I recognized in a
minute from his photos. He said nothing to any of us, and we often
speculated as to why he did not. He must have been pleased with the
production, or he would not have shown himself; indeed we heard he was
pleased, but no word was vouchsafed us.

For our geese we had grey Pomeranian beauties and immense white birds
from Italy. The Italians, besides being bigger were more numerous; they
saw their opportunity to bully the Teutons within an inch of their
lives, and they took it. There was a tank of real water on the stage, in
which they loved to splash, but do you suppose a German goose was ever
allowed to go near it? Ominous hisses kept them away, and they hated
hissing as all actors do. The foreigners gobbled up all the food, before
the others could get it, and the only time that there was any unanimity
among them was when they were doing something they should not. One night
the largest Italian stepped into a depression near the footlights,
caught his foot, squawked loudly and passed on. The second largest
immediately followed suit; there were eleven of them, and they all in
turn caught a foot, squawked and waddled on, to the great delight of
the audience. It was agonizing for us on the stage, waiting for each
squawk.

Animals were always a trial to the performers, though considered to lend
a sure magnificence from the manager's point of view. We used to have a
pack of hounds in the first act finale of "Tannhaeuser." They always
behaved beautifully and were allowed to run without leashes. One night,
however, our little round _Souffleuse_, as the prompter is called, named
"Bobberle" by the tenor as she was as broad as she was long, had taken
her bread and sausages into her tiny pen. The dogs suddenly winded this,
made a dive for the _Souffler Kasten_ (prompter's box), scratched out
the package, devoured the contents and then politely left their cards on
the box; poor Bobberle in helpless rage prompting the while. Since that
night the dogs have been chained two and two.

We often had famous guests. Edith Walker sang several times with us, and
Knote quite as often. Schumann-Heink, a great friend of the Grand Duke's
(she told me she would go through fire for him), sang _Azucena_. She had
always been my girlhood's idol, and my ideal of an artist, so I embraced
the opportunity to send her a wreath. They said she was much pleased by
the attention from a contralto! She used some of my _Schmink_ to make up
wi