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"Oh, Antoinette! would you could understand my sorrows!" "Speak, dear sister," replied Antoinette, tenderly. "Am I not twelve years old, and does not the Countess Lerchenfeld tell me, every time I do wrong, that I am no longer a child? Tell me, then, what grieves you? I will keep your secret, I promise you."
This pleased Liszt; and, indeed, I now made my way, by means of the summer theatre on the Lerchenfeld, into the capital of the Austrian empire. Of the performance itself the most wonderful accounts reached me.
A thrill of pain seemed to seize Bertha. At that moment she felt that there must be some special connexion between it and his taking part in the Mass at the Lerchenfeld Church. Perhaps some woman was singing in the Mass, who.... Ah, what did she know, after all?... But she would go to the church, yes, she must go ... she could let no other woman have Emil!
What you write to me about Count Seinsheim is done long ago; they are all links of one chain. I have already dined with, him once, and with Baumgarten twice, and once with Lerchenfeld, father of Madlle. Baumgarten. Not a single day passes without some of these people being at Cannabich's. Do not be uneasy, dearest father, about my opera; I do hope that all will go well.
He had been in Vienna at that period on his wedding tour, and had heard this Lerchenfeld performance. The young man assured me that, in spite of all superficial deficiencies, the production there had given him genuine pleasure, and had been more deeply impressive than the performance in the Berlin Court Theatre, which he had seen afterwards, and found immeasurably inferior.
As the night deepened, the ball-rooms and dancing-booths of Vienna,—the Sperl’s, Das Tanz Salon beim Schaf, and so downward to the dens of Lerchenfeld—grew furious in music, and hysterical in waltz. It was something fearful. It made your eyes twinkle, and your head dizzy, to see that eternal whirling of so many human teetotums.
If we were younger, Franzel, we, too, would mix with yonder crowd, and dance awhile. But I suppose we must leave that to our children, and betake ourselves to the card-table or to the opera-house." "If your majesty leaves me the choice," said the emperor, "I vote for the opera." The empress took his arm, while she turned to the Countess Lerchenfeld, the governess of the archduchesses.
Then, of course, I won't have to wait any longer than to-morrow morning before I can hear you." "If you want to. But it is really not worth the trouble.... That is to say, the Mass itself, of course, is very beautiful." "However does it happen that you are going to play in the Lerchenfeld Church?" "It is ... an act of kindness on my part." "For whom?" "For whom ... well, for Haydn, of course."
"No, dear, remain with me. Josepha's heart will reveal to her that her mother longs to welcome her back." At that moment a page announced the Countess Lerchenfeld. "It is not my child!" cried the empress, turning pale. The countess, too, was very pale, and she trembled as she approached the imperial mother. "She is dead!" murmured Marie Antoinette, sinking almost fainting to the floor.
Strange to say, the intoxicating waltz is gone out of vogue with the humbler classes of Vienna, its natal soil. Quadrilles, mazurkas, and other exotics, are now danced by every "Stubenmad'l" in Lerchenfeld, to the exclusion of the national dance. On the third day after this, at the appointed hour, I waited upon Prince Metternich.
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