The Lonely Way-Intermezzo-Countess Mizzie Part 10

Of course--to see us all. But as you are a little under the weather, you come foremost just now.--Well, how are you getting along, Gabrielle?

Better, are you not? (_In a low voice, almost timidly_) My love....

(_He strokes her brow and hair_) Love.... The air is so mild.

SALA

We are having a wonderful Autumn.

REUMANN

Have you just got away from the Academy, Professor?

WEGRAT

Yes. Now, when I am also the president of it, there is a whole lot to do--and all of it is not pleasant or grateful. But I seem to be made for it, as they have insisted. And I suppose it will have to go on this way. (_With a smile_) As somebody once called me--an art-official.

SALA

Don't be so unjust to yourself, Professor.

MRS. WEGRAT

You must have been walking all that long way home again?

WEGRAT

I even went out of my way some distance--to pa.s.s across the old Turkish fort.[2] I am awfully fond of that road. On evenings like this the whole city lies beneath you as if bathed in a silvery mist.--By the by, Gabrielle, I have some greetings to deliver. I met Irene Herms.

[2] The place where the Turks fortified themselves before driven from Vienna by John Sobieski in 1683 is now a small park, "_Turkenschanz-Park_," located in Dobling, one of the northwestern quarters of Greater Vienna. Only a little ways south of this park, and overlooking it, stands the Astronomical Observatory, not far from which Schnitzler has been living for a number of years. Numerous references to localities in this play indicate that he has placed the Wegrat home in that very villa quarter of Wahring, where he himself is so thoroughly at home.

MRS. WEGRAT

Is she in Vienna?

WEGRAT

Just pa.s.sing through. She intends to call on you.

SALA

Has she still got an engagement at Hamburg?

WEGRAT

No, she has left the stage, she told me, and is now living in the country with her married sister.

JOHANNA

I saw her once in a play of yours, Mr. von Sala.

SALA

Then you must have been a very small girl indeed.

JOHANNA

She played a Spanish princess.

SALA

Unfortunately. For princesses were not at all in her line. She has never in her life been able to treat verse properly.

REUMANN

And you can still bear that in mind, Mr. von Sala--that some lady on some occasion happened to handle your verse badly?

SALA

Well, why shouldn't I, my dear Doctor? If you were living at the center of the earth, you would know that all things are of equal weight. And were you floating in the center of the universe, you would suspect that all things are of equal importance.

MRS. WEGRAT

How does she look anyhow?

WEGRAT

She is still very pretty.

SALA

Has she preserved her resemblance to that portrait of hers which is hanging in the Museum?

FELIX

What portrait is that?

JOHANNA

Is her portrait really in the Museum?

SALA

Oh, you know it. In the catalogue it is labeled "Actress"--just "Actress." A young woman in the costume of a harlequin, over which she has draped a Greek toga, while at her feet lie a confused heap of masks. With her staring glance turned toward the spectators, she stands there all alone on an empty, dusky stage, surrounded by odd pieces of misfit scenery--one wall of a room, a forest piece, part of an old dungeon....

FELIX

And the background shows a southern landscape with palms and plane trees...?

SALA