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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Massimilla Doni, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Massimilla Doni
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Release Date: March 12, 2005 [EBook #1811]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MASSIMILLA DONI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+                          MASSIMILLA DONI
+
+                                 BY
+
+                          HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+
+                           Translated by
+                    Clara Bell and James Waring
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                           To Jacques Strunz.
+
+  MY DEAR STRUNZ:--I should be ungrateful if I did not set your name
+  at the head of one of the two tales I could never have written but
+  for your patient kindness and care. Accept this as my grateful
+  acknowledgment of the readiness with which you tried--perhaps not
+  very successfully--to initiate me into the mysteries of musical
+  knowledge. You have at least taught me what difficulties and what
+  labor genius must bury in those poems which procure us
+  transcendental pleasures. You have also afforded me the
+  satisfaction of laughing more than once at the expense of a
+  self-styled connoisseur.
+
+  Some have taxed me with ignorance, not knowing that I have taken
+  counsel of one of our best musical critics, and had the benefit of
+  your conscientious help. I have, perhaps, been an inaccurate
+  amanuensis. If this were the case, I should be the traitorous
+  translator without knowing it, and I yet hope to sign myself
+  always one of your friends.
+
+                                                         DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+
+                          MASSIMILLA DONI
+
+
+
+As all who are learned in such matters know, the Venetian aristocracy
+is the first in Europe. Its _Libro d'Oro_ dates from before the
+Crusades, from a time when Venice, a survivor of Imperial and
+Christian Rome which had flung itself into the waters to escape the
+Barbarians, was already powerful and illustrious, and the head of the
+political and commercial world.
+
+With a few rare exceptions this brilliant nobility has fallen into
+utter ruin. Among the gondoliers who serve the English--to whom
+history here reads the lesson of their future fate--there are
+descendants of long dead Doges whose names are older than those of
+sovereigns. On some bridge, as you glide past it, if you are ever in
+Venice, you may admire some lovely girl in rags, a poor child
+belonging, perhaps, to one of the most famous patrician families. When
+a nation of kings has fallen so low, naturally some curious characters
+will be met with. It is not surprising that sparks should flash out
+among the ashes.
+
+These reflections, intended to justify the singularity of the persons
+who figure in this narrative, shall not be indulged in any longer, for
+there is nothing more intolerable than the stale reminiscences of
+those who insist on talking about Venice after so many great poets and
+petty travelers. The interest of the tale requires only this record of
+the most startling contrast in the life of man: the dignity and
+poverty which are conspicuous there in some of the men as they are in
+most of the houses.
+
+The nobles of Venice and of Geneva, like those of Poland in former
+times, bore no titles. To be named Quirini, Doria, Brignole, Morosini,
+Sauli, Mocenigo, Fieschi, Cornaro, or Spinola, was enough for the
+pride of the haughtiest. But all things become corrupt. At the present
+day some of these families have titles.
+
+And even at a time when the nobles of the aristocratic republics were
+all equal, the title of Prince was, in fact, given at Genoa to a
+member of the Doria family, who were sovereigns of the principality of
+Amalfi, and a similar title was in use at Venice, justified by ancient
+inheritance from Facino Cane, Prince of Varese. The Grimaldi, who
+assumed sovereignty, did not take possession of Monaco till much
+later.
+
+The last Cane of the elder branch vanished from Venice thirty years
+before the fall of the Republic, condemned for various crimes more or
+less criminal. The branch on whom this nominal principality then
+devolved, the Cane Memmi, sank into poverty during the fatal period
+between 1796 and 1814. In the twentieth year of the present century
+they were represented only by a young man whose name was Emilio, and
+an old palace which is regarded as one of the chief ornaments of the
+Grand Canal. This son of Venice the Fair had for his whole fortune
+this useless Palazzo, and fifteen hundred francs a year derived from a
+country house on the Brenta, the last plot of the lands his family had
+formerly owned on _terra firma_, and sold to the Austrian government.
+This little income spared our handsome Emilio the ignominy of
+accepting, as many nobles did, the indemnity of a franc a day, due to
+every impoverished patrician under the stipulations of the cession to
+Austria.
