Chapter IV

The whole neighborhood was in an uproar. A score of tongues were wagging, ears were cocked to hear the news, and gesticulations and cries were everywhere. Even the invalids of the white Tanneries with their ridiculous looking caps, stretched their shaky heads out of the windows in order to listen to the great news related by Mrs. Langohr, the wandering gossip-monger of this poverty-stricken district.

"A real Count has heard her on Christmas Eve, you say?"

"A Count! Naw! Something higher up, smarty," snapped the gossip-monger, raising her voice to a shrill pitch and throwing herself into the proper attitude of importance. "It was a Duke if you want to know it. Yes, he heard her, and yesterday sent his carriage for her."

"His carriage!" echoed the crowd, and fell back amazed, unwilling to trust their own ears.

"With four white horses attached to it," added Mrs. Langohr with a triumphant laugh. "A girl from our suburb, imagine!"

"Hump! that's a greater miracle than the stories of the returning Pilgrims from Rome," sniffed an old, wrinkled woman, shaking her ludicrously shaped head with a certain vehemence and "soit disant" dignity which eminently befitted one enjoying the reputation of the female Socrates of the suburb.

The nightcaps at the windows commenced to shake visibly, and a heated argument of possible reasons for this exciting event followed.

"What will he do with her?" asked the female Socrates with solemnity, wiping each wrinkle separately with a dubious-looking red handkerchief, a sign that she intended to cross-examine everybody rigidly.

"What he--the Duke will do? He will make a great singer out of her, smarty," sneered the next-door neighbor, disappearing quickly indoors, to the great disappointment of the neighbors who had gathered for the purpose of hearing the great news at first hand with all the details.

"A great singer?" asked the shaky nightcaps at the windows, with dubious smiles, ignorant of what had gone before, and looking in blank amazement at each other. "Who--who is he?"

But so it had actually happened.

Christine had attracted first the attention, then the interest of Duke Hohenlohe, and had been placed in the Vienna Conservatory of Music. Here, as a protege of one of its principal patrons, she was being carefully instructed by the most prominent singing teachers of the institution, and making extraordinary progress.

But poor Peter! He had become so downcast at the loss of his little friend, that he cared nothing for even the merriest of his former pranks, and spent his time in counting the days until he could see her again. He had promised Christine before she had gone to the Conservatory, to help her family in every way he could, and what Peter promised, he kept faithfully. But, oh! how dear Christine had become to him--how necessary to his very existence! He gladly deprived himself of even the barest necessities of life in order to be of service to her and the mother and sisters she loved.

Now--in the few months that she had been living near the Conservatory, how tall and beautiful she had grown, and what depths of expression lay in her dark, speaking eyes! Goodness! the simple-hearted shoemaker's boy felt his heart leap and tremble, when he dared to look into their sparkling wells of light, they followed him whether he waked or slept.

He saw them in his grimy little shop, talked to them when he was sewing on buttons, or knocking vigorously at the hard, unresponsive leather, and smiled happily at the visionary picture always before his mind's eye, to the great astonishment of his observing mistress.

So five years sped by--five years which seemed five eternities to Peter's love-sick heart. But these five years had developed the pretty, sad-eyed girl into a beautiful, graceful woman, with a clever vigorous intellect, and an ambition to reach the highest eminence within the grasp of true womanhood and constant endeavor in the world of song.

So there was but little time to give poor Peter, as her approaching debut was near, and Christine studied night and day, with tireless energy, the important roles which she would be expected to portray.

In the meantime, dark clouds were gathering on the horizon of the Austrian monarchy. Rebellion after rebellion broke out on the southern frontier of its vast dominions, and Peter, now of age, was enlisted as a soldier, and sent away to the centre of the insurgent provinces. He had to march with his regiment in the darkness of the night without even being able to see Christine to utter a few parting words. He was heart-broken, though what he wanted to tell her was not known even to himself. All he knew was that he loved her dearly, and that his tortured, love-sick heart was writhing and bleeding at the thought that months and months would pass before he could again set eyes on her slender, graceful figure, and lovely smiling face.

The ensuing scenes of war and bloodshed sickened him; but Christine's hallowed picture, always with him, gave him strength to withstand all horrors. She appeared as the radiant star of his life, and he was guided in his loneliness by the single hope of seeing her again. Perhaps the ignorant simple lad covered his face and wept--wept tears of despair and joy in anticipating that inexpressible happiness which the future might hold in store.