springing down again he was greeted with general applause, which he received with a gloomy brow and compressed lips. His hasty act had evidently given him no inward relief. Nor could even Jansen's kind greeting succeed immediately in banishing his sinister mood. It was his innermost nature that he had consigned to this fiery death.
Felix, upon whom this curious incident had made a deep impression, was just on the point of going up to the youth, whom he saw standing apart from the others and enveloping himself in a dense cloud of tobacco smoke, when a clock in one of the church steeples near by announced, with its twelve slow strokes, that the hour of midnight had arrived.
On the instant all conversation was hushed, the chairs were drawn up in line; and it then occurred to Felix, for the first time, that Elfinger, whose "turn" it was this evening, had left the hall some little time before, in company with Rosenbusch.
The folding-doors that led into the central hall flew open, and disclosed on the threshold, illuminated by lamps at the sides, and standing on a framework draped in red, a puppet-theatre that occupied almost the entire width of the space. The table was quickly pushed to one side, and the chairs for the spectators were arranged in rows. After everybody had taken his place, a short prelude was played upon a flute behind the scenes; and then the curtain in front of the little stage rose, and a puppet in a dress-coat and black knee-breeches, carrying his hat in his hand--with the air of a director who has an official communication to make, or of a dramatic poet who has held himself in readiness behind the wings, to respond in case he should possibly be called before the footlights--delivered a rhymed prologue. In this he greeted the associates, and, after lamenting in half-satirical, half-serious stanzas, the decline of art and of the love of the beautiful, introduced his troop of players, of whom he especially boasted that no modern strifes or heartburnings ever invaded their temple, or kept them from a pure and lofty devotion to the Muses. His speech concluded, the little man made a dignified obeisance, and the curtain fell, to be again drawn up after a few moments, upon the little drama that had been prepared for the amusement of the company.
It bore the title of "The Wicked Brothers," and was in reality but the introduction to a longer play, designed to be produced upon some future evening. In rhyming verses it set forth the history of a musician, an artist, and a poet--three brothers who had been left at the foundling-asylum of a little village, and had grown up to become the curse of the region with their pranks; a very demon of evil-doing appearing to possess them, and their parentage remaining an impenetrable mystery to the quiet village folk. To them, after some of the worst of their misdeeds, and just as the villagers were about to wreak their vengeance on them, appeared no less a personage than the devil himself, revealing to them that he was their father, and that he had called them into being that they might work the ruin of the human race. This said, he summoned them away with him to undertake their mission in a larger field than this of their apprenticeship. And here the action left them; the fantastic little piece closing at last with a short epilogue by the same puppet who had introduced the play, his final verses promising the Paradise associates that on some other night they should enjoy a view of the results of this deep plot against their kind, but hinting, nevertheless, that they should see how, in the end, the true and beautiful should triumph, and the fell scheming of the brothers and their father should be brought to naught.
CHAPTER IV.
The play came to an end amid great applause. The quaintness of the composition, the easy flow of the words, and that mixture of gaiety and melancholy which is always effective, excited such enthusiasm among the spectators that the clapping would have no end, and the little puppet who recited the epilogue was obliged to come forward again and again to return thanks in the name of the poet.
Felix, especially, found much to admire in the little comedy, that had apparently lost the charm of novelty for the others; especially the extraordinary life-likeness of the little figures, scarcely two spans high, which were carved, painted, and dressed in the most careful manner, each in accordance with his character; the astonishing dexterity with which they moved upon the stage, and, finally, and above all else, the masterly art of the delivery.
The voices changed so rapidly and distinctly, the keynote to each rôle was so happily struck, and in the long speeches of the devil the speaker developed so brilliant a power that there was probably not one person among the audience who could repress a feeling of creeping horror, such as one has when ghost stories are told in the dark.
When the rows had broken up again, and everybody was standing about talking and laughing noisily, Felix took occasion to express to Schnetz his amazement that a person of such great rhetorical talent should have turned his back forever upon his art, and have settled down at a clerk's desk.
"He will have all or nothing!" remarked the lieutenant. "Since he lost one of his eyes, and deluded himself into the belief that with a glass eye he would not be fit for the stage, he is far too proud to step down from the high horse of the tragedian to the donkey of the public reader. Every one knows whether he is acting to his own disadvantage when he plays the malcontent. It is true, though, some one really ought to prevail upon him to become the manager of a puppet-theatre. And then, besides, it would offer a good employment for Rosenbusch, who makes his puppets for him, and lends him a helping hand at the exhibition. Although, to be sure, anything of that sort only affords pleasure to a person of his stamp so long as it is an art which earns him no bread. He has been puttering away over this farce for three weeks at least, and letting everything else slide in consequence of it. If it were exhibited for an entrance fee, he would soon be tired of it."
Elfinger now entered again, and was obliged to submit to the applause showered upon him in his proper person, and to acknowledge the toasts drunk in his honor. He modestly refused, however, to accept the applause, since the thanks of the audience belonged more properly to the author, who was not himself, but a poet known to them all, who cherished a wish to be admitted to Paradise. It was merely with this end in view that he had written the text for the puppets, in the hope of introducing himself in this way to the society, and of winning their good opinion.
His admission was immediately agreed upon by acclamation, without the usual formalities. Kohle begged the loan of the manuscript, as he wished to illustrate it in a series of sketches. Rossel began, after his usual fashion, to make criticisms upon different parts, censuring especially the imitation of Immermann's "Merlin." Elfinger defended the poem, and the dispute had begun to run in danger of becoming heated, when the door was thrown open and Rosenbusch rushed in in a state of great excitement.
"Treachery!" he cried; "black, villainous treachery! Hell sends forth its spies to ferret out the secrets of Paradise! The veil of night is no longer sacred; profane curiosity is plucking at the curtain of our mysteries--and, by-the-way, give me something to drink!"
All pressed around the breathless speaker, who had thrown himself into a chair, refusing, however, in spite of the confusion of questions and suggestions that went on about him, to give any explanation whatever until he had moistened his thirsty throat. Not until he had done this to the most liberal extent did he begin to relate his adventure.
After his assistance behind the scenes was no longer needed, he had swung himself out of one of the windows of the central hall into the cool garden, in order to refresh himself a little in the night air. So he strolled comfortably up and down under the trees, studying the clouds and occasionally playing a few snatches on his flute, until he at last experienced a most remarkable thirst. As he was slowly walking around the house, with the intention of rejoining the company by way of the back-door, he suddenly beheld two suspicious-looking figures, women, in long dark cloaks and with hoods or veils over their heads, who stood at one of the windows intently peering in through a crack in the shutters. He tried to surprise them, and catch them in flagrante delicto. But, stealthily as he crept
