Page:A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales (1875).djvu/219

Rh and on knocking, as directed, at his door, was surprised to hear the sound of a loud voice within. My knock remained unnoticed, so I presently introduced myself. I found no company, but I discovered my friend walking up and down the room and apparently declaiming to himself from a little volume bound in white vellum. He greeted me heartily, threw his book on the table, and said that he was taking a German lesson.

"And who is your teacher?" I asked, glancing at the book. He rather avoided meeting my eye, as he answered, after an instant's delay, "Madame Blumenthal."

"Indeed! Has she written a grammar?" I inquired.

"It's not a grammar; it's a tragedy." And he handed me the book.

I opened it, and beheld, in delicate type, in a very large margin, a Trauerspiel in five acts, entitled Cleopatra. There were a great many marginal corrections and annotations, apparently from the author's hand; the speeches were very long, and there was an inordinate number of soliloquies by the heroine. One of them, I remember, toward the end of the play, began in this fashion:—

"What, after all, is life but sensation, and sensation but deception?—reality that pales before the