+
+At the beginning of winter, this young gentleman was still lingering
+in a country house situated at the base of the Tyrolese Alps, and
+purchased in the previous spring by the Duchess Cataneo. The house,
+erected by Palladio for the Piepolo family, is a square building of
+the finest style of architecture. There is a stately staircase with a
+marble portico on each side; the vestibules are crowded with frescoes,
+and made light by sky-blue ceilings across which graceful figures
+float amid ornament rich in design, but so well proportioned that the
+building carries it, as a woman carries her head-dress, with an ease
+that charms the eye; in short, the grace and dignity that characterize
+the _Procuratie_ in the piazetta at Venice. Stone walls, admirably
+decorated, keep the rooms at a pleasantly cool temperature. Verandas
+outside, painted in fresco, screen off the glare. The flooring
+throughout is the old Venetian inlay of marbles, cut into unfading
+flowers.
+
+The furniture, like that of all Italian palaces, was rich with
+handsome silks, judiciously employed, and valuable pictures favorably
+hung; some by the Genoese priest, known as _il Capucino_, several by
+Leonardo da Vinci, Carlo Dolci, Tintoretto, and Titian.
+
+The shelving gardens were full of the marvels where money has been
+turned into rocky grottoes and patterns of shells,--the very madness
+of craftsmanship,--terraces laid out by the fairies, arbors of sterner
+aspect, where the cypress on its tall trunk, the triangular pines, and
+the melancholy olive mingled pleasingly with orange trees, bays, and
+myrtles, and clear pools in which blue or russet fishes swam. Whatever
+may be said in favor of the natural or English garden, these trees,
+pruned into parasols, and yews fantastically clipped; this luxury of
+art so skilfully combined with that of nature in Court dress; those
+cascades over marble steps where the water spreads so shyly, a filmy
+scarf swept aside by the wind and immediately renewed; those bronzed
+metal figures speechlessly inhabiting the silent grove; that lordly
+palace, an object in the landscape from every side, raising its light
+outline at the foot of the Alps,--all the living thoughts which
+animate the stone, the bronze, and the trees, or express themselves in
+garden plots,--this lavish prodigality was in perfect keeping with the
+loves of a duchess and a handsome youth, for they are a poem far
+removed from the coarse ends of brutal nature.
+
+Any one with a soul for fantasy would have looked to see, on one of
+those noble flights of steps, standing by a vase with medallions in
+bas-relief, a negro boy swathed about the loins with scarlet stuff,
+and holding in one hand a parasol over the Duchess' head, and in the
+other the train of her long skirt, while she listened to Emilio Memmi.
+And how far grander the Venetian would have looked in such a dress as
+the Senators wore whom Titian painted.
+
+But alas! in this fairy palace, not unlike that of the Peschieri at
+Genoa, the Duchess Cataneo obeyed the edicts of Victorine and the
+Paris fashions. She had on a muslin dress and broad straw hat, pretty
+shot silk shoes, thread lace stockings that a breath of air would have
+blown away; and over her shoulders a black lace shawl. But the thing
+which no one could ever understand in Paris, where women are sheathed
+in their dresses as a dragon-fly is cased in its annular armor, was
+the perfect freedom with which this lovely daughter of Tuscany wore
+her French attire; she had Italianized it. A Frenchwoman treats her
+shirt with the greatest seriousness; an Italian never thinks about it;
+she does not attempt self-protection by some prim glance, for she
+knows that she is safe in that of a devoted love, a passion as sacred
+and serious in her eyes as in those of others.
