o the narrow
passage choked with stones and lime dust which separated her from us. She
had fainted while trying to follow. I seized her feet, and we staggered
on, but ere we could leave the passage which led into the larger room I
heard a loud rattling and thundering above, and the next instant
something struck my head and everything reeled around me. Yet I did not
drop the blue yarn stockings, but tottered on with them into the large
open space, where I fell on my knees.

Still I must have retained my consciousness, for loud shouts and cries
reached my ears. Then came a moment with which few in life can
compare--the one when I again inhaled draughts of the pure air of heaven.

I now felt that my hair was stained with blood, which had flowed from a
wound in my head, but I had no time to think of it, for people crowded
around me saying all sorts of pleasant things. The architect, Winzer, was
most cordial of all. His words, "I approve of such foolhardiness, Herr
Ebers," echoed in my ears long afterwards.

A beam had fallen on my head, but my thick hair had broken the force of
the blow, and the wound in a few days began to heal.

My companion in peril was at my side, and as my blood-stained face looked
as if my injuries were serious he invited me to his house, which was
close by the scene of the accident. On the way we introduced ourselves to
each other. His name was Hering, and he was the prompter at the theatre.
When the doctor who had been sent to me had finished his task of sewing
up the wound and left us, an elderly woman entered, whose rank in life
was somewhat difficult to determine. She wore gay flowers in her bonnet,
and a cloak made of silk and velvet, but her yellow face was scarcely
that of a "lady." She came to get a part for her daughter; it was one of
the prompter's duties to copy the parts for the various actors.

But who was this daughter?

Fraulein Clara, the fair Amalie of The Robbers, the lovely leading lady
of the theatre.

My daughter has an autograph of Andersen containing the words, "Life is
the fairest fairy tale."

Ay, our lives are often like fairy tales.

The Scheherezade "Fate" had found the bridge to lead the student to the
actress, and the means employed were of no less magnitude than a
conflagration, the rescue of a life, and a wound, as well as the somewhat
improbable combined action of a student and a prompter. True, more simple
methods would scarcely have brought the youth with