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<h2> CHAPTER IX </h2>
<h3> [What the Beautiful Maiden Said] </h3>
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<p>One day we took the train and went down to Mannheim to see "King Lear"
played in German. It was a mistake. We sat in our seats three whole hours
and never understood anything but the thunder and lightning; and even that
was reversed to suit German ideas, for the thunder came first and the
lightning followed after.</p>
<p>The behavior of the audience was perfect. There were no rustlings, or
whisperings, or other little disturbances; each act was listened to in
silence, and the applauding was done after the curtain was down. The doors
opened at half past four, the play began promptly at half past five, and
within two minutes afterward all who were coming were in their seats, and
quiet reigned. A German gentleman in the train had said that a
Shakespearian play was an appreciated treat in Germany and that we should
find the house filled. It was true; all the six tiers were filled, and
remained so to the end—which suggested that it is not only balcony
people who like Shakespeare in Germany, but those of the pit and gallery,
too.</p>
<p>Another time, we went to Mannheim and attended a shivaree—otherwise
an opera—the one called "Lohengrin." The banging and slamming and
booming and crashing were something beyond belief. The racking and
pitiless pain of it remains stored up in my memory alongside the memory of
the time that I had my teeth fixed.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
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<p>There were circumstances which made it necessary for me to stay through
the four hours to the end, and I stayed; but the recollection of that
long, dragging, relentless season of suffering is indestructible. To have
to endure it in silence, and sitting still, made it all the harder. I was
in a railed compartment with eight or ten strangers, of the two sexes, and
this compelled repression; yet at times the pain was so exquisite that I
could hardly keep the tears back.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
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<p>At those times, as the howlings and wailings and shrieking of the singers,
and the ragings and roarings and explosions of the vast orchestra rose
higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and fiercer and fiercer, I could
have cried if I had been alone. Those strangers would not have been
surprised to see a man do such a thing who was being gradually skinned,
but they would have marveled at it here, and made remarks about it no
doubt, whereas there was nothing in the present case which was an
advantage over being skinned.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
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<p><br/> <br/> <br/> <br/> There was a wait of half an hour at the end of the
first act, and I could have gone out and rested during that time, but I
could not trust myself to do it, for I felt that I should desert to stay
out. There was another wait of half an hour toward nine o'clock, but I had
gone through so much by that time that I had no spirit left, and so had no
desire but to be let alone.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/> <SPAN name="p085b" id="p085b"></SPAN></p>
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<p>I do not wish to suggest that the rest of the people there were like me,
for, indeed, they were not. Whether it was that they naturally liked that
noise, or whether it was that they had learned to like it by getting used
to it, I did not at the time know; but they did like it—this was
plain enough. While it was going on they sat and looked as rapt and
grateful as cats do when one strokes their backs; and whenever the curtain
fell they rose to their feet, in one solid mighty multitude, and the air
was snowed thick with waving handkerchiefs, and hurricanes of applause
swept the place. This was not comprehensible to me. Of course, there were
many people there who were not under compulsion to stay; yet the tiers
were as full at the close as they had been at the beginning. This showed
that the people liked it.</p>
<p>It was a curious sort of a play. In the manner of costumes and scenery it
was fine and showy enough; but there was not much action. That is to say,
there was not much really done, it was only talked about; and always
violently. It was what one might call a narrative play. Everybody had a
narrative and a grievance, and none were reasonable about it, but all in
an offensive and ungovernable state. There was little of that sort of
customary thing where the tenor and the soprano stand down by the
footlights, warbling, with blended voices, and keep holding out their arms
toward each other and drawing them back and spreading both hands over
first one breast and then the other with a shake and a pressure—no,
it was every rioter for himself and no blending. Each sang his indictive
narrative in turn, accompanied by the whole orchestra of sixty
instruments, and when this had continued for some time, and one was hoping
they might come to an understanding and modify the noise, a great chorus
composed entirely of maniacs would suddenly break forth, and then during
