We follow the play. The performance is decidedly respectable, from the leader to the chorus. The setting is quite brilliant, and true to style, the orchestra well trained, with some very excellent performers among the soloists. We forget, for the time being, that we are in Russia, notwithstanding the Russian language and the Russian music. It is Schiller's heroic composition which has inspired the composer. Dunoi's Lahire, Lionel, Raymond, Bertram, Agnes Sorel, Charles, the cardinal appear before us in familiar scenes, and we experience at times quite peculiar sensations when we again come across this northern night, the images, the glowing rhetoric of which in the dear tongue of our own poet had given us the first intoxication of patriotic enthusiasm. The passionately warm music of Tschaikowski, and the swing of his choruses intensify the effect of those reminiscences.
But let us return to Russian reality. A thin, black-bearded young man paces busily through the rows during one of the entr'actes. He exchanges remarks here and there with the officers and officials, whom he leaves with a smile. And in the second entr'acte it becomes evident what preparations had been made here. War had just been declared; the password had just been given out to arouse patriotic enthusiasm, or, at least, to make the attempt. Already in one or another of the theatres the public had thunderingly called for the national hymn. What is proper in the Imperial Theatre must be acceptable in the popular theatre. The curtain had fallen after the second act, when suddenly, from one of the boxlike recesses on the left gallery was heard the call "Hymn! Hymn!" Everybody looked curiously up. There were there a few uniformed young men, as we found later, student-members of that patriotic secret association organized under the patronage of the reactionaries--a stroke of Suvorin--to watch the progressive students. The orchestra replied to the call with remarkable alacrity, and the public rose dutifully smiling and stood to the beautiful hymn. But new shouts were heard. The choir must join in. The curtain rose obediently, and the entire cast of "The Maid of Orleans," Charles, Agnes, Jean d'Arc, and Lionel, Burgundy and England; the people and knights were already properly grouped and joined in the hymn with the orchestra accompaniment. The public again arose politely and listened standing. The demonstration was not yet at an end. It was reported that the hymn was sung three times in the other theatres, hence that should occur also here. And the public patiently rises for the third time, and lets the song float over it. The thin, black-bearded young man, however, rubs his hands with which he joined in the applause but shortly before, throws a significant glance to his neighbors, and hastens out. I do not know to this day whether he was an entrepreneur of the public resort, or a penny-a-liner who had arranged an interesting piece of local news.