“It only proves your disobedience. Vocation, indeed! Any man has a vocation for the stage: any man who has brains, and is not physically too weak to utter the thoughts of an author. Vocation! You might as well tell me you had a vocation for the highway—and if you had robbed a man, by placing a pistol to his head, and bidding him stand and deliver, that your success was your excuse!
“Is it not enough,” pursued Schoenlein, after a pause, “that there should be one actor in the family: one whose necessities have driven him on the stage, and who, once there, is forced to remain there?”
“But I, for my part, see nothing reprehensible in the life of an actor.”
“I do.”
Franz saw there was no appeal from such a decision, so he dressed himself in silence.
He was hurt, angry. He expected that his father would have been delighted with his performance, would have rejoiced in his success. To be treated like a schoolboy, to hear such tones and see such looks, irritated him.
“Come with me to my hotel,” said Schoenlein, as Franz completed his dressing.
They had not taken many steps before a stout middle-aged woman, enveloped in a fur cloak, said to Franz:
“Lieber Franz, the carriage is waiting.”
Schoenlein did not hear the whispered reply, but strode hastily onwards: his son followed.