t imagine what he was
there for. Every once in a while he would get up and leave the
orchestra, and dive down under the stage, and appear behind the scenes,
where we could catch glimpses of him practising with a pair of
thirty-pound dumb-bells, and testing a spirometer. Then he would come
back and re-occupy his old seat among the orchestra, and look paler and
sadder than ever. What strange, mysterious being was he? Why did he
inflict his pale, sad presence upon that galaxy of tuneful revellers?

What a cunning master the great Herr Wagner is! For what emergency
does he not provide? It was half-past eleven when the third act began.
Die Walkueren had assembled in the dismal dell,--all but the den
Walkuere, Brunhilde. Wotan is approaching on appalling storm-clouds,
composed of painted mosquito-bars and blue lights. The sheet-iron
thunder crashes; and the orchestra is engaged in another mortal combat
with that revolutionary mugwump, the small reed-instrument, that
persists in reforming the tune of the opera.

Then the pale, sad man produces a large brass horn, big enough at the
business end for a cow to walk into. It is a fearful, ponderous
instrument, manufactured especially for "Die Walkuere" at the Krupp Gun
Factory in Essen. It has an appropriate name: the master himself
christened it the boomerangelungen. It is the monarch, the Jumbo of
all musical instruments. The cuspidor end of it protrudes into one of
the proscenium-boxes. The fair occupants of the box are frightened,
and timidly shrink back.

Wotan is at hand. He comes upon seven hundred yards of white tarletan,
and fourteen pounds of hissing, blazing lycopodium! The pale, sad man
at the other end of the boomerangelungen explains his wherefore. He
applies his lips to the brazen monster. His eyeballs hang out upon his
cheeks, the veins rise on his neck, and the lumpy cords and muscles
stand out on his arms and hands. Boohoop, boohoop!--yes, six times
boohoop does that brazen megatherium blare out, vivid and distinct,
above all the other sixty instruments in the orchestra. Then the white
tarletan clouds vanish, the blazing lycopodium goes out, and Wotan
stands before the excited spectators.

Then the pale, sad man lays down the boomerangelungen, and goes home.
That is all he has to do; the six sonorous boohoops, announcing the
presence of Wotan, is all that is demanded of the boomerangelungen.
But it is enough: it is marvellous, appalling, pro