+
+At eleven in the forenoon, after a walk, and by the side of a table
+still strewn with the remains of an elegant breakfast, the Duchess,
+lounging in an easy-chair, left her lover the master of these muslin
+draperies, without a frown each time he moved. Emilio, seated at her
+side, held one of her hands between his, gazing at her with utter
+absorption. Ask not whether they loved; they loved only too well. They
+were not reading out of the same book, like Paolo and Francesca; far
+from it, Emilio dared not say: "Let us read." The gleam of those eyes,
+those glistening gray irises streaked with threads of gold that
+started from the centre like rifts of light, giving her gaze a soft,
+star-like radiance, thrilled him with nervous rapture that was almost
+a spasm. Sometimes the mere sight of the splendid black hair that
+crowned the adored head, bound by a simple gold fillet, and falling in
+satin tresses on each side of a spacious brow, was enough to give him
+a ringing in his ears, the wild tide of the blood rushing through his
+veins as if it must burst his heart. By what obscure phenomenon did
+his soul so overmaster his body that he was no longer conscious of his
+independent self, but was wholly one with this woman at the least word
+she spoke in that voice which disturbed the very sources of life in
+him? If, in utter seclusion, a woman of moderate charms can, by being
+constantly studied, seem supreme and imposing, perhaps one so
+magnificently handsome as the Duchess could fascinate to stupidity a
+youth in whom rapture found some fresh incitement; for she had really
+absorbed his young soul.
+
+Massimilla, the heiress of the Doni, of Florence, had married the
+Sicilian Duke Cataneo. Her mother, since dead, had hoped, by promoting
+this marriage, to leave her rich and happy, according to Florentine
+custom. She had concluded that her daughter, emerging from a convent
+to embark in life, would achieve, under the laws of love, that second
+union of heart with heart which, to an Italian woman, is all in all.
+But Massimilla Doni had acquired in her convent a real taste for a
+religious life, and, when she had pledged her troth to Duke Cataneo,
+she was Christianly content to be his wife.
+
+This was an untenable position. Cataneo, who only looked for a
+duchess, thought himself ridiculous as a husband; and, when Massimilla
+complained of this indifference, he calmly bid her look about her for
+a _cavaliere servente_, even offering his services to introduce to her
+some youths from whom to choose. The Duchess wept; the Duke made his
+bow.
+
+Massimilla looked about her at the world that crowded round her; her
+mother took her to the Pergola, to some ambassadors' drawing-rooms, to
+the Cascine--wherever handsome young men of fashion were to be met;
+she saw none to her mind, and determined to travel. Then she lost her
+mother, inherited her property, assumed mourning, and made her way to
+Venice. There she saw Emilio, who, as he went past her opera box,
+exchanged with her a flash of inquiry.
+
+This was all. The Venetian was thunderstruck, while a voice in the
+Duchess' ear called out: "This is he!"
+
+Anywhere else two persons more prudent and less guileless would have
+studied and examined each other; but these two ignorances mingled like
+two masses of homogeneous matter, which, when they meet, form but one.
+Massimilla was at once and thenceforth Venetian. She bought the
+palazzo she had rented on the Canareggio; and then, not knowing how to
+invest her wealth, she had purchased Rivalta, the country-place where
+she was now staying.
+
+Emilio, being introduced to the Duchess by the Signora Vulpato, waited
+very respectfully on the lady in her box all through the winter. Never
+was love more ardent in two souls, or more bashful in its advances.
+The two children were afraid of each other. Massimilla was no
+coquette. She had no second string to her bow, no _secondo_, no
+_terzo_, no _patito_. Satisfied with a smile and a word, she admired
+her Venetian youth, with his pointed face, his long, thin nose, his
+black eyes, and noble brow; but, in spite of her artless
+encouragement, he never went to her house till they had spent three
+months in getting used to each other.
+
+Then summer brought its Eastern sky. The Duchess lamented having to go
+alone to Rivalta. Emilio, at once happy and uneasy at the thought of
+being alone with her, had accompanied Massimilla to her retreat. And
+now this pretty pair had been there for six months.
+
+Massimilla, now twenty, had not sacrificed her religious principles to
+her passion without a struggle. Still they had yielded, though
+tardily; and at this moment she would have been ready to consummate
+the love union for which her mother had prepared her, as Emilio sat
+there holding her beautiful, aristocratic hand,--long, white, and
+sheeny, ending in fine, rosy nails, as if she had procured from Asia
+some of the henna with which the Sultan's wives dye their fingertips.
+
+A misfortune, of which she was unconscious, but which was torture to
+Emilio, kept up a singular barrier between them. Massimilla, young as
+she was, had the majestic bearing which mythological tradition
+ascribes to Juno, the only goddess to whom it does not give a lover;
+for Diana, the chaste Diana, loved! Jupiter alone could hold his own
+with his divine better-half, on whom many English ladies model
+themselves.
