"Has the tragedy ever been
acted?"
"Never in public; but Madame Blumenthal tells me that she had it played
at her own house in Berlin, and that she herself undertook the part of
the heroine."
Pickering's unworldly life had not been of a sort to sharpen his
perception of the ridiculous, but it seemed to me an unmistakable sign of
his being under the charm, that this information was very soberly
offered. He was preoccupied, he was irresponsive to my experimental
observations on vulgar topics--the hot weather, the inn, the advent of
Adelina Patti. At last, uttering his thoughts, he announced that Madame
Blumenthal had proved to be an extraordinarily interesting woman. He
seemed to have quite forgotten our long talk in the Hartwaldt, and
betrayed no sense of this being a confession that he had taken his plunge
and was floating with the current. He only remembered that I had spoken
slightingly of the lady, and he now hinted that it behoved me to amend my
opinion. I had received the day before so strong an impression of a sort
of spiritual fastidiousness in my friend's nature, that on hearing now
the striking of a new hour, as it were, in his consciousness, and
observing how the echoes of the past were immediately quenched in its
music, I said to myself that it had certainly taken a delicate hand to
wind up that fine machine.
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