“Yes,” I assented.
“And his little son!” Here she threw up her hands. “Ach! the poor man! There are people who speak against him, and every one knows he and the Herr Direktor are not the best friends, but sehn Sie wohl, Fräulein, the Herr Direktor is well off, settled, provided for; Herr Courvoisier has his way to make yet, and the world before him; and what sort of a story it may be with the child, I don’t know, but this I will say, let those dare to doubt it or question it who will, he is a good father—I know it. And the other young man with Herr Courvoisier—his friend, I suppose—he is a musiker too. I hear them practicing a good deal sometimes—things without any air or tune to them; for my part I wonder how they can go on with it. Give me a good song with a tune in it—‘Drunten im Unterland,’ or ‘In Berlin, sagt er,’ or something one knows. Na! I suppose the fiddling all lies in the way of business, and perhaps they can fall asleep over it sometimes, as I do now and then over my knitting, when I’m weary. The young man, Herr Courvoisier’s friend, looked ill when they first came; even now he is not to call a robust-looking person—but formerly he looked as if he would go out of the fugue altogether. Entschuldigen, Fräulein, if I use a few professional proverbs. My husband, the sainted man! was a piano-tuner by calling, and I have picked up some of his musical expressions and use them, more for his sake than any other reason—for I have heard too much music to believe in it so much as ignorant people do. Nun! I will send Fräulein her box up, and then I hope she will feel comfortable and at home, and send for whatever she wants.”
In a few moments my luggage had come upstairs, and when they who brought it had finally disappeared, I went to the window again and looked out. Opposite, on the same étage, were two windows, corresponding to my two, wide open, letting me see into an empty room, in which there seemed to be books and many sheets of white paper, a music-desk and a vase of flowers. I also saw a piano in the clare-obscure, and another door, half open, leading into the inner room. All the inhabitants of the rooms were out. No tone came across to me—no movement of life. But the influence of the absent ones was there. Strange concourse of circumstances which had placed me as the opposite neighbor, in the same profession too, of Eugen Courvoisier! Pure chance it certainly was, for von Francius had certainly had no motive in bringing me hither.
“Kismet!” I murmured once again, and wondered what the future would bring.
CHAPTER XV.
“He looks his angel in the face
Without a blush: nor heeds disgrace,
Whom naught disgraceful done
Disgraces. Who knows nothing base
Fears nothing known.”
It was noon. The probe to “Tannhauser” was over, and we, the members of the kapelle, turned out, and stood in a knot around the orchestra entrance to the Elberthal Theater.
It was a raw October noontide. The last traces of the by-gone summer were being swept away by equinoctial gales, which whirled the remaining yellowing leaves from the trees, and strewed with them the walks of the deserted Hofgarten; a stormy gray sky promised rain at the earliest opportunity; our Rhine went gliding by like a stream of ruffled lead.
“Proper theater weather,” observed one of my fellow-musicians; “but it doesn’t seem to suit you, Friedhelm. What makes you look so down?”