two minutes, and sometimes three, I lived over again all that I suffered
the time the orphan asylum burned down.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
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<p>We only had one brief little season of heaven and heaven's sweet ecstasy
and peace during all this long and diligent and acrimonious reproduction
of the other place. This was while a gorgeous procession of people marched
around and around, in the third act, and sang the Wedding Chorus. To my
untutored ear that was music—almost divine music. While my seared
soul was steeped in the healing balm of those gracious sounds, it seemed
to me that I could almost resuffer the torments which had gone before, in
order to be so healed again. There is where the deep ingenuity of the
operatic idea is betrayed. It deals so largely in pain that its scattered
delights are prodigiously augmented by the contrasts. A pretty air in an
opera is prettier there than it could be anywhere else, I suppose, just as
an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere.</p>
<p>I have since found out that there is nothing the Germans like so much as
an opera. They like it, not in a mild and moderate way, but with their
whole hearts. This is a legitimate result of habit and education. Our
nation will like the opera, too, by and by, no doubt. One in fifty of
those who attend our operas likes it already, perhaps, but I think a good
many of the other forty-nine go in order to learn to like it, and the rest
in order to be able to talk knowingly about it. The latter usually hum the
airs while they are being sung, so that their neighbors may perceive that
they have been to operas before. The funerals of these do not occur often
enough.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
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<p>A gentle, old-maidish person and a sweet young girl of seventeen sat right
in front of us that night at the Mannheim opera. These people talked,
between the acts, and I understood them, though I understood nothing that
was uttered on the distant stage. At first they were guarded in their
talk, but after they had heard my agent and me conversing in English they
dropped their reserve and I picked up many of their little confidences;
no, I mean many of <i>her</i> little confidences—meaning the elder party—for
the young girl only listened, and gave assenting nods, but never said a
word. How pretty she was, and how sweet she was! I wished she would speak.
But evidently she was absorbed in her own thoughts, her own young-girl
dreams, and found a dearer pleasure in silence. But she was not dreaming
sleepy dreams—no, she was awake, alive, alert, she could not sit
still a moment. She was an enchanting study. Her gown was of a soft white
silky stuff that clung to her round young figure like a fish's skin, and
it was rippled over with the gracefulest little fringy films of lace; she
had deep, tender eyes, with long, curved lashes; and she had peachy
cheeks, and a dimpled chin, and such a dear little rosebud of a mouth; and
she was so dovelike, so pure, and so gracious, so sweet and so bewitching.
For long hours I did mightily wish she would speak. And at last she did;
the red lips parted, and out leaps her thought—and with such a
guileless and pretty enthusiasm, too: "Auntie, I just <i>know</i> I've got five
hundred fleas on me!"</p>
<p>That was probably over the average. Yes, it must have been very much over
the average. The average at that time in the Grand Duchy of Baden was
forty-five to a young person (when alone), according to the official
estimate of the home secretary for that year; the average for older people
was shifty and indeterminable, for whenever a wholesome young girl came
into the presence of her elders she immediately lowered their average and
raised her own. She became a sort of contribution-box.<br/> <br/> <br/>
<br/></p>
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<p>This dear young thing in the theater had been sitting there unconsciously
taking up a collection. Many a skinny old being in our neighborhood was
the happier and the restfuler for her coming.</p>
<p>In that large audience, that night, there were eight very conspicuous
people. These were ladies who had their hats or bonnets on. What a blessed
thing it would be if a lady could make herself conspicuous in our theaters
by wearing her hat.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
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<p>It is not usual in Europe to allow ladies and gentlemen to take bonnets,
hats, overcoats, canes, or umbrellas into the auditorium, but in Mannheim
this rule was not enforced because the audiences were largely made up of
people from a distance, and among these were always a few timid ladies who
were afraid that if they had to go into an anteroom to get their things
when the play was over, they would miss their train. But the great mass of
those who came from a distance always ran the risk and took the chances,
preferring the loss of a train to a breach of good manners and the
discomfort of being unpleasantly conspicuous during a stretch of three or
four hours.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
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