“In these things, which offer the jolliest possibilities, artists nowadays are very unresourceful,” he said.  “We have naive German examples in the Gaensemaennchen, the Maennicken Piss, and the Tugendbrunnen in Nuremberg.  One of the best classic examples is the drunken Silenus of Herculaneum.  Water when combined as a mobile element with immobile works of art, can run, trickle, dash, splash, spray, bubble up, or rise up in a splendid jet.  It can hiss and sputter and foam.  From the drinking bottle of the drunken Silenus in Herculaneum it must have popped.  I have had a plaster-cast model made of the little Pompeian figure of Narcissus at the spring in Naples.  It is exquisitely beautiful.  I am going to place it somewhere in my villa.  My gardens will reach down to the seashore, and I intend to have a landing-place for boats, with marble steps and balustrades and sculpture work.”

While walking in the cold sunny air next to the slim, elegantly dressed sculptor, listening to his Greek fantasies, Frederick’s heart beat mightily against his ribs.  Whenever the thought arose in his mind that here, in this new country, after everything that had happened, he would again see Ingigerd Hahlstroem dance her dance, he felt that he was no longer equal to the trial.  The forces of his soul that had remained healthy were already rising in rebellion against anything that might increase the power of the little demon.  Nevertheless, he was so intimately connected with her, that the public exhibition of her charms tortured him, and he suffered from the anticipation of her great success.  Yet while dreading it, he fervently desired it.

The theatre was dark and empty when Ritter and his following entered.  They could scarcely see and had to grope their way after the young man that led them to seats in the parquet.  Gradually, their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and they could distinguish the vast windowless cave, with its rows of seats, its galleries and painted ceiling.  The air, smelling of dust and decay, lay heavily on Frederick’s lungs.  There were recesses in the great grotto that made the impression of gloomy holes for coffins.  Some of them were hung with grey canvas, and canvas lay spread over the whole parquet, with the exception of a few rows left free for seats for the visitors.  The stage curtain was up, and the only lighting on the stage came from a few incandescent lamps with weak reflectors, which cast only a narrow circle of light, which widened somewhat as the visitors’ eyes learned to be content with the faint illumination.

None of the men had ever before seen an empty unlighted theatre, and they felt cramped and oppressed.  For no special reason, they lowered their voices in speaking, and sat there in the expectant mood in which people always await the beginning of a performance.

No wonder that Frederick’s heart throbbed more and more turbulently.  Even Willy Snyders, who was not easily shaken out of his composure and was always inclined to make sarcastic remarks, was silent and adjusted his glasses on his nose.  He sat with his mouth open and his nostrils dilating.  When Frederick’s eye happened to fall upon him in his unwonted state of self-forgetfulness, he was amused by the comic appearance of his black Japanese head.