Frau Steinmann kissed me, and called me _liebes Kind_.
I got into the cab and directed the driver to go to Wehrhahn, 39.
He drove me along one or two streets into the one known as the
Schadowstrasse, a long, wide street, in which stood the Tonhalle. A
little past that building, round a corner, and he stopped, on the same
side of the road.

"Not here!" said I, putting my head out of the window when I saw the
window of the curiosity shop exactly opposite. "Not here!"

"Wehrhahn, 39, Fraeulein?"

"Yes."

"This is it."

I stared around. Yes--on the wall stood in plainly to be read white
letters, "Wehrhahn," and on the door of the house, 39. Yielding to a
conviction that it was to be, I murmured "Kismet," and descended from my
chariot. The woman of the house received me civilly. "The young lady for
whom the Herr Direktor had taken lodgings? _Schon_! Please to come this
way, Fraeulein. The room was on the third _etage_." I followed her
upstairs--steep, dark, narrow stairs, like those of the opposite house.
The room was a bare-looking, tolerably large one. There was a little
closet of a bedroom opening from it--a scrap of carpet upon the floor,
and open windows letting in the air. The woman chatted good-naturedly
enough.

"So! I hope the room will suit, Fraeulein. It is truly not to be
called richly furnished, but one doesn't need that when one is a
_Sing-student_. I have had many in my time--ladies and gentlemen
too--pupils of Herr von Francius often. _Na!_ what if they did make a
great noise? I have no children--thank the good God! and one gets used
to the screaming just as one gets used to everything else." Here she
called me to the window.

"You might have worse prospects than this, Fraeulein, and worse neighbors
than those over the way. See! there is the old furniture shop where so
many of the Herren Maler go, and then there there is Herr Duntze, the
landscape painter, and Herr Knoop who paints _Genrebilder_ and does not
make much by it--so a picture of a child with a raveled skein of wool,
or a little girl making ear-rings for herself with bunches of
cherries--for my part I don't see much in them, and wonder that there
are people who will lay down good hard thalers for them. Then there is
Herr Courvoisier, the musiker--but perhaps you know who he is."

"Yes," I assented.

"And his little son!" Here she threw up her hands. "_Ach!_ the poor man!
There are people who speak against him, and every one knows he an