"Oh, nothing to speak of," he replied. "My queen was a little ungracious; but even that has a charm. A perfectly docile woman is as tiresome as a quiet horse: there is no pleasure in either unless there is some caprice to subdue."
Erika's grandmother bestowed a keen, observant glance, first upon the speaker, and then upon her grand-daughter, after which she remarked, dryly, "If we wish for any dinner we had better betake ourselves to 'The Sun.'"
CHAPTER XIV.
The sleepy afternoon quiet is broken by a sudden stir and excitement. It is time to go to the theatre, and the Lenzdorffs in a rattling, clumsy, four-seated hired carriage join the endless train of vehicles of all descriptions that wind through the narrow street of the little town and beyond it, until upon an eminence in the midst of a very green meadow they reach the ugly red structure looking something like a gasometer with various mysterious protuberances,--the temple of modern art.
The Lenzdorffs are among the last to arrive, but they are in time: unpunctuality is not tolerated at Bayreuth.
Summoned by a blast of trumpets, the public ascend a steep short flight of steps to a large, undecorated auditorium. The Countess Lenzdorff and her granddaughter have seats on the bench farthest back, just in front of the royal boxes.
At a given signal all the ladies present take off their hats. It suddenly grows dark,--so very dark that until the eye becomes accustomed to it nothing can be discovered in the gloom. Gradually row upon row of human heads are perceived stretching away in what seems endless perspective: such is the auditorium of the theatre at Bayreuth.
The most brilliant toilette and the meanest attire are alike indistinguishable; here is positively no food for idle curiosity, nothing to distract the attention from the stage.
Agitated as Erika already was, and consequently sensitively alive to impressions, the first sound of the trumpets thrilled her every nerve, and before the last note of the prelude had died away she had reached a condition of ecstasy closely allied to pain, and could with difficulty restrain her tears.
All the woe of sinning humanity wailed in those tones,--the mortal anguish of that humanity which in its longings for the imperishable, the supernatural, beats and bruises itself against the barriers that it cannot pass,--that humanity which, dragged down by the burden of its animal nature, grovels on the earth when it would fain soar to the starry heavens.