"No, your excellency, I do not deny it at all."
"Well, your Tyrolese are running around everywhere."
"Pardon me, your excellency, that cannot be true. You must have been misinformed."
"What! misinformed? How dare you say so to my face, sir? Your beardman, or bushman, or Sandwirth Hofer is at the Karnthnerthor Theatre, and is the observed of all observers. I saw him with my own eyes; and that was the reason why I left the theatre and sent for you."[Footnote: Count Stadion's own words.—See Hormayr's "Andreas Hofer," vol i., p. 209]
"Your excellency saw him with your own eyes! Then, of course, it must be true, and I would beg leave of your excellency to go immediately to the theatre and take him to his hotel."
"That was just what I wished to ask you to do, Baron von Hormayr.
Make haste and induce this bushman to leave Vienna immediately."
"He will leave the capital early in the morning. Your excellency will permit me now to withdraw."
Baron von Hormayr hastened down stairs, left the chancery of state, and crossed the Joseph's Place. On reaching the Karnthnerthor Theatre, he bought a ticket at the office and entered the pit.
"The Marriage of Figaro," by Mozart, was performed at the Karnthnerthor Theatre to-night, and this favorite opera of the Viennese had attracted so large an audience that not a seat was vacant, and the baron had to elbow his way with no little difficulty through the crowd filling the pit, in order to reach a point where he might be able to see every part of the house, and discover him for whose sake he had come.
At length he had succeeded in advancing so far that, leaning against one of the pillars supporting the upper tiers of boxes, he was able to survey the lower part of the house. But all faces were averted from it, all eyes were fixed on the stage. The opera had just reached the scene where Count Almaviva lifts the carpet from the chair and finds Cherubino under it. A loud outburst of laughter resounded from the pit to the upper gallery. But in the midst of the din, a loud and angry voice exclaimed: "Ah, you young good-for- nothing, if I had you here I would show you how to behave!" And a threatening fist and vigorous arm was raised in the midst of the orchestra-stalls.