a
set, sad, earnest gaze. And as long as play lasted, every time the
Baron looked up, his eyes met the stranger's dark sad stare, until at
last he could not help being struck with a very uncomfortable and
oppressive feeling. And the stranger only left the apartment when play
came to an end for the night. The following night he again stood
opposite the Baron, staring at him with unaverted gaze, whilst his eyes
had a dark mysterious spectral look. The Baron still kept his temper.
But when on the third night the stranger appeared again and fixed his
eyes, burning with a consuming fire, upon the Baron, the latter burst
out, "Sir, I must beg you to choose some other place. You exercise a
constraining influence upon my play."

With a painful smile the stranger bowed and left the table, and the
hall too, without uttering a word.

But on the next night the stranger again stood opposite the Baron,
piercing him through and through with his dark fiery glance. Then the
Baron burst out still more angrily than on the preceding night, "If you
think it a joke, sir, to stare at me, pray choose some other time and
some other place to do so; and now have the"---- A wave of the hand
towards the door took the place of the harsh words the Baron was about
to utter. And as on the previous night, the stranger, after bowing
slightly, left the hall with the same painful smile upon his lips.

Siegfried was so excited and heated by play, by the wine which he had
taken, and also by the scene with the stranger, that he could not
sleep. Morning was already breaking, when the stranger's figure
appeared before his eyes. He observed his striking, sharp-cut features,
worn with suffering, and his sad deep-set eyes just as he had stared at
him; and he noticed his distinguished bearing, which, in spite of his
mean clothing, betrayed a man of high culture. And then the air of
painful resignation with which the stranger submitted to the harsh
words flung at him, and fought down his bitter feelings with an effort,
and left the hall! "No," cried Siegfried, "I did him wrong--great
wrong. Is it indeed at all like me to blaze up in this rude,
ill-mannered way, like an uncultivated clown, and to offer insults to
people without the least provocation?" The Baron at last arrived at the
conviction that it must have been a most oppressive feeling of the
sharp contrast between them which had made the man stare at him so;
in the moment that he was perhaps contending wi