len frocks,
patched velvet skirts, filthy cotton blouses, and French wadding.

Another time the mob in "Martha" consisted of a distempered woman, a
waiter brought in at the last minute from a herring restaurant, and the
door-keeper of an orphanage: the chorus had gone on a strike because
their salaries had been held up.

In Karlstadt the final act of the "Merry Wives of Windsor" could not be
played, because during the intermission Falstaff and Mrs. Quickly had
got into a fight, and the lady had scratched a huge piece of skin from
the singer's nose.

If these musical strollers, as acting-director Wurzelmann called the
company, nevertheless made some money, it was due to the superhuman
efforts of Daniel. Wurzelmann was always mixed up in some kind of love
affair, introduced in time a ruinous system of favouritism, and became
lazier and lazier as the weeks passed by.

Daniel had to pull the singers out of their beds to get them to go to
rehearsals; Daniel had to help out with the singing when the chorus was
too weak; Daniel had to distribute the roles, tame down refractory
women, and make brainless dilettants subordinate their noisy opinions to
the demands of a work which he himself generally detested. He had to
drill beginners, abbreviate scores, transpose voices, and produce
effects with lamentably inadequate material. And from morning to night
he had to wage war eternal against libellous action, inattention, and
inability.

Nobody loved him for this; they merely feared him. They swore they would
take vengeance on him, but they knuckled under whenever they seemed to
have a chance. He had a habit of treating them with crushing coldness,
he could make them look like criminals. He had a look of icy contempt
that made them clench their fists when his eye fell on them. But they
bowed before a power which seemed uncanny to them, though it consisted
in nothing more than the fact that he did his duty while they did not.

At the close of each quarter, the impresario Doermaul appeared on the
scene to take invoice in person. His presence was invariably celebrated
by a gala performance of "Fra Diavolo," or "The Daughter of the
Regiment," or "Frou Frou." On these occasions the buffo did not get
drunk, the barytone rested from the torments of his lawsuit, the alto
had a charming smile for the sympathetic house, the soprano was as
peaceful as a mine immediately after an explosion. Not one of the chorus
stayed too long in the caf