Confessions of an Opera Singer Part 5

They retain the smells of the period also, many of them; for in a theatre like that of Metz I don't believe the men's clothes were ever cleaned. Things which have been worn several times a week for seven months a year during the past hundred years, acc.u.mulate a richness and variety of odours which must be sniffed to be appreciated--a very ancient and fish-like smell indeed. I often wished at Metz that I had no use of my nose, and I have wished it many times since. As _Amneris_, to force your way for the entrance in the triumph scene, through an Egyptian populace composed of German Infantrymen, is a squeamish business at best; but when they are attired in clothes that haven't been washed for years, it is a feat before which any one may quail, especially if he belongs to the number of unfortunates, unluckily far from rare among singers, whose stomach nerves are affected in any case when they have a big part before them.

Was.h.i.+ng was not any too popular in Metz even among the princ.i.p.als. I have dressed with leading women whose arms showed streaks of white where the water had run down as they washed their hands, stopping conscientiously at the wrists. Their make-up would be removed with the same dirty rag night after night during the whole season; and their personal garments under more or less smart outer raiment, had often done overlong service. I must hasten to say, however, that this state of affairs was the exception rather than the rule, and that in better theatres, the women princ.i.p.als were always scrupulously cleanly.

Over ornamentation or fineness in undergarments is usually looked upon as rather questionable, among the solid middle cla.s.ses in Germany. My mother had made me a dainty supply of be-ribboned linen, and I was told after I had been in Metz for some time, that at first, the Alsatian woman who dressed me reported me to be "_beaucoup trop soignee de ne pas avoir un amant_." However, she changed her mind later on, and put it down to American extravagance--always a safe play. Some of the men were much more careless than the women. Our operetta tenor played the whole season in the same s.h.i.+rt, powdering the bosom freshly each evening with a yellowish powder which he used for his face.

At Carnival time, some of the Schauspieler remained for three days in the clothes in which they had played on Sat.u.r.day night, never going to bed, or even removing their make-up till the fun came to an end early Wednesday morning.

Many of the older members dyed their hair, as it had begun to turn grey.

Of course they did not have it done by competent people, or nearly often enough, and the shades of rusty brown, green, or purple it a.s.sumed were quite startling. Our first Kapellmeister used to dye his hair a rich black. He was a good-looking man and very vain. He was also portly and easily became over-heated. Of course when this happened, the perspiration running down his neck was dyed black too, and he would be intensely worried for fear we should see it. We knew his sensitiveness, and took delight in sitting directly behind him at the piano, though he would urge, beg, and finally command us to sit beside him. He was kindhearted in his way, and I remember one instance of this. The stage manager, in a vile humour, had come storming into the midst of a room rehearsal one day, with some trivial complaint against me, and had succeeded in making me cry, not a difficult matter at that time as I was always in a state of nerve strain owing to continuous over-fatigue. The Kapellmeister did his best to comfort me, telling me not to mind, praising my work, and finally pressing upon me his huge, brand new silk handkerchief--a real sacrifice, as he had probably intended to use it for days! His fingertips used to split in the cold weather from much piano pounding and I won his heart by prescribing collodion for them. He continually praised my sight reading and quickness in learning and it was he who gave me the nick-name of "Notenfresserin."

CHAPTER XII

MISPLACED MOISTURE AND THE STORY OF A COURT-LADY

The Bohemian, Hungarian and Croatian singers nearly always add to one's joy in work by eating garlic. The "high dramatic" soprano in my next engagement was from Croatia. The first time I went to Prague to sing, on alighting from the train I sniffed a strangely familiar odour. The impression of familiarity grew stronger and stronger as I drove to the hotel--but I couldn't place it. At last it came to me--the whole town smelled like our soprano! I have often wished, while on the stage, for temporary atrophy of the senses. In addition to the fustiness of much worn clothes and infrequent bathing, you really have all kinds of horrors to endure.

