fore time for the curtain to rise. This company of buglers, in
uniform, march out with military step and send out over the landscape
a few bars of the theme of the approaching act, piercing the distances
with the gracious notes; then they march to the other entrance and
repeat. Presently they do this over again. Yesterday only about two
hundred people were still left in front of the house when the second
call was blown; in another half-minute they would have been in the
house, but then a thing happened which delayed them--the only solitary
thing in this world which could be relied on with certainty to
accomplish it, I suppose--an imperial princess appeared in the balcony
above them. They stopped dead in their tracks and began to gaze in a
stupor of gratitude and satisfaction. The lady presently saw that she
must disappear or the doors would be closed upon these worshipers, so
she returned to her box. This daughter-in-law of an emperor was pretty;
she had a kind face; she was without airs; she is known to be full of
common human sympathies. There are many kinds of princesses, but this
kind is the most harmful of all, for wherever they go they reconcile
people to monarchy and set back the clock of progress. The valuable
princes, the desirable princes, are the czars and their sort. By their
mere dumb presence in the world they cover with derision every argument
that can be invented in favor of royalty by the most ingenious casuist.
In his time the husband of this princess was valuable. He led a degraded
life, he ended it with his own hand in circumstances and surroundings of
a hideous sort, and was buried like a god.

In the opera-house there is a long loft back of the audience, a kind of
open gallery, in which princes are displayed. It is sacred to them;
it is the holy of holies. As soon as the filling of the house is
about complete the standing multitude turn and fix their eyes upon
the princely layout and gaze mutely and longingly and adoringly
and regretfully like sinners looking into heaven. They become rapt,
unconscious, steeped in worship. There is no spectacle anywhere that is
more pathetic than this. It is worth crossing many oceans to see. It
is somehow not the same gaze that people rivet upon a Victor Hugo,
or Niagara, or the bones of the mastodon, or the guillotine of the
Revolution, or the great pyramid, or distant Vesuvius smoking in the
sky, or any man long celebrated to you by his genius and achievements,
o