XII
July 10.
Good news at last about Fräulein Hartmann! The crisis is past and she is much better. We all feel so relieved, especially the Poet's Wife, who is beginning to show the strain of the past weeks. Frau von Waldfel writes that her affairs are in a far worse condition than she anticipated. In fact she appears to be greatly disturbed, which accounts for her having written but twice since she went away. Lieutenant Blum called yesterday. He has been here but once since Frau von Waldfel's departure. Doesn't that strike you as rather extraordinary? I was in the room when he came, and I could but notice how closely he questioned the Poet's Wife about Frau von Waldfel's last letter. Indeed he seemed much more interested in her business troubles than in the condition of his fiancée. Is it possible that it is only her money that he is after? To tell the truth the thought has occurred to me before, but I never deemed it worthy of consideration till now.
Every day the Fräulein receives beautiful blue flowers such as one finds in the Isar-Thal if one looks carefully enough. The servants think they are the gift of her betrothed, so do not gossip over his nonappearance, but the Poet's Wife and I know better. We have not seen Heinrich daily pacing to and fro in the park opposite without learning many things. Do you know, when I see him looking up with yearning eyes at Fräulein's window, I always think of the poet in Bernard Shaw's "Candida." The expression of Heinrich's face says as plainly as words, "We hold our tongues. Does that stop the cry of the heart?—for it does cry: doesn't it? It must, if you have a heart."
Yesterday and to-day examinations were held at the Conservatory. At eight o'clock all the professors appeared in the dignity of frock coats and black ties. They shut themselves up in a large room on the top floor, and one by one the pupils were called in to be examined before them. The only examination which was really trying was that in the history of music. Had it been a written one I should have approached it with only the usual nervousness, but an oral test is quite a different thing when one is a foreigner. All the pupils filed in together and sat in a single row on the platform. Before us was the formidable mass of professors with folded arms. Just in front of them was Stavenhagen behind a table and two other men who wrote down what we said. Before the director was a box full of paper slips on which were written the questions. When a pupil's name was called, he went to the box, drew three questions, and declaimed his answers to the joint audience of pupils and teachers. As I have told you, whenever I am nervous my German becomes affected in a peculiar fashion. I find myself forgetting words with remarkable rapidity and I insist on employing the English order of expression, which, to a Münchener, is nothing less than a mild form of madness. However, I managed to get through by not allowing the amused faces of the onlookers to trouble me, and although I discovered afterwards that I had called "The Damnation of Faust" an oratorio and had mixed my genders in the most ludicrous fashion, I was successfully "passed."
Now only the concert remains before the school closes for the summer. Then we are to take our final trip before sailing for home. Our itinerary has been specially planned to include places of musical interest and we are to go to Mozart's birthplace, Salzburg; Leipsic, crowded with memories of Bach and Wagner; Vienna where Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms lie buried; Berlin, Dresden, and Bremen. We may run down to Budapest, since we are so near, and thus have an opportunity to hear a bona fide Hungarian orchestra. Isn't that fine, and doesn't it make you long to be with us?
Now no more for the present, my dear, as I want my last lesson for Thuille to be a good one, and my orchestration work is unfinished.