Some terrible creatures with a pa.s.sion for distinct enunciation and with unfortunate dental formation, spray you copiously when uttering words like _Mutter_ or _Freude_. This always seems to happen in some impa.s.sioned scene when you simply can't get away from them, and have absolutely no defence. Others have painfully hot and wet, or painfully cold and wet hands with which they persistently paw you. I remember one lyric tenor who was my bugbear because he had hands like a fresh, cold fish. The soprano and I had a scene with him in one opera, in which she had to say, "_Die Hand, so weich, so warm_" (the hand, so soft, so warm), speaking of his clammy member. I dared her one night, to say instead, "_Die Hand, so feucht, so kalt_" (The hand, so moist, so cold), and when it came to the point, sure enough she did so, her voice so shaky with suppressed laughter, that it came out in a tremulous pianissimo. We both had to turn away from the front in silent convulsions, but not a soul in the house was the wiser.

This is a horrible subject and I might enlarge upon it endlessly, recalling for example, the pleasures of being folded in the embrace of a large, warm, damp tenor smelling at best of onions; or still worse the large drops which rain upon you during the most touching love scene from his manly brow, while you, though shuddering with disgust, daren't try to dodge them, or even change the wistfully adoring expression of your countenance. It may be honest sweat, but it is a demned moist unpleasant kind of honesty in my opinion. Goritz told me that he once, as _Kurwenal_, in the last act of "Tristan," dripped on a prostrate _Tristan's_ eye so long that the poor tenor was blind for days after.

This is German efficiency!

Some of the colleagues at Metz were a great contrast to others in their scrupulous care of their personal appearance. The lyric baritone, a youngster from the Rhineland making his debut in opera, attracted me at the very first rehearsal by his groomed look and beautifully manicured finger-nails. He came from quite ordinary people, and had been brought up to be a "Tapizierer," curtain hanger, upholsterer, etc. He had never met any Americans before and we grew to like him very much, and used to let him go for walks with us, and come to us for tea. He was always wanting to _tapizieren_ for us and criticizing the hang of the curtains, etc., in our rooms. We taught him to play Canfield, more to keep him from talking than for any other reason, for my sister and I used to play patience for hours, so that we should not be tempted to talk when I was resting my voice in the brief intervals between rehearsals and performances. We used to play with pretty little German patience cards in a pocket size, and he was simply infatuated with the game. He showed all his friends how to play, and dozens of packs of these cards were imported from Frankfort where they are made.

The craze spread rapidly; all the officers began to play in their Casinos, and the princ.i.p.als in the theatre were always being roared at for keeping the stage waiting during rehearsals, when they missed their cues by being absorbed in the game of Canfield. It became the great resource of those who had small parts in the first act of an opera, and then had to wait in costume and make-up until the very end like the _Meister_ in "Meistersinger," or _Mary_ in "Fliegender Hollander" who has a seemingly interminable wait after her one scene at the beginning of the second act, until at the very last of the third she has to rush in for the single phrase "_Senta, Senta, wa.s.s willst du tun?_"

In return for our tea, the little baritone would tell us amusing tales of his experiences in a cavalry regiment while doing his military service. His high spirits and his beautiful voice made him popular with officers and men, but he was quite unamenable to discipline, and had spent something like ninety days in prison during his first year, for such offences as refusing to stop singing on the march, or for cheeking an officer. He used to call us his G.o.ddesses, and speak to us as "Frauleinchen." Our rooms, through him, were the starting place of new culinary ideas in Metz. We taught him to make and like such American delicacies as salted almonds, chocolate fudge, and hot chocolate sauce for ice cream, an unheard of combination. We tried to make him like fruit salad with mayonnaise; but the mixture of sweet with oil and vinegar was too much for his burgher palate, and he used to quote to us the Bavarian proverb, "_Was der Bauer net kennt frisst er net._" (What the peasant doesn't know he doesn't eat.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: AMNERIS AS I USED TO DRESS IT]