+
+Emilio set his mistress far too high ever to touch her. A year hence,
+perhaps, he might not be a victim to this noble error which attacks
+none but very young or very old men. But as the archer who shoots
+beyond the mark is as far from it as he whose arrow falls short of it,
+the Duchess found herself between a husband who knew he was so far
+from reaching the target, that he had ceased to try for it, and a
+lover who was carried so much past it on the white wings of an angel,
+that he could not get back to it. Massimilla could be happy with
+desire, not imagining its issue; but her lover, distressful in his
+happiness, would sometimes obtain from his beloved a promise that led
+her to the edge of what many women call "the gulf," and thus found
+himself obliged to be satisfied with plucking the flowers at the edge,
+incapable of daring more than to pull off their petals, and smother
+his torture in his heart.
+
+They had wandered out together that morning, repeating such a hymn of
+love as the birds warbled in the branches. On their return, the youth,
+whose situation can only be described by comparing him to the cherubs
+represented by painters as having only a head and wings, had been so
+impassioned as to venture to hint a doubt as to the Duchess' entire
+devotion, so as to bring her to the point of saying: "What proof do
+you need?"
+
+The question had been asked with a royal air, and Memmi had ardently
+kissed the beautiful and guileless hand. Then he suddenly started up
+in a rage with himself, and left the Duchess. Massimilla remained in
+her indolent attitude on the sofa; but she wept, wondering how, young
+and handsome as she was, she could fail to please Emilio. Memmi, on
+the other hand, knocked his head against the tree-trunks like a hooded
+crow.
+
+But at this moment a servant came in pursuit of the young Venetian to
+deliver a letter brought by express messenger.
+
+Marco Vendramini,--a name also pronounced Vendramin, in the Venetian
+dialect, which drops many final letters,--his only friend, wrote to
+tell him that Facino Cane, Prince of Varese, had died in a hospital in
+Paris. Proofs of his death had come to hand, and the Cane-Memmi were
+Princes of Varese. In the eyes of the two young men a title without
+wealth being worthless, Vendramin also informed Emilio, as a far more
+important fact, of the engagement at the _Fenice_ of the famous tenor
+Genovese, and the no less famous Signora Tinti.
+
+Without waiting to finish the letter, which he crumpled up and put in
+his pocket, Emilio ran to communicate this great news to the Duchess,
+forgetting his heraldic honors.
+
+The Duchess knew nothing of the strange story which made la Tinti an
+object of curiosity in Italy, and Emilio briefly repeated it.
+
+This illustrious singer had been a mere inn-servant, whose wonderful
+voice had captivated a great Sicilian nobleman on his travels. The
+girl's beauty--she was then twelve years old--being worthy of her
+voice, the gentleman had had the moderation to have brought her up, as
+Louis XV. had Mademoiselle de Romans educated. He had waited patiently
+till Clara's voice had been fully trained by a famous professor, and
+till she was sixteen, before taking toll of the treasure so carefully
+cultivated.
+
+La Tinti had made her debut the year before, and had enchanted the
+three most fastidious capitals of Italy.
+
+"I am perfectly certain that her great nobleman is not my husband,"
+said the Duchess.
+
+The horses were ordered, and the Duchess set out at once for Venice,
+to be present at the opening of the winter season.
+
+So one fine evening in November, the new Prince of Varese was crossing
+the lagoon from Mestre to Venice, between the lines of stakes painted
+with Austrian colors, which mark out the channel for gondolas as
+conceded by the custom-house. As he watched Massimilla's gondola,
+navigated by men in livery, and cutting through the water a few yards
+in front, poor Emilio, with only an old gondolier who had been his
+father's servant in the days when Venice was still a living city,
+could not repress the bitter reflections suggested to him by the
+assumption of his title.
