The paper adds that there will be a fenced enclosure for many invited guests and for those who are to kick the ball; that passers-by may watch free of charge from the promenade called the Untermainanlage; and that prizes will be given to the winners before the close. The whole chorus of the house and several of its singers will frame the spectacle with live song, offering both operatic music and songs connected with the club; something from Verdi's "Traviata" is certain to be heard, and the reporters guess it will be the very drinking song in which the cup is raised. Bernd Loebe, who has long directed the house, is known to everyone as a supporter of the club; the theatre's shop already sells a scarf on which the theatre's emblem and the club's eagle are joined.

You know, my dear Calvisius, how little the races hold me, and what I once wrote to you about them: "now they cheer for a rag, they love a rag." Here is a new rag, tying two factions in a single knot. Loebe, the paper says, does not think football and the Muses are opposed. I grant gladly that the people should be drawn to the Muses; I never closed my library at Comum lest some countryman wander in. But I ask in what order they are drawn. Here the foot commands and the voice obeys: the light answers not to the song but to the kick, and the chorus, which is used to playing out the stories of kings and lovers, performs the office of the piper who accompanies a contest at the games without governing it. The Muses are present, certainly, but as handmaids, not as mistresses.

Consider, too, the front of the theatre. Agrippa inscribed his name on the front of a temple he had built with his own money, and the inscription is read to this day; here a financial house sets its title upon another's glass, on a film stuck up for two days and to be peeled off after two days. What all this costs, and who pays for the film, the lights and the chorus, the paper does not say; I, who saw the aqueducts at Nicomedia begun and abandoned, would ask nothing sooner. Nor do I object to the enclosure, for nothing is more unequal than equality itself; but by what judgment the guests are chosen, the paper does not say. If by dignitas, I approve; if by the banker's favour, I laugh, for then what is displayed before the theatre is not the order of the city but a list of clients.

The remedy is easy and honourable. If Loebe wishes to lead football supporters to the Muses, let him give them seats in the theatre, like a generous citizen of his town, and bid them hear the whole "Traviata" from the first act to the last, where that cup is raised not as a victor's prize but as the opening of a most sorrowful story; then at last he will know whether supporters become lovers of the Muses. Meanwhile, since I am not in Frankfurt, I take some pleasure in not being taken by this pleasure. For the Muses may come down to the people; they must not be bent to their feet. Farewell.