The country round Metz is rarely beautiful, in its half-French, half-German character. It retains its typical French poplars, planted in long lines, which turn pure gold in autumn. A placid river, the Moselle, runs between hills covered with orchards and vineyards, with picturesque villages of grey stone and red tiling, piled steeply up their sides. The meadows in the fall are filled with lavender crocuses--the kind that Meredith's Diana got up at four A.M. to gather. Every village has of course its "Gasthaus," some still absolutely French in the arrangement of their marble topped tables, mirrors, and red upholstered benches running round three sides of the room. We have drunk coffee in autumn, and _Maibowle_ in spring in every one of them, I think. I dare say many of them are still using the same card board circles under their customers' beer-gla.s.ses which we marked with our initials. Can you flip them from the edge of the table into your own hand?

The town of Metz itself is interesting enough, and we explored it thoroughly. It is very ancient ground indeed, and there are Roman walls still to be seen, with characteristically beautiful brick-work; old chapels, a Gothic cathedral, and the remains of the mediaeval wall and moat which once surrounded the town, with great arched fortified gates at its east and west entrances.

On returning once from a long walk with the little baritone we entered by the eastern gate, and as he was doing a small part that evening, and it was getting unpleasantly near the hour of the performance, we took a short cut through an unfamiliar part of the town. We soon found ourselves in a narrow street of respectable enough looking houses, but as we pa.s.sed, out of nearly every window on both sides, a female head was thrust, all in varying degrees of frowsiness, and remarks and comments in half unintelligible dialect were yelled at us with shrieks of hideous laughter. Our little escort grew purple with confusion, walking faster and faster, and when we reached an open square he broke into the most fervent apologies for unwittingly leading us into such a street. It was a curious and unpleasant little experience and reminded me of certain quarters in oriental cities of which I had heard tales. We named it "the street of queer women" and avoided the eastern gateway in our walks thereafter.

Later in the season another colleague sometimes joined our tea parties and walking expeditions. This was an immensely talented youth, attached to the theatre in an anomalous position of third Kapellmeister, in reality a volunteer without pay, hoping to pick up an occasional chance to gain experience in conducting an orchestra. He was a Frenchman of excellent family who had studied in one of the great conservatories and thought he spoke the German language. Such German I have never heard before or since. His French inability to aspirate an "h," a p.r.o.nounced stutter, and the most nonchalant disregard of gender, formed a combination which was enough to upset the gravity of a German customs house official himself! It was his business among other things, to "_einstudieren_" the new members of the chorus in any opera which they did not know, but of course his version of their language rendered any authority he might have had over them quite ineffectual, and his position was anything but enviable. At the same time he was a really magnificent pianist, a composer of promise, and a thorough musician; but if ever a creature was out of his element he was that creature as Kapellmeister in Metz. And yet what is a young fellow in his position to do? The desire to conduct, the longing to interpret the great masters through the medium of an orchestra, possessed him to the point of obsession; but where to find an orchestra to conduct was a problem. The barrier "no experience" was erected across his path as it had been across mine, though he must serve an apprentices.h.i.+p somewhere.

The musical life of Germany attracted him for the same reasons as it had attracted me, and so he endured a veritable martyrdom in the pursuance of his dream. He was a pupil of Nikisch and told us Nikisch had told him he made half his career with his cuffs. Whoever has watched him shoot them gently out as he begins to conduct will know what he meant.

Our rooms were a sort of haven for this boy, I think, where he could talk of the things that absorbed him in a language that was his servant instead of his master. In return he would play so gorgeously for us, that our little upright piano rocked under the strain. He could suggest a whole orchestra in his playing. Strauss' "Salome" was brand new then and he revelled in it, and adopted the motif of _Jochanaan_ as a signal which he and the baritone would whistle under our windows. Sometimes he would get lost at the piano and play for hours, till our supper time was past, and our good friend Emma Seebold, the "_Hoch Dramatische_," would rush in and urge us to hurry and get ready for some mythical dinner to which we were invited. This was always successful, owing to Seebold's talent.

