but a small dirty boy, his son, was told to take me to the theatre to find ‘Papa.’  Papa, however, met us on the way.  He was an elderly man; he wore a dressing-gown, and on his head a cap.  His delight at greeting me was interrupted by complaints about a serious indisposition, for which his son was to fetch him a cordial from a shop close by.  Before despatching the boy on this errand he pressed a real silver penny into his hand with a certain ostentation which was obviously for my benefit.  This person was Heinrich Bethmann, surviving husband of the famous actress of that name, who, having lived in the heyday of the German stage, had won the favour of the King of Prussia; and won it so lastingly, that long after her death it had continued to be extended to her spouse.  He always drew a nice pension from the Prussian court, and permanently enjoyed its support without ever being able to forfeit its protection by his irregular and dissipated ways.

At the time of which I am speaking he had sunk to his lowest, owing to continued theatre management.  His speech and manners revealed the sugary refinement of a bygone day, while all that he did and everything about him testified to the most shameful neglect.  He took me back to his house, where he presented me to his second wife, who, crippled in one foot, lay on an extraordinary couch while an elderly bass, concerning whose excessive devotion Bethmann had already complained to me quite openly, smoked his pipe beside her.  From there the director took me to his stage manager, who lived in the same house.

With the latter, who was just engaged in a consultation about the repertory with the theatre attendant, a toothless old skeleton, he left me to settle the necessary arrangements.  As soon as Bethmann had gone, Schmale, the stage manager, shrugged his shoulders and smiled, assuring me that that was just the way of the director, to put everything on his back and trouble himself about nothing.  There he had been sitting for over an hour, discussing with Kroge what should be put on next Sunday:  it was all very well his starting Don Juan, but how could he get a rehearsal carried out, when the Merseburg town bandsmen, who formed the orchestra, would not come over on Saturday to rehearse?

All the time Schmale kept reaching out through the open window to a cherry tree from which he picked and persistently ate the fruit, ejecting the stones with a disagreeable noise.  Now it was this last circumstance in particular which decided me; for, strange to say, I have an innate aversion from fruit.  I informed the stage manager that he need not trouble at all about Don Juan for Sunday, since for my part, if they had reckoned on my making my first appearance at this performance, I must anyhow disappoint the director, as I had no choice but to return at once to Leipzig, where I had to put my affairs in order.  This polite manner of tendering my absolute refusal to accept the appointment—­a conclusion I had quickly arrived at in my own mind—­forced me to practise some dissimulation, and made it necessary for me to appear as if I really had some other purpose in coming to Lauchstadt.  This pretence in itself was quite unnecessary, seeing that I was quite determined never to return there again.