'This lad--no angel is from sin more free,
Craving thy favor, I commend to thee.'"
With these words he rose, smiling, leaving me to decide whether the quotation referred to my character of Fridolin, or to Joachimchen, who expressed great delight on hearing that Uncle Johannes would take him to walk immediately.
After her husband had left the room, Luise came to me and said in a low tone: "I can not approve your decision, Johannes. But I am so weary that I have not the strength to combat it."
I shall avoid giving a minute description of the time that now followed. No one can feel disposed to pursue the destinies of such a strolling company, the alternations of good and evil fortune, or the coming and going of its members, in greater detail--nay, even for theatrical history the list of its plays would have no value, as it was not at all regulated by the spirit of the time, nor even by the fashion, but patched together from new stock and shabby rubbish, as chance and the difficulties of stage-setting permitted.
During the first few months the enterprise remained in about the same stage of prosperity as I had found it. Then, by the withdrawal of the Selmars and their charming daughter, it fell several degrees, soon rose again by advantageous engagements, and then declined in consequence of our worthy stage-manager's being made helpless for months by a fall from a high scaffold. These fluctuations corresponded with the ebb and flow in the cash-box, and, but for the wise economy of the manager's wife, there would often have been a failure in the payment of salaries. But the name of Spielberg always possessed sufficient attraction to fill the house tolerably well, and make amends for the recreant members. The most faithful were those from whom I should have least expected loyalty--Laban, who, with all his apparent frivolity and jesting, felt a sincere and warm reverence for Frau Luise, and the young couple, whose stay, it is true, was due to less honorable traits of character.
How they were to regard me, and in what manner my position as dramatic "maid of all-work" was to be interpreted, at first caused them much perplexity. They soon learned that I was not working for money. My sole pecuniary profit consisted in my paying no board, as Frau Luise would not permit any other arrangement, and occasionally, when lodgings for all could be hired, I was not allowed to pay for my sleeping-room. In return, I made myself as useful as I could, coached green beginners in their parts, sometimes stood at the side-scenes or crouched in a subterranean box with the prompter's book in my hand, copied parts, arranged plays so that ten characters could be compressed into six, and only drew the line of my services at the one point of obstinately refusing to undertake to act any part, no matter how trivial.
At first they attributed this to arrogance, of which, spite of his unassuming helpfulness, they credited the "doctor" with a large share. But, after I had once told them that I cherished too lofty an idea of art to sin against it by bungling work, I rose no little in their esteem, and even Spielberg, who never ceased saying that I was a genius in disguise, let me alone.
The suspicion that I was following the company as a secretly favored admirer of the manager's unpopular wife had of course at first suggested itself, even to the better natures among them. But the calm irony with which the great artist crushed all allusions to such a relation did not fail to produce its effect, as well as the perfectly unembarrassed demeanor of the suspected woman herself, and my own Fridolin countenance, which expressed anything rather than the secret triumph of a favored lover.
And, indeed, I was not on a bed of roses.