We grew very fond of her and often spent our evenings together. She had a lovely voice and would put her head back on her chair sometimes in the evening and sing us languorous Austrian peasant songs with her fascinating Viennese accent. Her pa.s.sion was remnants, and she would send home boxes of sc.r.a.ps of pa.s.s.e.m.e.nterie and odds and ends of silk tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs which she would sew all over her costumes. The richness she saw in it was pathetic. Bargain gloves were also irresistible, and she had green ones and purple ones, spotted and mildewed ones, and loved them all because they were cheap.

The pianist and the baritone often met at our rooms and got on surprisingly well considering their utter lack of points of contact and the natural contempt that they felt for each other. The Frenchman was certainly mildly crazy. He believed that his astral body, or psychic envelope, or something was visible as an aura of light around his hand, and he would hold it up and look at it and say, "_Ah, oui, elle est la--je vais bien aujourd'hui_," or shake his head and say, "_Non, pas la aujourd'hui--je ne suis rien!_" He was good looking, bearing a strong resemblance to the portraits of Oscar Wilde. He dressed well, and his was.h.i.+ng bills--amounting as we were told, with bated breath, to ten and fifteen marks a week--were the scandal of the theatre! Since those days he has gone back to his piano, though he persevered in the theatre long enough to obtain a second Kapellmeister position in a good opera house.

I have met him casually all over Europe, and he is one of the very few of the old _Kollegen_ from Metz whom I have ever seen again.

These three were the only ones that season whom we cared about, though we were friendly enough with all of them after Christmas, and as I have said, we dined at the hotel with a group of them every day. They were all types in their way. First the director--a survival of the old school, with rather long dyed hair and enormous dyed moustache, always in _Gehrock_ (frock coat) with a large tie in which reposed a royal monogram in pearls and diamonds presented to him by the Hereditary Grand Duke of Glumphenbergen-Schlimmerheim or something, during his career as _Heldenbariton_. In the street he wore a soft black felt hat which would have done for the _Wanderer_ in "Siegfried," and of course a fur-lined coat whenever the weather gave the least excuse for one. Champagne was his universal panacea--his very present help in trouble. If he had a disagreement with a singer for any cause and wished to make it right again, he would always send a bottle of _Sekt_ if it were a woman, or present the money to buy one if it were a man. He had been a famous singer in his day, and known others far more so, and his reminiscences could be interesting enough. His stories of Bayreuth under the old regime, were really interesting, with the prescribed position of every finger, every gesture studied to an inch, every tone closed, opened, coloured according to strictest rule, every syllable enunciated with minutest care, and the effect of all this schooling on the singer--the strained and broken nerves, the wrecked voices that were the result of it. Diction--_Aussprache_--was naturally enough his hobby, but his ideas were absurdly exaggerated and caused much more or less hidden amus.e.m.e.nt among the _Personal_. He insisted, for example, upon so much "t" in a phrase like Mignon's "_Dahin, dahin, moecht ich mit dir_," that it sounded like "_Moecht tich mit tier_." Anything of that sort among colleagues is looked upon as a tremendous joke, especially when it is on the director.

One result of his former glory was that famous people came to this theatre to _gastieren_ and it also seemed to us as if every former singer or actor in Germany of any pretension to fame, who had a son or daughter to launch in either profession, sent them to our director for a debut. This was looked upon by us as a bore; but the famous guests were rather amusing, because when they had gone, the director used to relate all kinds of derogatory stories about them. Possart---- Ritter, Ernst von---- was perhaps the most renowned. He came to recite Manfred at a special performance with our soloists and chorus. The director told us how, during the most impa.s.sioned speeches of Goethe or Shakespeare his eye would be on the upper gallery, counting empty places, and how after the performance when the box office sheet showed an _ausverkauftes Haus_ he would demand, "What about those three empty seats in the second row of the top gallery, at the left?"

