Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/350

 ARMGART.

SCENE I.

''A Salon lit with lamps and ornamented with green plants. An open piano, with many scattered sheets of music. Bronze busts of Beethoven and Gluck on pillars opposite each other. A small table spread with supper. To, who advances with a slight lameness of gait from an adjoining room, enters at the opposite door in a travelling dress''.

Good-morning, Fraulein!

I feared your mission kept you still at Prague.

But now arrived! You see my travelling dress.

I hurried from the panting, roaring steam

Like any courier of embassy

Who hides the fiends of war within his bag.

You know that Armgart sings to-night?

'T is close on half-past nine. The Orpheus