"Your highness has played a fine jest this day. Where does madame your guest sing, in Berlin or Vienna?"
"In neither," answered her highness, mightily gratified with Gretchen's success. "She lives in Dreiberg, and till this morning I doubt if I ever saw her before."
The Herr Direktor stared blankly from her highness to Gretchen, and back to her highness again. Then he grasped it. Here was one of those moments when the gods make gifts to mortals.
"Can you read music?" he asked.
"No, Herr," said Gretchen.
"That is bad. You have a great voice, Fräulein. Well, I shall teach you. I shall make you a great singer. It is hard work."
"I have always worked hard."
"Good! Your Highness, a thousand thanks! What is your name?" to Gretchen. She told him. "It is a good name. Come to me Monday at the opera and I shall put you into good hands. Some day you will be rich, and I shall become great because I found you."
Then, with the artist's positive indifference to the presence of exalted blood, he turned his back upon the two young women and roused his men from the trance.
"So, Gretchen," said her highness, when the two came out again into the garden, "you are to be rich and famous. That will be fine."
"Thanks, Highness, thanks! God grant the day to come when I may be of service to you!" Gretchen kissed the hands of her benefactress.
"Whenever you wish to see the gardens," added the princess, "the gates will be open for you."
As Gretchen went back to the Krumerweg her wooden shoes were golden slippers and her rough homespun, silk. Rich! Famous! She saw the opera ablaze with lights, she heard the roll of applause. She saw the horn of plenty pouring its largess from the fair sky. Rainbow dreams! But Gretchen never became a prima donna. There was something different on the knees of the gods.