s grandeur, young, forceful, untrammelled.
She came right down to the half-lit footlights, and stood motionless
during a bar or two of the music. And then she sang, and the audience,
tittering curiously before, remained spellbound, awe-struck, as the first
notes of that matchless voice smote upon their hearing. She sang of the
sadness of the ending of comedies, of the regret which lingers in the
remembrance of past laughter. In a couplet of passionate melancholy she
asked, where are the roses of yesterday? whither vanish the songs of
to-day?

Changing verse and melody to a soft _recitatif_, she begged her hearers
to give good favour to the evening's festivities. She reminded them that
the merry company would soon disperse for many months; she wished them
peace and happiness, and she prayed that another spring would find the
company reunited once again. 'Mars, God of War, hold thy hand; touch not
this fair country!'

In her singing she had struck that note of regret which never leaves an
audience unmoved; she appealed to the sadness which lingers for ever in
the heart of man, and, after the vapid brilliancies of La Fontaine's
comedy, the strain had all the greater power to stir. Wilhelmine, an
unseen spectator at many rehearsals of the theatricals, had calculated
this to a nicety, with an artist's instinct for playing upon human nature
and emotion.

There were women among the audience who knew that ere the following
spring many of those they loved might be shot down by French bullets;
there were men in the parterre who knew this, and a wave of emotion
swept over the whole audience. To the singer herself all this hardly
mattered; the human hearts were merely instruments upon which she played
a melody; yet her receptive, finely strung being thrilled in response to
the feeling she evoked; a half-sob rose in her throat and flooded her
flexible voice with a passion of sadness. When the song ended, there came
a moment's breathless silence, then the applause broke forth, and
Wilhelmine knew she had achieved a triumph.

* * * * *

In the banqueting-hall Duke Eberhard's guests were seated at a
magnificent repast. Five hundred ladies and gentlemen at long tables on a
raised platform, while in the lower portion of the hall the burghers of
Stuttgart were regaled with wine and cake. Her Highness Johanna
Elizabetha sat at one table with her retinue; Serenissimus at another
with his suite and closes