He told a similar tale of a famous Austrian guest-artist, the leading Teutonic exponent of his day of the negative side in the never-ending argument of stage technique "to feel or not to feel." He had mechanical as well as histrionic genius, and his dramatic art had become so mechanical too, towards the end of his career, that he could utilize such places in his great parts as Hamlet's soliloquy for thinking out scientific puzzles, although his power over the emotions of his audience never lost its effect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AMNERIS AS I NOW DRESS IT]

The director's own story was a real romance. While still on the upward side of the hill of fame, he had met and loved the wife of a n.o.bleman, the scion of an ancient house. She had been maid-of-honour at the most exclusive court in Europe, the confidante of the royal family, and was said to know the true story of many of the mysterious incidents in court history. In fact she was supposed to have been married off hurriedly to her much older husband to get her away from the royal circle of whose secrets she knew altogether too many. The infatuation of the singer for the lady was mutual, and in course of time a boy was born to them, who reached the age of six years before the n.o.ble husband consented to divorce his wife, or rather, I think, his lawyers consented for him, as by that time dissipation had quite softened whatever brain he may have had to begin with. This mental condition of his gave her the care of their children, and in Metz their youngest son, their daughter a girl of about twenty, and the director's little boy all lived together.

At holiday times another of her sons, a most charming young fellow, a lieutenant in a crack cavalry regiment, used to visit them too. She invited my sister and me to meet him, and the whole family often attended the opera together. He liked me in several roles and used to send me wonderful flowers. I still have a huge green bowl which he sent me filled with violets, in return for the photograph for which he had begged. He was an example of the most elegant type of young officer, the aristocrat of _Uradlige Familie_, fair, with delicate features; his six feet of slimness, with long slender limbs and very little body, clothed in his glove-fitting uniform. He had the fas.h.i.+onable three creases across the front of his smart Hussar jacket where his tummy should have been. His poor little story turned into tragedy. He contracted consumption and did not tell his people, but used their influence to get himself transferred to German West Africa, on the plea of wanting to see service. Arrived there, he quietly shot himself one evening as the easiest way out of a life that promised him nothing but misery. A sort of malignant fate seemed to pursue the children of that first marriage, for the charming young daughter also came to a sudden and most tragic end, as I shall tell later on.

The director's wife was very nice to us. She often invited us to visit her although we did so but seldom. Her rooms were filled with relics of her former life--portraits of herself as lady-in-waiting to the Empress of Austria, in court dress, portraits of her Empress, old photographs of groups on terraces and at castle gates, almost every person in them a "personage." She herself still wore her hair as her Empress had done, in a coronet of narrow braids set round her head. She said that they were sewn together with the same coloured silk as the hair every morning after being braided, to make them stand up. With us she always played the _grande dame_, apparently quite without effort, but there were stories about her which seemed to show that she could be something very different.

She certainly could talk most interestingly of her former grandeur. One of her tales was of a lady of the court who owned the smallest dog that any one had ever seen. It was so tiny that she used to carry it, when in evening dress, in the front of her decolletage. One night at dinner as she leaned forward to eat her soup, the dog fell into the plate. There was vermicelli in the soup, and before she could fish it out of this entanglement, the poor little thing was drowned! Another time the Frau Direktor showed us a photograph of a very slim and shapely young dragoon in full regalia, cloak and all, holding a letter up to hide his face. As there was evidently a story we begged her to tell it to us. She said that there had been a certain young married Countess of the court, who was known as a great prude and was always boasting of her exaggerated wifely devotion. Her airs became, said the Frau Direktor, quite insufferable, and so she herself resolved to put such armour-plate virtue to the test. At Carnival time, therefore, she dressed herself as a young officer for a ball at which the _Hofgesellschaft_ was to be present, and a very das.h.i.+ng figure she made, according to the picture.

