Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/78

 popular enthusiasm in the end smoothes out its waves. Krista was an apparition above all dear to them but they were already habituated to it. To-day they went to the theatre pretty much from habit, not from any inward necessity, not because something drew them to it with irresistible force. Nothing that they could see and hear to-day could be any more either novel or striking. They saw and heard it already in their recollection, to-day those recollections had only to be sprinkled with a few drops of dew and then they would be tolerably revived, and ever recollection is but pale and wan beside the full-blown roses of novelty.

The theatre then had a more ordinary appearance. Among the public there was no expectation—only certainty, comfortable certainty. Just as, when we travel through a country for the second or third time we know where we ought to look out of the window and where we may spare ourselves the pains.

True, one new violinist sat yonder in the orchestra, but does that change the aspect of a theatre? Is the aspect of a country changed because there is one tree there more or one tree there less? In the orchestra! The orchestra is not the stage. On the stage we mark at once every change—but in the orchestra! Who gives so much as a passing look to that? If a young drummer is seated by the drum instead of the old one whom they buried yesterday—what of that? If a bald pate stands by the bass-fiddle who a few years before had not yet grown bald—what of that? Not a single person paid the slightest attention to his head while it was hairy, why should he pay attention to it any more, now that it is smooth and polished?

A new violinist! Plenty of them are seated in the orchestra; whether there is one more or one less concerns only the members of the orchestra, and among these perhaps only the violinists, it does not change the aspect of the theatre. True there were in the orchestra artists as good as those on the stage, but it is the fashion with the public to look only at the stage—let us piously adhere then to the fashion.

And now the curtain was furled up. When the violin solo came, Venik settled himself to his violin and played. In this solo the violinist was allowed some liberty and was not obliged to confine himself rigidly to the written score, he might improvise and he did improvise.

When Venik began to play, something thrilled the audience and caused it to cast a languid look at the orchestra and it was observed that some one different was performing to-day. Even those