Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/97

 certainty, comfortable eee: 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 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.