His acquaintances there must have found it rather
embarrassing, for it was not a usual thing in Carlstad to look at
one's friends through an opera-glass: he was the only person who did
it, and they probably all talked about it when they went home.
We were so occupied with our surroundings that we hardly thought of
the piece, though it was given with considerable spirit, if I remember
rightly. The sailors were fine, jolly tars, and the Chinese ladies
and gentlemen toddled about in flowered dressing-gowns and talked
with their thumbs, as it would appear the inhabitants of the Celestial
Empire usually do; but the house did not allow itself to be betrayed
into unseemly enthusiasm. There was an involuntary laugh now and then,
and once somebody said _bravo_, but as a general thing a discreet
reticence prevailed, and the actors might have gone through the piece
on their heads in an extravagant desire to elicit signs of approval:
they would only have received a cool little round of applause when the
curtain fell.
We, at all events, had no hesitation in telling the commissioner that
we had enjoyed ourselves immensely; and so, it appeared, had he. He
was even bold enough to call it a very fine company, and as we walked
back to the hotel at half-past nine in broad daylight, he told us what
they were going to play the next evening, possibly in the hope that we
should stay for it and he should get another seat.
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