THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
room flashed out again, I saw hundreds of handkerchiefs busy wiping moistened cheeks. There was not the slightest attempt at a demonstration of applause. The assembled multitude rose in perfect silence and sought the doors. In the little company of friends who were with me, not a word was spoken. We only pressed one another's hands as we went out. In the row behind us sat Coquelin, the great French comedian. He walked out immediately in front of me. His face wore an expression of profound seriousness. When he reached the open door I heard one of his companions ask him how he had liked the performance. Coquelin did not answer a word, but turned from his friend and walked away, silent and alone. Between the first and the second acts, according to custom, we took dinner at one of the restaurants near by. Not one of us had recovered himself sufficiently to be fit for table talk. We sat there almost entirely speechless during the whole repast.
When all this happened—1889—I was no longer young and easily excitable, but rather well past the meridian of life. I had never been inclined to sentimental hysterics. My friends around me were all sensible persons, some of them musically well educated. We had all seen and heard much in and of the world. What, then, was there in the first act of the “Parsifal” that excited in us such extraordinary emotions? It was not the splendor of the scenery; for that, however magnificent, could only appeal to our sense of the picturesque and call forth admiration. Neither was there in the action anything melodramatic that might have touched our sympathetic hearts and thus moved us to tears. The action was, in fact, exceedingly simple, and rather mystic than humanly sympathetic in its significance. Nor was it the music alone. This, when heard in the concert hall, as I have since often heard it, would indeed strike one as something of extraordinary beauty and grandeur, but it would
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