"The origin of all music," thought Frederick, "is dance and song in one and the same person. The feet compel the rhythm that the throat voices; and if the dancer herself does not sing, she hears music different from the music to which she is dancing, and if she dances without an accompaniment, we who behold her hear her music nevertheless. The melodies I hear in this girl's dancing are comparable in their bucolic innocence to the things of the same sort that Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert wrote. They have exorcised the vulgar muse from this vulgar place, banishing her to a remote distance."
The dancer was a Spaniard. She made little leaps in the air and tossed her head archly, as if for her own joy, unconscious both of the audience and the toreador, who sometimes picked her up and held her aloft. Her dancing was innocent, entirely free from sensuality. At the conclusion of her performance, Frederick and his friends clapped madly, while the vast audience gave very scanty signs of applause.
"Caviar to the general," said Frederick.
When she disappeared in the wings, a lackey in red livery stepped on the stage and set a number of small seats at regular distances from one another. It was not until he had left and returned again with a pea-rifle and a violin that Frederick recognised the brave private, Bulke. The next moment Stoss appeared. A frantic outburst of delight, threatening never to end, greeted him. He wore a jacket and knee-breeches of black velvet, a lace jabot, lace cuffs, black silk stockings, and buckled pumps of patent leather. His yellowish hair was brushed straight up all around his large head. His pale face, with its broad cheek bones and broad flat nose, was turned to the audience with a professional smile. The applause refused to end, and the armless trunk made a moderately profound bow.
Frederick saw the same man helpless, drenched with water, crouching under the seats of the life-boat; and he recalled with what murderous determination the sailors, Bulke, Doctor Wilhelm, and he himself, as well as the women, Rosa, Mrs. Liebling, and Ingigerd, had prevented the boat from capsizing. What an unreal contrast between the past and the present! And why was Stoss receiving such homage?
The psychology of certain mass demonstrations has yet to be written. What could the applause have been intended to signify? "We are grateful to God that he rescued you. This you have accomplished, you poor armless man, that hundreds, though they had two arms, perished, while you are privileged to appear on the stage this evening as if nothing had occurred. We must enjoy ourselves; and it is better that you who entertain and amuse us with your thousands of tricks should have been saved than any Tom, Dick, or Harry. Besides we want to reimburse you for all the troubles you have been through. What is more, because of your skill and because of your rescue, you are a lion whose worth has increased twofold."
The turbulence continued. The man the audience so honoured was fairly drowned in a sea of applause. At last a man in evening dress stepped from the wings and made signs that he wanted to speak. Silence fell, and he announced that Arthur Stoss, the world's champion, would say a few words. The next instant Stoss's sharp, clear boyish voice rang through the theatre reaching even the hindmost seats.
Frederick caught expressions here and there, "My dear New Yorkers," "hospitable Americans," "the hospitable shores of America," "Columbus," and "1492." He heard Stoss say that on the bill-boards one read "1492," the year in which modern America was born. He distinguished phrases such as "navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse," "through darkness to light," and so on. Stoss's speech utterly lacked inspiration.
"Noah's ark," he said, "has not yet become superfluous. Two-thirds of the earth's surface is still covered with water. But if a vessel here and there is swallowed up in the flood, the ark of humanity cannot sink, since God has set his rainbow in the heavens. The ocean is the cradle of heroism, it is the unifying, not the dividing element."
The name of Captain von Kessel resounded in the hall. Frederick saw the dead hero tossing about in the great black waters under a starless heaven. Above the performer's shrill voice, he heard the captain's voice saying: