived just as the lady was trying to wake Ingigerd and raise her up in bed.
"For Heaven's sake, child," she kept saying, "wake up for a second."
Frederick and Willy recognised Webster and Forster's agent and immediately expelled him to the hall, talking to him in whispers, but none the less energetically. They told him a few forceful things, which he received with a shrug of his shoulders. When they asked the lady by what right she had forced her way in, she said she was the proprietor of one of the largest New York theatrical agencies and had negotiated the contract between Webster and Forster and Ingigerd Hahlström's father, who had received a thousand dollars in advance.
"Time is money, especially here in New York," she declared. "Even if Miss Hahlström cannot dance to-night, she must begin to think of to-morrow. I should be willing to accommodate her, but this is only one of a hundred cases that I have to look after. And if Miss Hahlström is to appear to-morrow, she must go with me this very minute to"—she mentioned the Gerson of New York—"so that they can work on her costume over night. The establishment is on Broadway, and a cab is waiting in front of the door."