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A young flute-player, overcome with sleep and wine, still sat in one corner. The poplar wreath that had crowned his curls had slipped over his pretty face, but even in sleep he still held his flute clasped fast in his fingers.
He returned home with a proud bearing, and preceded by his flute-player, who played his best, amid the acclamations of the multitude, who cried at the top of their voices, 'Long live, Duilius; long live the conqueror of the Carthaginians; long live the savior of Rome! This was so intoxicating that the poor consul nearly went crazy with joy.
Excruciating discord from the flute, on three or four nights of a season, was accepted as part payment for such playing, upon every other night, as seldom had been heard from any flute in any orchestra in London or elsewhere. The theatre saw very little of the daughter. Once at the beginning of the run of every fit new play, the flute-player requested of the manager a box and always got it.
Perhaps, though, you've got some cousin that looks arter your bills?" The flute-player exchanged knowing glances with the seamstresses. All-unconscious of the taunt, Alice simply replied, "No, I have told you that I have no one to depend upon." The landlady's mouth was primly set, and she merely exclaimed, "Oh! indeed!" "I think I'll look further," said Alice. "Good-morning." "Good-morning."
She hurried Anna out into the kitchen and the flute-player could hear the key turn in the lock behind them. Sure that, for the moment, his dear child was safe, he now went to the door, with measured, steady tread, and opened it. "Come, Madame, come," he said to Mrs. Vanderlyn, who, flushed and angry, waited with small patience at the threshold.
But he had reckoned without his host; or, rather, without his musician. Hardly had he gone four steps when the flute-player, who was attached to his service by night as well as day, darted from a post on which he was seated and went before, playing with all his might and main.
I can't have people saying that my dear son's father-in-law is a shabby old musician a flute-player in a theatre. You see that clearly, don't you. How could I " "It is quite true," Herr Kreutzer admitted humbly. "I am a shabby old flute-player and you do not make it quite as bad as it is really, Madame." He looked at her and smiled a rueful smile.
The father, on his part, was growing more and more contemptuous of his son. He found Fritz cared nothing for the army, nothing for the chase, that the hardship and exposure of rough life were torture to him. Worse than that, he had discovered some verses in French that Fritz had written, and spoke of him scornfully to the men of his court as "the French flute-player and poet."
This caused much scandal in Rome, though it was an old custom of the house of Ptolemy, and suited the Egyptians. "The flute-player died. Cleopatra became Queen, and at the same time the wife of a husband ten years old, for whom she did not even possess the natural gift of sisterly tenderness.
Finally, the slave stepped out into the middle of the floor and waved his pipes in imitation of a flute-player; then, with a whip and a smock, he enacted the part of a mule-driver. At last Habinnas called him over and kissed him and said, as he poured a drink for him, "You get better all the time, Massa. I'm going to give you a pair of shoes."
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