The reader has learned, from the foregoing chapters, what a splendid role the French theatre and ballet were now playing at the court of Berlin.  A superb house had been built for the Italian opera and the ballet, a stage had been prepared in the king’s palace for the French comedies, and every representation was honored by the presence of the king, the royal family, and the court circle.  The most celebrated singers of Italy, the most graceful Parisian dancers were now to be heard and seen in Berlin.  These things assumed such vast importance, that the king himself appeared as a critic in the daily journals, and his articles were published in the foreign papers.  While the king favored the strange actors with his presence and his grace, the German theatre, like a despised step-child, was given over to misery and contempt.  Compelled to seek an asylum in low dark saloons, its actors had to be thankful for even the permission to exist, and to plead with Apollo and the Muses for aid and applause.  The king and the so-called good society despised them altogether.  But this step-child carried under her ashes and ragged garments the golden robes of her future greatness; her cunning step-sisters had cast her down into obscurity and want, but she was not extinguished; she could not be robbed of her future!  Only a few propitious circumstances were necessary to enable her to shake the dust from her head, and bring her kingly crown to light.

The king had given Schonemein permission to bring his company to Berlin; and by a happy chance, Schonemein had engaged the young and talented actor Eckhof for the season.  Eckhof was destined to give renown to the German theatre; he was justly called the first and greatest actor in Germany.  Alas, how much of misery, how much of humiliation, how many choking tears, how much suffering and care, how much hunger and thirst were then comprised in that one word, a “German actor!” None but a lost or despairing man, or an enthusiast, would enroll himself as a German actor; only when he had nothing more to lose, and was willing to burn his ships behind him, could he enter upon that thorny path.  Religion and art have always had their martyrs, and truly the German actors were martyrs in the time of Frederick the Great.  Blessings upon those who did not despair, and took up their cross patiently!

The French comedy and the Italian opera flourished like the green bay-tree.  The German actors took refuge in the saloon of the Council-house.  The lighting up of the Royal Opera-house cost two hundred and seventy-seven florins every night.  The misty light of sweltering oil lamps illuminated the poor saloon of the Council-house.

The audience of the German theatre was composed of burghers, philosophers, poets, bankers, and clerks—­the people of the middle classes, who wore no white plumes in their hats; they were indeed allowed to enter the opera-house, but through a side passage, and their boxes were entirely separated from those of the court circle.  These people of the middle classes seemed obscure and unimportant, but they were educated and intelligent; even then they were a power; proud and independent, they could not be bribed by flattery, nor blinded by glitter and pomp.  They judged the king as they judged the beggar, the philosopher as they did the artist, and they judged boldly and well.