Time passes slowly, but surely. At last we reach an act in which SEEBACH
walks quietly across the stage. The curtain instantly drops amid the
sobs of the excited audience.
1ST GERMAN. "Lend me your handkerchief, my friend, that I may wipe away
my tears. I have a sausage wrapped up in mine, but what are sausages
compared with art! How divinely SEEBACH walks. To me, she seems like an
incarnation of Pure Reason, an Avatar of the spirit of transcendental
philosophy. Come, we will pledge her in beer."
1ST AMERICAN. "What are they making all that row about--just because
SEEBACH walked across the stage? Why, she never said a word."
2D AMERICAN. "Let's go round to the hotel and take a quiet sleep till
she comes on again. I've got my night-clothes with me. Always bring 'em
when I go to see German tragedy."
Then ensue other hours of dialogue, interspersed with soliloquies of
half an hour each. Interspersed also with perpetual dropping of the
curtain, whereby the play is made to last some eight or ten hours longer
than would otherwise be the case. Most of the German music that has been
written during the last three centuries is played by the orchestra
during these intermissions. But in course of time SEEBACH gives us the
Garden scene, winning our frantic admiration by her inimitable
tenderness and grace, and finally we reach that grandest scene ever
written by dramatist, that most pathetic poem ever conceived by
poet--the meeting of "FAUST" and "MARGARET" in prison.
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