‘Imagine!’ she went on, ‘Amalia is suddenly taken ill with scharlach-fieber—scarlet fever you call it. Yes, it is so; and it is providential. Naturally she cannot act the part, nor even appear at the lebende Bilder, for which Gott sei dank! though I know it is very wrong of me to say so. And I hope she will have the fever mildly and make a speedy recovery; but ah, I am glad she comes not; and I do pray of you, dear Miss Ford, to take the part, and also that of Thusnelda. I shall bless you all my life if you only will.’
‘I will take the parts, Frau Goldmark, and will do my best to act them well,’ said Sara, composedly, anxious to put an end to the widow’s exaggerated prayers and protestations. Her consent was received with a perfect whirlwind of thanks and blessings and expressions of joy, which she cut short by saying:
‘But I beg you will not say anything comparing me with Fräulein Waldschmidt. It would be very wrong, and if I heard of such a thing I should instantly give it up.’
‘You may trust me indeed, mein liebes Fräulein! And now I go to the Herrn Professor, to tell him of my success. He will let you know all about the rest.’
With the most affectionate adieux she departed. Sara and Avice, left alone, both burst into a fit of laughter.
‘What an absurd little woman!’ exclaimed Avice.
‘Painfully so,’ responded Sara. ‘I own that I wonder to see her going about doing this kind of thing herself. If it were not that the dear old Professor evidently desires it so much’—she tossed Wilhelmi’s note to Avice—‘I should refuse.’
‘They are both very different subjects—the pictures, I mean,’ said Avice, musingly. ‘You will look splendid as Thusnelda, Sara.’
‘Shall I? It is a splendid picture, certainly.’
It was a picture representing that scene in Kleist’s Hermannsschlacht, in which Hermann, seated beside Thusnelda, listens to her, while she indignantly relates how the Roman envoy, Ventidius, had impertinently, and without her knowledge, clipped off a lock of her hair, upon hearing which Hermann, with a grim and granite humour, and a mirth bordering on the diabolical, describes to her how that lock will probably go to Rome, there to excite the cupidity of the Roman women, who, he informs her, admire hair like that—‘ gold’ und schön, und trocken so wie dein,’—and sometimes have it—not growing on their own heads, but shorn from those of other women, and that the golden locks of a Teuton princess would be an ornament which they, any of them, would especially glory in wearing. It was a noble picture, by a celebrated artist, and Sara, already even, felt some thrills of pleasure in the idea of taking a part in the representation of it. The other picture was a rather ambitious tableau de genre, Goldmark’s last, and was called Ja, oder Nein.