I did not go on the stage after this act. I was afraid lest I should meet Mitzi and say one word too many.
The last act began, and soon the famous sleep-walking scene arrived. Never before had the ruin of a poor, over-burdened heart been acted thus.
She came.
At once I noticed that she was not dressed as she had been the day before at the dress rehearsal, when she had worn a long night-gown. She came like a child, with bare feet and bare legs—there was just then the craze of dancers who appeared like that—tripping full of anguish ... not in a night-gown, but in a chemise ... looking tortured, deceived, broken, a child vanquished in a fight which was too much for her.
And with a voice more gentle, soft, and lovely than anything which I ever heard, she began. Sweet as the singing of a breeze her voice vibrated through the soundless, trembling audience.
"Yet here's a spot."
How she wept after the words: "Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?"
And later: "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!" How she whined these three oh's! The audience pitied her. And how helpless she looked, with her poor, naked legs, in her poor chemise....
Then ... then, when she had said the words: "To bed—to bed," there came a musical afterpiece in which I once more repeated all the motives of the opera, including the lullaby. Mitzi was slowly to turn round and to remain there with her taper—showing her back to the audience and advancing only one step from time to time.