+
+"What a mockery of fortune! A prince--with fifteen hundred francs a
+year! Master of one of the finest palaces in the world, and unable to
+sell the statues, stairs, paintings, sculpture, which an Austrian
+decree had made inalienable! To live on a foundation of piles of
+campeachy wood worth nearly a million of francs, and have no
+furniture! To own sumptuous galleries, and live in an attic above the
+topmost arabesque cornice constructed of marble brought from the Morea
+--the land which a Memmius had marched over as conqueror in the time
+of the Romans! To see his ancestors in effigy on their tombs of
+precious marbles in one of the most splendid churches in Venice, and
+in a chapel graced with pictures by Titian and Tintoretto, by Palma,
+Bellini, Paul Veronese--and to be prohibited from selling a marble
+Memmi to the English for bread for the living Prince Varese! Genovese,
+the famous tenor, could get in one season, by his warbling, the
+capital of an income on which this son of the Memmi could live--this
+descendant of Roman senators as venerable as Caesar and Sylla.
+Genovese may smoke an Eastern hookah, and the Prince of Varese cannot
+even have enough cigars!"
+
+He tossed the end he was smoking into the sea. The Prince of Varese
+found cigars at the Duchess Cataneo's; how gladly would he have laid
+the treasures of the world at her feet! She studied all his caprices,
+and was happy to gratify them. He made his only meal at her house--his
+supper; for all his money was spent in clothes and his place in the
+_Fenice_. He had also to pay a hundred francs a year as wages to his
+father's old gondolier; and he, to serve him for that sum, had to live
+exclusively on rice. Also he kept enough to take a cup of black coffee
+every morning at Florian's to keep himself up till the evening in a
+state of nervous excitement, and this habit, carried to excess, he
+hoped would in due time kill him, as Vendramin relied on opium.
+
+"And I am a prince!"
+
+As he spoke the words, Emilio Memmi tossed Marco Vendramin's letter
+into the lagoon without even reading it to the end, and it floated
+away like a paper boat launched by a child.
+
+"But Emilio," he went on to himself, "is but three and twenty. He is a
+better man than Lord Wellington with the gout, than the paralyzed
+Regent, than the epileptic royal family of Austria, than the King of
+France----"
+
+But as he thought of the King of France Emilio's brow was knit, his
+ivory skin burned yellower, tears gathered in his black eyes and hung
+to his long lashes; he raised a hand worthy to be painted by Titian to
+push back his thick brown hair, and gazed again at Massimilla's
+gondola.
+
+"And this insolent mockery of fate is carried even into my love
+affair," said he to himself. "My heart and imagination are full of
+precious gifts; Massimilla will have none of them; she is a
+Florentine, and she will throw me over. I have to sit by her side like
+ice, while her voice and her looks fire me with heavenly sensations!
+As I watch her gondola a few hundred feet away from my own I feel as
+if a hot iron were set on my heart. An invisible fluid courses through
+my frame and scorches my nerves, a cloud dims my sight, the air seems
+to me to glow as it did at Rivalta when the sunlight came through a
+red silk blind, and I, without her knowing it, could admire her lost
+in dreams, with her subtle smile like that of Leonardo's Mona Lisa.
+Well, either my Highness will end my days by a pistol-shot, or the
+heir of the Cane will follow old Carmagnola's advice; we will be
+sailors, pirates; and it will be amusing to see how long we can live
+without being hanged."
+
+The Prince lighted another cigar, and watched the curls of smoke as
+the wind wafted them away, as though he saw in their arabesques an
+echo of this last thought.
+
+In the distance he could now perceive the mauresque pinnacles that
+crowned his palazzo, and he was sadder than ever. The Duchess' gondola
+had vanished in the Canareggio.
+
+These fantastic pictures of a romantic and perilous existence, as the
+outcome of his love, went out with his cigar, and his lady's gondola
+no longer traced his path. Then he saw the present in its real light:
+a palace without a soul, a soul that had no effect on the body, a
+principality without money, an empty body and a full heart--a thousand
+heartbreaking contradictions. The hapless youth mourned for Venice as
+she had been,--as did Vendramini, even more bitterly, for it was a
+great and common sorrow, a similar destiny, that had engendered such a
+warm friendship between these two young men, the wreckage of two
+illustrious families.
+
+Emilio could not help dreaming of a time when the palazzo Memmi poured
+out light from every window, and rang with music carried far away over
+the Adriatic tide; when hundreds of gondolas might be seen tied up to
+its mooring-posts, while graceful masked figures and the magnates of
+the Republic crowded up the steps kissed by the waters; when its halls
+and gallery were full of a throng of intriguers or their dupes; when
+the great banqueting-hall, filled with merry feasters, and the upper
+balconies furnished with musicians, seemed to harbor all Venice coming
+and going on the great staircase that rang with laughter.
