[1] St. John's day.

CHAPTER XV.

The stage of the Opera House was crowded with the chorus. It was ten
o'clock in the morning, but the day was rainy and the light that came
from the windows at the back of the proscenium was feeble and dim, and
the House itself was quite dark. The seats stretched out bare and
ghostly, row after row; and beyond a dark cavern seemed yawning,
mysterious and empty, the sound of the voices echoing and resounding
through spaces of silence.

In the centre of the stage stood the Conductor, mounted on a small
platform with his desk before him; and around him were the chorus,
huddled and watchful as sheep about a shepherd. He was tapping the
desk with his baton and calling out to them, and the voices had ceased.

"Meine Herren--meine Damen!" he cried, "How you sing! It is like the
squealing of guinea-pigs--and the tenors are false! Mein Gott! Stick
to the notes, gentlemen, and sing in the middle of the tone. There
now, once more. Begin on the D."

Kapellmeister Ritter glanced over his chorus with a fierce, compelling
motion of his baton. He was like a general, compact and trim of figure
with a short, pointed beard, and hair also short that was swiftly
turning to grey. The only thing that suggested the musician was the
heaviness and swelling of his brows, and the delicacy of his hands and
wrists, which were white, like a woman's, of an extraordinary
suppleness and full of power; hands that were watched instinctively and
obeyed. The eyes of the entire chorus were fixed on them now, gazing
as if hypnotized, and hanging on every movement of his beat.

"Na--na!" he cried, "Was that F, I ask you? You bellow like bulls!
Again--again, I tell you! On the D and approach the note softly.

"Hist-st!--Pianissimo!"

He stamped his foot in vexation and the baton struck the desk sharply:
"Again--the sopranos alone! Hist! Piano--piano I say! Potztausend!"

The chorus glanced at one another sheepishly and a flush crept over the
faces of the sopranos. The Kapellmeister was in a bad mood to-day;
nothing suited him, and he beat the desk as if he would have liked to
strike them all and fling the baton at their heads.

"Sheep!" he said, "Oxen--cows! You have no temperament, no
feeling--nothing--nothing! Where are your souls? Haven't you any
souls? Don't you hear what I say? Piano! P-i-a-n-o! When I say
piano, do I mean forte?"

He shrugged his shoulders, and his eyes flashed s