"Yet how short is the memory of our contemporaries: what is all this fleeting, intoxicating splendour for which we strive with all the fibres of our soul? How soon we are transformed into a legend that each year becomes more obscure, and then the vast storm of oblivion sweeps over us all! Oh, I am weary, often infinitely weary, and would fain fly to a quiet spot where never more the incessant chase after success would shatter my nerves."
Giulia rested her head upon her hand, and closed her eyes; then she continued, opening them again wearily.
"Yes, if the sweet rapture still hold us captive; if we still feel all the magic of renown in its perfect entirety, then we may defy the infinite trouble which the chase after laurels brings with it, for the time has passed in which they fall spontaneously like divine favours into the lap of the happy being, but when we have become indifferent to all these triumphs, when we would fain cast aside all this rustling gilt tinsel of fame, and necessity still compels us to labour, for immortality in which we no longer believe, oh, then we could envy the daily labourer the calm happiness of his work, for he only needs his hands--his thoughts and emotions are free, while we must bring spirit and nerve to our daily task, yield up our heart's blood without faith or love."
"In such a frame of mind you probably declined to-day's performance!"
"Perhaps--but you know--I have seen him. How uncertain are my feelings! I did not wish to see him again, therefore we sought his home when he was absent. With dread I look forward to the moment in which he will speak to me, call me by my name--the step out of that enchanted fairy tale into sober reality, appears inconceivable to me. I feel the burning colour of shame upon my cheeks at the very thought. At one time I appear to myself like a Somnambula who must precipitate herself into an abyss when he calls me, awakes me out of my dreams, then at another like a Melusina, who is surprised by her knight while she, with a fish's tail, splashes about in the crystal stream with other water-witches, that horrible fish's tail, the paper train of unhappy theatrical renown."
"But many a principe has married such a Melusina despite her fish's tail," said Beate with a smile of ready comfort.
"He feels differently, I know it; I wish now not to meet him, not to desecrate a beautiful moonlight memory with the sober light of day, and yet what is it that ever drives me hither to this desolate land? A dark, incomprehensible longing, that I dare not confess to myself; I feel as if I belonged to him when I stand upon the soil of his home, and when I saw him again the day before yesterday, he recognised me--I saw it, felt it; what is all fame, all exultation of the crowd to me? I yearn for one word from him, he will come, he must come, and because I expect him, I have not sung to-day."
"If the stern manager knew that!"
"I tremble at the prospect of meeting him, I start up each time the bell is touched; I listen with feverish expectation; I am boundlessly disappointed at every other face, and yet I could hardly endure to see him."
The bell was rung; in anxious anticipation Giulia smoothed the dark curls from her brow. Beate, shrugging her shoulders, announced Herr Spiegeler, the indefatigable, irrepressible operatic reporter, who in addition provided the radicalism for many German theatrical newspapers.