at some one would seize him by the arm; but
no one stirred. The flame seized eagerly upon the canvas. When a part
was consumed, the young man swung himself upon the window-sill and
hurled the burning picture through the upper part of the window, which
was open, into the dark garden below, where it fell hissing on the damp
gravel.

Upon 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