124.—MARA'S REVENGE.
Madame Mara was blessed with a rascally husband who persisted in too frequently looking on the wine when it was red. Notwithstanding the brutality and drunkenness her liege lord engaged in, she supported him and kept him in money for many a day. At one time this gentleman was for some offense separated from his wife by order of the King of Prussia, and made to play the big drum in a regimental band instead of the violoncello in the court orchestra.
In spite of her husband's loose habits, Madame Mara determined to be revenged on the king for this treatment, and after a while her opportunity came. His Majesty was entertaining the Czarowitz of Russia, and had arranged a grand concert as a part of the pleasures to be offered to his distinguished guest. Mara was ordered to take part. But instead she took to her bed, and sent word to the theater that she was too ill to sing.
On the evening of the concert, shortly before time for the performance to begin, a military escort was sent to her house, and the officer in charge insisted that she get up and go with him to the opera. Mara declared that she would not.
"Don't you see I am in bed and cannot leave it?" exclaimed she.
"If that be the case, I must take you and the bed too," answered the officer.
So Mara was forced to go weeping to her dressing-room, and finally to accompany the guard to the theater. Then she thought of the old saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink," and though she were made to go to the opera she determined to sing in such a manner as would make the king repent of his order.
For a good part of the evening she kept to her resolve. But suddenly the audience were astonished to notice a complete change in her style of singing and acting. She had changed from her poorest to her best mood, and she seemed to excel herself in the brilliancy of her singing and the intensity of her acting. And Mara at her best was wonderful.
The secret of this sudden change was that Mara had bethought herself that if she went on in her first careless style, the heir to the Russian throne would carry away with him a very poor opinion of her abilities, and as this would be very undesirable she suddenly changed her policy, making the king the victor after all.