"Five minutes to seven!" I almost yelled, dashing wildly into my room to wash my hands and get my violin. Courvoisier followed me. The child was awake. I felt a horrible sense of guilt as I saw it looking at me with great, soft, solemn, brown eyes, not in the least those of its father, but it did not move. I said apologetically that I feared I had awakened it.
"Oh, no! He's been awake for some time," said Courvoisier. The child saw him, and stretched out its arms toward him.
"_Na! junger Taugenichts!_" he said, taking it up and kissing it. "Thou must stay here till I come back. Wilt be happy till I come?"
The answer made by the mournful-looking child was a singular one. It put both tiny arms around the big man's neck, laid its face for a moment against his, and loosed him again. Neither word nor sound did it emit during the process. A feeling altogether new and astonishing overcame me. I turned hastily away, and as I picked up my violin-case, was amazed to find my eyes dim. My visitors were something unprecedented to me.
"You are not compelled to go to the theater to-night, you know, unless you like," I suggested, as we went down-stairs.
"Thanks, it is as well to begin at once."
On the lowest landing we met Frau Schmidt.
"Where are you going, _mein Herren_?" she demanded.
"To work, madame," he replied, lifting his cap with a courtesy which seemed to disarm her.
She gave us a look which meant volumes. I pulled Courvoisier out.
"Come along, do!" cried I. "She will keep you there for half an hour, and it is time now."
We rushed along the streets too rapidly to have time or breath to speak, and it was five minutes after the time when we scrambled into the orchestra, and found that the overture was already begun.
Though there is certainly not much time for observing one's fellows when one is helping in the overture to "Tannhauser," yet I saw the many curious and astonished glances which were cast toward our new member, glances of which he took no notice, simply because he apparently did not see them. He had the finest absence of self-consciousness that I ever saw.
The first act of the opera was over, and it fell to my share to make Courvoisier known to his fellow-musicians. I introduced him to the director, who was not von Francius, nor any friend of his. Then we retired to one of the small rooms on one side of the orchestra.