"Oh, how beautiful, how enchantingly beautiful it is here," cried Eva, with her heart full, and tears standing in her eyes, tears such as only youth can shed in overflowing moods, when the charm of nature presciently awakes gloomy feelings in the heart.
The Regierungsrath could not explain these tears to himself, because every rational cause for them was wanting, and indeed every irrational one; any kind of wish denied would speedily have solved the mystery for him. Therefore he made the cold wind responsible, and folded his daughter still more closely in her shawl. Her mother, on the contrary, who had equally little sympathy with such-like emotional outbreaks, but knew better how to divine their cause, cried, reprovingly--
"Learn to wean yourself from over-sensitiveness, dear child! How often already have I been obliged to tell you so! You must learn gradually to control your feelings. All this is very beautiful: moonshine and ocean's tide, groups of trees and wooded vallies, and the steep precipitous rocks; yet one must not admire it too much; it is after all an old tale, and one must not appear too new to the world. What would people say to it? At some period one must leave school behind, and enter into life."
Eva pressed herself deprecatingly against her mother, whose gigantic form towered above the slender girl; but her father, after having taken a pinch of snuff, assumed a complacent tone of voice, and began to expound his views as to the capabilities of profit possessed by the Samland sea-bathing places. Eva had ample leisure to survey the beautiful picture of the moonlight evening, to follow the lines of the surf-surrounded coasts to the uttermost foreland, and ever again to lower her gaze into the mystery of the Wolf's schlucht, above which the most luxuriant vegetation rose and fell like green breakers in the sough of the night wind.
Then voices suddenly arose from the paths which led upward through the wood to the Fuchs-spitze; they were not the melodies of strolling singers, but the music of artists. One female voice, by its beautiful full tone, made itself conspicuous amongst all the others, and that singer's execution appeared to be by no means inconsiderable. The Regierungsrath found this interruption to his discourse the more disagreeable, because he was about to make a few propositions by which sea-bathing places, such as this romantic Warnicken, could be raised out of their rude primitive condition into fashionable watering places.
In the meanwhile the party of male and female singers had reached the summit, their hats and coats garlanded with wreaths of leaves. They appeared to be in a most lively mood, and broke out into loud rejoicings when they had gained the point whence a view could be obtained; some clapped their hands, and at a signal, which an elderly gentleman gave with a walking-stick used as a conductor's bâton, all began to sing a most artistically correct Jodler. In the faces and in the whole demeanour of the party there lay that peculiarity by which actors and actresses are unmistakable even in their exterior; an air of mental freedom, the assurance and self-sufficiency of manner, and at the same time the appearance of struggling after an ideal, which even those know how to maintain who follow their art as a rather rude handicraft. In fact, they were singers from the provincial capital, who were wandering along the shore for a holiday excursion, but had set up their head-quarters in the favourite seaside watering place Cranz, which by its sociable doings atoned for what its desolate strand lacked in natural beauty.
It soon became apparent that the most prominent female person in the group, a tall figure with southern glowing eyes, with noble aristocratic features, and dark hair that shone amongst the green oak branches with the polish of ebony, was that accomplished singer, who, during the party's ascent, had borne away the prize of song. Leaning over the balustrade, she warbled a melody into the night air, with trills and cadences irreproachably executed, while the fuller notes were uttered with most soul-felt intensity of expression.
"Bravo, Signora Bollini!" cried the elderly gentleman, who had previously waved the bâton, "even the most unfavourable critic, the most venomous monster that lurks in any newspaper's crevice, would be obliged to write a laudatory criticism upon this performance. Besides you are in wonderfully good voice."
"You know, dear Conductor," replied the Signora, "that I possess an impressionable soul; here in free beautiful nature I regulate my powers quite differently from what I do when I stand behind you at the piano, looking down upon its venerable smooth surface, and the pages of music upon the lifeless paper, that I am to transpose into ringing coin. One must have illusions, best of conductors; but to sing to order, at the appointed time, as announced on the black board, for wages which themselves sometimes belong to illusions, takes away all inclination, and acts most depressingly upon one's mind. Art can only thrive in freedom!"
"It is well known to us all," said the Conductor, "that our beautiful prima donna belongs to those natures, which, in the language of art, may be designated as cappricciose, and which only with difficulty can accustom themselves to any regular walk in life, or indeed to any rules of business."