The play proceeded, and if the rehearsal had had circumstances peculiarly gratifying to me as an individual, as an amateur of art I could not withhold my warmest approbation from this day's performance. The admirable tact and delicacy of the princess's acting, combined with the utter absence of stage-trick and conventionality, gave an unusual and extraordinary charm to her personation of a part that is by no means easy. The honours of the evening were for her and the count, and with justice, for few of the many German theatres I had visited could boast of such able and tasteful actors. Between the acts, the marshal's lady took her jestingly to task, and asked her whether, if the play were reality, she should not be disposed, without disparagement to me, to admit that the count was no despicable or unlikely wooer? "To her thinking," the princess replied, "our merits in real life might very well bear about the same relative proportion as those of the characters we assumed, and, for her part, she preferred her amiable and gentle tutor." Then perceiving, as she finished speaking, that I was within hearing, she turned away with a blush and a smile, that seemed to me like an opening of the gates of Elysium. Upon this occasion, however, the embracing scene was gone through according to the corrected version--that is to say, with the embrace omitted--but my vanity consoled me by attaching so much the greater price to the deviation that had been made in my favour upon the preceding evening. In short, I gave myself up to the enchantment of the hour: I was, or fancied myself, desperately in love; visions of felicity flitted through my brain to the exclusion of matter-of-fact reflections; I had dreamed myself into an impossible Paradise, whence it would take no slight shock to expel me. One awaited me, sufficiently violent to dissipate in a second the whole air-built fabric.
The performance was drawing to a close, when a sudden commotion arose behind the scenes, and cries of alarm were uttered. The flaring of a lamp, fixed in one of the narrow wings, had set fire to the elaborate frills and floating frippery that decorated the coxcombical costume of Count Von der Mulde. His servant, a simple fellow, who had attended him to the theatre, was ludicrously terrified at seeing his master in a blaze. "Water!" he shouted, at the top of his lungs. "Water! water! the Prince of Schnapselzerhausen is on fire!"