In this disguise she then proceeded to give the Countess the rush of her life. The gallant pursued the virtuous Countess all the evening, and was rewarded by being asked to escort her ladys.h.i.+p to her home. In the carriage the "Lieutenant's" attentions became still more pressing, when to his secret dismay, the fair creature suddenly melted entirely, cast herself into his arms, and swore she adored him. Arrived at her house, the "Lieutenant" beat a hasty retreat vowing all sorts of things for their next meeting, which naturally never took place. But the vanished Lieutenant did not resemble the gentlemen of Virginia who kiss and never tell, for the Countess' share in the story leaked out, and her reputation for una.s.sailable devotion was irreparably damaged, to the great satisfaction of all her acquaintance.

CHAPTER XIII

HUMAN Pa.s.sIONS AND SMALLPOX

At the beginning of the season, the director's family was still in the country, where they remained until the opera had been running for some time. We met his wife and daughter for the first time at a luncheon given by him at the hotel where we had arranged to take our two o'clock dinner, after trying all sorts of unsuccessful ways of dining in private. The stage manager of the drama, the first and second Kapellmeister, the "Bureau Chef," the Heldentenor, Heldenbariton, High Dramatic, Coloratura, my sister and myself were all invited. Just as we were seating ourselves, the _Schauspiel Regisseur_, Herr S----, noticed that there were thirteen at table. He turned as white as a sheet, jumped up, and scarcely stopping to apologize, hurriedly left the room, nor could he be prevailed upon to return, although the director followed him into the hall to remonstrate. He protested that one of our number was certain to die within the year as it was, and he wished to insure its not being himself by refusing to sit down at all. Curiously enough, his prophecy came true, for the Director's young step-daughter died very suddenly soon after.

Herr S---- was a most unpleasant person, as I discovered later, and I was always thankful that my identification with the _Opern-Personal_ kept me out of his way. He had a sort of spurious veneer and ingratiating manner, which was at variance with his hard, square, pa.s.sion-scarred countenance. He pretended an enormous admiration for the American woman, and that very day before luncheon, he showed me with great pride a small American-made patent-leather shoe, which he took out of the tail pocket of his frock-coat, telling me with a leer that it belonged to a girl of _my_ country, where the women had the most beautiful feet in the world, and that it was his talisman and never left him! He bore a bad name among the women players in the company. One of the little actresses, a girl of good family, in her first season, used to tell me unpleasant tales of him in her rapid, ungrammatical French, whenever I met her; and she always referred to him as "That beast!"

Our Heldentenor of that season was an uninteresting personage, a quite elderly man of enormous routine and mediocre equipment, who had sung in all sorts of opera houses and was on the last lap of a long career. He was said to be nearly sixty, and was quite bald, but he managed to make a surprisingly youthful appearance on the stage. He had been at it so long that he could make an attempt at acting almost anything--even youth. His sprightly legs in "Fra Diavolo" were quite adolescent. He kept himself discreetly to himself, and was never seen in the cafes, nor on the streets with his colleagues.

His greatest joy was a tiny dog, whose tricks he delighted to show off to every one. The little thing would whine for a soprano, growl for a ba.s.s, howl for a tenor, bark when told "The Direktor's coming," and sit up and beg at the word _Gage_ (salary,) in a very amusing way, and his master was intensely proud of his accomplishments.

The lyric tenor of the first season was a peasant from Swabia, with a droll accent and a lovely voice which he forced in a most agonizing manner. He would shake all over when he sang a high note, and yet his natural voice ranged easily to high D sharp--I have even heard him sing an E. His dialect and his ignorance made him the b.u.t.t of the company, but he was very goodnatured and took it all in good part. He used to say: "Yes, I know--my wife is a French woman and she tells me to say _Mignon_, but I'm a peasant--I say _Mischnong_." She was years older than he and of better cla.s.s. She had helped him to the little study that he had had, and out of grat.i.tude he had married her, but they were said to disagree very consistently.

