THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
gant picture produced by the overheated imagination of a young man charmed by a stage-goddess. I must confess that I was at first somewhat suspicious of my own sensations. I, therefore, at that as well as at later periods, repeatedly asked persons of ripe years who had seen Rachel, about the impressions they had received, and I found that theirs hardly ever materially differed from mine. Indeed, I have often heard gray-haired men and women, persons of cultivated artistic judgment, speak of Rachel with the same sort of bewildered enthusiasm that I had experienced myself. I am sure, there was in my admiration of Rachel nothing of the infatuation of an ingenuous youth for an actress which we sometimes hear or read of. If anybody had offered to introduce me personally to Rachel, nothing would have made me accept the invitation. Rachel was to me a demon, a supernatural entity, a mysterious force of nature, anything rather than a woman with whom one might dine, or speak about every-day things, or take a drive in a park. My enchantment was of an entirely spiritual kind, but so strong that in spite of the perils of my situation in Berlin I could not withstand it. So I visited the theater to see Rachel as often as the business I had in hand, which then required occasional night drives to Spandau, permitted such a luxury. Of course, I was not altogether unmindful of the danger to which I was exposing myself. I always managed to have a seat in the parterre near the entrance. While the curtain was up, I was sure that all eyes would be riveted on the scene. Between the acts, when people in front of me would turn around to look at the audience, I kept my face well covered with an opera glass examining the boxes. And as soon as the curtain fell after the last act, I hurried away in order to avoid the crowd.
But one night, when the closing scene enchained me in an
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