Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/274

238 also show you a drama, which at first perhaps you did not want to pay attention to?— Very well; I love two cars and more, if required. Move up quite close to me— This is not yet what he wants to tell us; at present he only promises that he is going to say something, something extraordinary as he gives us to understand by these gestures. For gestures they are. How he beckons! How he raises himself! How he throws up his arms! Ah, now the supreme moment of sus- pense seems to have come to him : two more trumpetblasts, and he opens his theme, splendidly adorned as though studded with precious stones. Is it a handsom woman? Or a beautiful horse? Enough, he looks about in raptures, for it is his duty to attract enraptured looks—only now his theme begins quite to satisfy him, now he grows inventive and risks new and bolder features. How he forces out his theme! Mark!—he knows not only how to adorn it, but also to paint it! Yes, he knows the colour of health, he knows how to make it up—he is more subtle in his self-consciousness than I thought. And now he is convinced that he has convinced his hearers, he exhibits his impromptus as though they were the most important things under the sun; he gives impudent hints with regard to his theme, as if it were too good for this worldl. Ah, how suspicious he is! Lest we might get tired! So he wraps his melodies in sweetness—How he even appeals to our coarser senses, in order to