After a number of tense minutes had passed and nothing had yet occurred, the artists were about to unburden their feelings in questions and remarks, when the silence was suddenly broken by a tramping of feet, and the stage resounded with a loud, though dull and by no means melodious voice.  It was the impresario Lilienfeld, in a long overcoat, his hat pushed back on his neck.  He was scolding violently and flourishing a cane.  The vision tickled the artists’ risibilities.  It was all they could do to keep their laughter within the limits of courtesy.

Lilienfeld roared and called for the porter, and thundered unmercifully at a charwoman happening to stray on the empty stage.

“Where’s the carpet, where are the musicians, where is that good-for-nothing of a fellow who attends to the reflector?  I expressly ordered him to be here at twelve o’clock.  Miss Hahlstroem is standing back there and can’t get into her dressing-room.”

A voice from the parquet—­it came from the young man that had guided the artists to their seats—­several times attempted a timid “Mr. Lilienfeld, Mr. Lilienfeld.”  Finally Lilienfeld caught the sound and, holding his hand to his ear, stepped to the edge of the stage.  Forthwith a shower of curses, which had ceased for an instant, descended upon the lad, with reinforced severity.  The reflector man came and received his dose of furious rebukes.  A man in a silk hat pushed in three musicians, carrying a tom-tom, a cymbal and a flute.

“Where’s the flower?  The flower!  The flower!” Lilienfeld now shouted into the parquet, when a hesitating “I don’t know” came from somewhere.  Lilienfeld disappeared, crying “Where’s the flower?  Where’s the flower?”

“Where’s the flower?  The flower!  The flower!” was taken up in endless echoes here and there, above and below, from the wings, on the stage, and now from the last rows of the parquet—­a circumstance which only increased the artists’ inclination to titter.

A few more lights were turned on, and a remarkable, great red paper flower was set on the stage.  Lilienfeld, now better satisfied, reappeared and entered into a conversation with the three musicians.

“Have you studied the dance I told you to?” he demanded, humming the tune and stressing the accented parts to impress it upon them.  “Now then,” he said, “let’s hear what you can do.”  He raised his bamboo cane like a conductor’s baton and said commandingly, “Well, begin.”

And the musicians began to play that provoking, passionate melody, that barbaric music, now dull and suppressed, now loud and screeching, which, ever since it first began to excite his nerves, had pursued Frederick night and day.  He thanked heaven that the darkness helped conceal his emotion.  It was that hard, convulsive motive conjuring up the demons which had been the beginning of his obsession in the Kuenstlerhaus in Berlin.  Over and again those sounds had lured him and led him on.