The Heldenbariton was quite a nice fellow, big and burly with a good voice; he was a great favourite with the public, whom he had pleased by marrying, out of the chorus, a townswoman who adored him.

The second Kapellmeister was a vague, weak creature, henpecked by his vain little wife who was never happy unless she was the centre of some one's admiration. She was inordinately proud of her small feet, and our little friend the lyric baritone used to make her furious, by insisting that mine were smaller! Her dream was to go on the stage too, if only to sing pages in "Lohengrin" and "Tannhauser," and later her hope was realized, I heard, when several of them went off together in April to a "Monatsoper" on the _Russische Grenze_ (Russian Frontier). The coloratura soprano was a Dutch woman, speaking German with more accent than I did. She was very fair, very fat, and very lazy, and she had a capacity for food that I have seen equalled but never surpa.s.sed. She dined with us daily, and woe to the person who had to serve himself from a dish that had been pa.s.sed to her! Eat until you could hold no more was a part of the creed of all my colleagues. Anything short of absolute repletion, and the meal was considered a failure. "_Sind Sie satt?_"

They would ask each other gravely--"_Ich bin nicht satt!_" Meaning literally, "Are you full?" "_I_ am _not_ full." And this was a grave cause of resentment against the hotel management. I must say that most of them reached this desirable consummation long before the coloratura soprano, for she continued placidly as long as there was any food in sight. She would even finish anything left on another's plate, and our table always looked as if a horde of locusts had visited it.

Those colleagues of my first engagement are stamped upon my memory--representing as they did so much that was new to me,--a new nationality, a new profession, and in many cases a new social cla.s.s.

Take them all together they were a pretty decent lot considering their antecedents and surroundings. As a general rule, I think the actors are apt to be of a somewhat higher social cla.s.s than the singers, as a remarkable voice occurs when and where it will, while a vocation for the acting stage presupposes a certain amount of education and refinement of surroundings, although there have been, of course, some notable exceptions.

They wanted us to meet the officers of the different smart regiments.

The Red Dragoons in particular were supposed to be all-powerful in deciding the success or failure of a singer, and the colleagues kindly thought we ought all to have the advantage of this. One or two of the women of course had affairs with them, and as Marjorie and I did not care to meet the officers in just that society, we were sometimes hard put to it to find a good excuse. Once my sister went to bed, though perfectly well, for several days, to avoid a particularly pressing invitation. Later we met these officers through letters from our relatives, and liked some of them tremendously. Even their affairs were the outcome of the system, and did no particular harm to any one.

The opera soubrette had one of years' standing with a tall ungainly White Dragoon. He was a harmless idiot, and she a smart German-Polish Jewess, a nice little thing. We each had a "Benefiz" before leaving the Metz engagement, when we were showered with flowers and gifts from our friends and admirers, also sharing in the box-office receipts. R----, the soubrette, told us the day after hers, still breathless from rage, that "_Er_"--she never called him anything but "He"--had sent her an umbrella, bound in the middle of a huge sheaf of roses. He had not pa.s.sed it over the footlights, so that every one might see its splendour, but had left it at her rooms. When he called on her expecting soft thanks, she berated him soundly, and succeeded in so enraging his usually placid self that he threw his big sabre through the window, sending it cras.h.i.+ng into the court below.

One handsome Red Dragoon, a notorious connoisseur of music and women, and believed absolutely irresistible, always sat in a box at our right from the stage. His one reputable pa.s.sion was music. He had at that time an affair with a Dutch woman, who had been handsome and distinguee--she was pitifully his slave. Going to the theatre one evening we saw her approaching from one direction in the big court in front of the theatre, as he approached from another. She smiled infatuatedly at him but he pa.s.sed her without a look--perhaps his idea of a tribute to my sister and me. I felt sorry for her as the joy left her face.