d
around me saying all sorts of pleasant things. The architect, Winzer,
was most cordial of all. His words, "I approve of such foolhardiness,
Herr Ebers," echoed in my ears long afterwards.

A beam had fallen on my head, but my thick hair had broken the force of
the blow, and the wound in a few days began to heal.

My companion in peril was at my side, and as my blood-stained face
looked as if my injuries were serious he invited me to his house,
which was close by the scene of the accident. On the way we introduced
ourselves to each other. His name was Hering, and he was the prompter
at the theatre. When the doctor who had been sent to me had finished his
task of sewing up the wound and left us, an elderly woman entered, whose
rank in life was somewhat difficult to determine. She wore gay flowers
in her bonnet, and a cloak made of silk and velvet, but her yellow face
was scarcely that of a "lady." She came to get a part for her daughter;
it was one of the prompter's duties to copy the parts for the various
actors.

But who was this daughter?

Fraulein Clara, the fair Amalie of The Robbers, the lovely leading lady
of the theatre.

My daughter has an autograph of Andersen containing the words, "Life is
the fairest fairy tale."

Ay, our lives are often like fairy tales.

The Scheherezade "Fate" had found the bridge to lead the student to
the actress, and the means employed were of no less magnitude than
a conflagration, the rescue of a life, and a wound, as well as the
somewhat improbable combined action of a student and a prompter. True,
more simple methods would scarcely have brought the youth with the
examination in his head and a pretty girl in his heart to seek the
acquaintanceship of the fair actress.

Fate urged me swiftly on; for Clara's mother was an enthusiastic woman,
who in her youth had herself been an ornament of the stage, and I can
still hear her exclamation, "My dear young sir, every German girl ought
to kiss that wound!"

I can see her indignantly forbid the prompter to tie his gay
handkerchief over the injury and draw a clean one from her own velvet
bag to bind my forehead. Boltze and my school-mates greeted me very
warmly. Director Tzschirner said something very similar to Herr Winzer's
remark.

And so matters would have remained, and in a few weeks, after passing
the examination, I should have returned to my happy mother, had not a
perverse Fate willed otherwise.

This time a bit of lin