The Medicinalrath was to me an unapproachable entity. I dared not ask him. Etiquette demanded that I should confine myself to replying if he should address me. His lady might be looked upon as more condescending, but to-day I should have to forego any polite advances. Like the vestal High Priestess in Spontini’s opera, she stood in the centre of a group of maidens festively arrayed. Man, at any other time a much-sought-for article, had evidently fallen in price. The young gentlemen, even the boldest lions of society, stood close together, and did not venture above a whisper.
What had occurred? What was about to occur?
My vague forebodings became certainty as I heard a pale and criminally lean gentleman, one notorious for his festive odes, say to his neighbour: “He is coming! You will see the godlike youth face to face.” The person addressed like the contrite Brahmin stared at the tip of his nose, and preserved a worshipful silence. “I breakfasted with him yesterday. A most delightful companion! The very picture of unpretentious simplicity,” continued the other. Ah, could he but breakfast with him every day, life had looked brighter to him!
Among the bards near by a wild state of excitement made itself felt. Their leader distributed printed leaflets among them, and the poet stepped nearer to designate a certain passage in the third stanza which required a decided crescendo. Just then the Frau Medicinalräthin came rustling into the circle.
“Would it not be better,” she said, smiling benignly, but struggling with a nervous tremor, “if the chorus were to retire into the adjoining room, so as to have the music come from a greater distance?”
“Frau Medicinalräthin is right,” exclaimed the poet encouragingly, urging the youths of Berlin into the next room. “The chant should impress him as coming from another, purer world. Then in the third and last stanzas the angels descend and greet the genius here below as a brother. Carry out my suggestions, gentlemen, and go into the other room.”
The chorus would greatly have preferred to be present from beginning to end, after the fashion of its antique prototypes in Sophocles and Euripides, but there was nothing for it but to yield. It took a covered position, attentively re-read the melodious lyric made to fit a well-known tune, and cleared its throat.
The clock on the mantel struck nine; the Medicinalrath still stood sentinel at the right of the mirror, conversing with the aristocratic element. In the background preparations for a sacrificial offering of tea seemed to be going on, but no one ventured to begin the solemn ceremony. My conjecture was that the hostess feared thereby to offend the august spirit of the expected genius.
It struck a quarter, it struck half-past—still no Liszt!—
The Medicinalrath and his æsthetic wife moved nearer to the windows, and convulsively started every time a carriage passed near enough to give one reason to suspect it of an intention of stopping. The assembled guests had said everything they had to say, and the need of an impetus, physical or psychical, was making itself sadly felt.