that for a single spectator, I would open the house, and
have a play acted. One part of my oath is already accomplished; your
appearance calls on me for the other. This over, I shall leave Erfurt
for ever; and if," continued he, "the fates ever discover me again
within the walls of a fortified town--unless I be sent there in
handcuffs, and with a peloton of dragoons--may I never cork my eyebrows
while I live!"

This resolve, so perfectly in accordance with the meditations I
had lately indulged in myself, gave me a higher opinion of the Herr
Director's judgment, and I followed him with a more tranquil conscience
than at first.

"There are four steps there--take care," cried he, "and feel along by
the wall here; for though this place should be, and indeed is, by right,
one blaze of lamps, I must now conduct you by this miserable candle."

And so, through many a narrow passage, and narrower door, up-stairs and
down, over benches, and under partitions, we went, until at length we
arrived upon the stage itself. The curtain was up, and before it, in
yawning blackness, lay the audience part of the house--a gloomy and
dreary cavern; the dark cells of the boxes, and the long, untenanted,
benches of the "balcon," had an effect of melancholy desolation
impossible to convey. Up above, the various skies and moon scenes hung,
flapping to and fro with the cold wind, that came, Heaven knows whence,
but with a piercing sharpness I never felt the equal of within doors;
while the back of the stage was lost in a dim distance, where
fragments of huts, and woods, mills, mountains, and rustic bridges, lay
discordantly intermixed--the chaos of a stage world.

The Herr Director waved his dip candle to and fro, above his head,
like a stage magician, invoking spirits and goblins damned; while he
repeated, from one of Werner's pieces, some lines of an incantation.

"Gelobt sey Marie!" said the Herr Stauf, blessing himself devoutly; for
he had looked upon the whole as an act of devotion.

"And now, friend," continued the Director, "wait here, at this fountain,
and I will return in a few minutes." And so saying, he quitted the
place, leaving Stauf and me in perfect darkness--a circumstance which I
soon discovered was not a whit more gratifying to my friend than myself.

"This is a fearful place to be in the dark," quoth Stauf, edging close
up to me; "you don't know, but I do, that this was the Augustine Convent
formerly, and the monks were a