It is a strange feeling of pleasure that the writer
about the stage and the characters of the theatrical
feels, when he occasionally discovers a good, honest
human heart in the twilight behind the scenes.
Of all the witches and semi-witches of that eternal
Walpurgis night, whose boards represent the
world, the ladies of the ballet have at all times and
in all places been regarded at least like saints,
although Hacklaender repeatedly told in vain in his
earlier novels, to convince us that true virtue appears
in tights and short petticoats and is only to be found
in ballet girls. I fear that the popular voice
is right as a general rule, but is equally true that
here and there one finds a pearl in the dust, and
even in the dirt, and the short story that I am about
to relate, will best illustrate my assertion.
Whenever a new, youthful dancer appeared at the Vienna
Opera House, the habitues began to go after
her, and did not rest, until the fresh young rose
had been plucked by some hand or other, though often
it was old and trembling. For how could those
young and pretty, sometimes even beautiful girls who,
with every right to life, love and pleasure, were
poor and had to subsist on a very small salary, resist
the seduction of the smell of flowers and of the flash
of diamonds? And if one resisted it, it was love,
some real, strong passion, that gave her the strength
for this, generally, however, only to go after luxury
all the more shamelessly and selfishly, when her lover
forsook her.
At the beginning of the winter season of 185—the
pleasing news was spread among the habitues,
that a girl of dazzling beauty was going to appear
very shortly in the ballet at the Court Theater.
When the evening came, nobody had yet seen that much
discussed phenomenon, but report spread her name from
mouth to mouth; it was Satanella. The moment when
the troop of elastic figures in fluttering petticoats
jumped onto the stage, every opera-glass in the boxes
and stalls was directed on the stage, and at the same
instant the new dancer was discovered, although she
timidly kept in the background.
She was one of those girls who are surrounded by the
bright halo of virginity, but who at the same time
present a splendid type of womanhood; she had the
voluptuous form of Rubens’ second wife, whom
they called, not untruly, the risen Green Helen, and
her head with its delicate nose, its small full mouth,
and its dark inquiring eyes, reminded people of the
celebrated picture of the Flemish Venus in the Belvedere
in Vienna.
