Page:The Dial (Volume 75).djvu/671

Rh On the twenty-seventh of June as Tristan he made his last appearance. Kläre sat unmoved in the company's box. The following morning she drove with Fanny to the cemetery and laid an enormous wreath on the Prince's grave. The same evening she gave a party in honour of the singer, who was to leave Vienna the day after.

The circle of friends was completely assembled. Everyone was aware of the passion which Sigurd had conceived for Kläre. As usual, he spoke quite volubly and with agitation. Among other things he told how during his voyage here on the ship an Arabian woman married to a Russian grand-duke had prophesied from the lines of his hands that he was soon to go through the most fatal period of his life. He trusted wholly in this prophecy, and superstition seemed with him to be something deeper than a mere method of making himself interesting. He also spoke of the generally well-known fact that last year, immediately after his landing in New York where he was to fill an engagement as visiting star, on that very day, yes, on that very hour, although he had to pay a severe penalty, he had taken another ship back to Europe; and all this simply because on the wharf a black cat had run between his legs. He certainly had every reason to believe in such secret relationships between incomprehensible signs and the fate of man. One evening at Covent Garden in London, before going on the stage he had neglected to murmur a certain little charm handed down by his grandmother and his voice had suddenly failed him. One night in a dream a winged angel had appeared before him in rose-coloured tights, announcing to him the death of his favoyrite barber and sure enough, the next morning it was discovered that this poor devil had hanged himself. Further, he always carried with him a short but very significant letter which had been given to him in a spiritualist séance in Brussels by the spirit of the dead singer Cornelia Lujan; it contained in fluent Portuguese the prediction that he was destined to become the greatest singer of the old and the new world. He told all these things to-day; and as the spirit-letter, written on rose-coloured paper of the house of Glienwood, was passed from hand to hand, an undercurrent passed through the entire room. But Kläre herself scarcely altered her expression, and merely nodded her head indifferently now and then. Nevertheless Leisenbohg's unrest attained a high intensity. To his