"I say, Fritz," said he; "have you, who are an enterprising genius, actually never discovered where this girl lives?"
"How can I with certainty! No one knows any thing about where she lives—save that she does not live at home." There was a flourish of music.
"Ece! the curtain rises again!" said M'Alpine, waving his bonnet; "and again all eyes turn towards her, like flowers towards the sun."
My goddess was again upon the stage, but in a very different dress. The scene disclosed was a far stretching valley between beautiful mountains; over one of these rose the pale light of the moon; on the other died away the last glow of the west; the calm current of a starlit river wound between the shaded hills, and the lofty arches of a ruined bridge spanned it; their downward shadows were reflected deep in the stream below. The white columns of a ruined temple, such as might have stood in Lybian deserts, arose on one side; on the other stood the red square keep of a guarded fortress, and dark Italian pine-woods threw their gloom around them. The white-orbed moon soared slowly into the blue sky, which became studded by innumerable stars; it edged the ruins, the rocks, the leaves, and the riplets of the stream below with a silvery wavering light; and, lo! there seemed to be nothing but objects of nature standing palpably before us.
Clad in long and graceful drapery, which was white as snow, girdled by a glittering zone or bandelet below her rounded bosom, with her arms bare to those dazzling shoulders, on which her long hair rolled unbound, with a lyre in her hand, and a bright star sparkling on her radiant brow, Prudentia, as the Genius of Poetry, arose from the ruin of a fallen column, around which the leaves of the ivy, the vine, and acanthus were clustering, and came forward greeted by a storm of applause. I know not whether it was the style of her dress, or the subdued light around her; but she seemed paler, and if possible more beautiful, than before.
The play was a tragedy, which I now remember not, neither have I any recollection of the other characters; for all my ideas were absorbed by the fair Spanish jigurante, who now made her appearance as a singer, and after a short prelude on her lyre, the notes of which seemed to come from the orchestra, she began to warble, with all the sweetness of a little bird, a Spanish song, and it seemed to be somewhat like the serenade I had overheard her practising; and, however absurd it might seem for a maid of Magna Græcia to sing in the language of Old Castile, it served the honest Holsteiners quite as well as the purest Greek that was spoken in the days of Pythagoras.
If I was entranced while this siren sung, I was equally delighted by her acting. My heart beat like lightning; but I had one source of disappointment—she never once turned her dark eyes towards me, nor seemed to observe me, although the balcony occupied by M'Alpine, the two other cavaliers, and myself, was made sufficiently conspicuous by the richness of our dresses. I detected, however, one bright glance of recognition thrown among the closely packed masses of the pit; I followed the smiling glance, and discovered the round bullet-head and grey glistening eyes of our Hausmeister.
Remembering the stuff he had so recently told me, about trolds and fairies and women who were hollow behind, I was making mental resolutions to punch a bole or two in his doublet, when the sudden descent of the curtain, and rapid extinction of half the lights, broke the spell of the place; but the voice of Prudentia still seemed to linger in my ear, as, in closing the epilogue, she sang the last verses of Lopez de Vega.
"Will she appear again to night, Herr Baron?" I asked the captain of the pistoliers.
"No, thank Heaven!" said he, yawning; "the drama is over."