+
+The chisels of the greatest artists of many centuries had sculptured
+the bronze brackets supporting long-necked or pot-bellied Chinese
+vases, and the candelabra for a thousand tapers. Every country had
+furnished some contribution to the splendor that decked the walls and
+ceilings. But now the panels were stripped of the handsome hangings,
+the melancholy ceilings were speechless and sad. No Turkey carpets, no
+lustres bright with flowers, no statues, no pictures, no more joy, no
+money--the great means to enjoyment! Venice, the London of the Middle
+Ages, was falling stone by stone, man by man. The ominous green weed
+which the sea washes and kisses at the foot of every palace, was in
+the Prince's eyes, a black fringe hung by nature as an omen of death.
+
+And finally, a great English poet had rushed down on Venice like a
+raven on a corpse, to croak out in lyric poetry--the first and last
+utterance of social man--the burden of a _de profundis_. English
+poetry! Flung in the face of the city that had given birth to Italian
+poetry! Poor Venice!
+
+Conceive, then, of the young man's amazement when roused from such
+meditations by Carmagnola's cry:
+
+"Serenissimo, the palazzo is on fire, or the old Doges have risen from
+their tombs! There are lights in the windows of the upper floor!"
+
+Prince Emilio fancied that his dream was realized by the touch of a
+magic wand. It was dusk, and the old gondolier could by tying up his
+gondola to the top step, help his young master to land without being
+seen by the bustling servants in the palazzo, some of whom were
+buzzing about the landing-place like bees at the door of a hive.
+Emilio stole into the great hall, whence rose the finest flight of
+stairs in all Venice, up which he lightly ran to investigate the cause
+of this strange bustle.
+
+A whole tribe of workmen were hurriedly completing the furnishing and
+redecoration of the palace. The first floor, worthy of the antique
+glories of Venice, displayed to Emilio's waking eyes the magnificence
+of which he had just been dreaming, and the fairy had exercised
+admirable taste. Splendor worthy of a parvenu sovereign was to be seen
+even in the smallest details. Emilio wandered about without remark
+from anybody, and surprise followed on surprise.
+
+Curious, then, to know what was going forward on the second floor, he
+went up, and found everything finished. The unknown laborers,
+commissioned by a wizard to revive the marvels of the Arabian nights
+in behalf of an impoverished Italian prince, were exchanging some
+inferior articles of furniture brought in for the nonce. Prince Emilio
+made his way into the bedroom, which smiled on him like a shell just
+deserted by Venus. The room was so charmingly pretty, so daintily
+smart, so full of elegant contrivance, that he straightway seated
+himself in an armchair of gilt wood, in front of which a most
+appetizing cold supper stood ready, and, without more ado, proceeded
+to eat.
+
+"In all the world there is no one but Massimilla who would have
+thought of this surprise," thought he. "She heard that I was now a
+prince; Duke Cataneo is perhaps dead, and has left her his fortune;
+she is twice as rich as she was; she will marry me----"
+
+And he ate in a way that would have roused the envy of an invalid
+Croesus, if he could have seen him; and he drank floods of capital
+port wine.
+
+"Now I understand the knowing little air she put on as she said, 'Till
+this evening!' Perhaps she means to come and break the spell. What a
+fine bed! and in the bed-place such a pretty lamp! Quite a Florentine
+idea!"
+
+There are some strongly blended natures on which extremes of joy or of
+grief have a soporific effect. Now on a youth so compounded that he
+could idealize his mistress to the point of ceasing to think of her as
+a woman, this sudden incursion of wealth had the effect of a dose of
+opium. When the Prince had drunk the whole of the bottle of port,
+eaten half a fish and some portion of a French pate, he felt an
+irresistible longing for bed. Perhaps he was suffering from a double
+intoxication. So he pulled off the counterpane, opened the bed,
+undressed in a pretty dressing-room, and lay down to meditate on
+destiny.
+
+"I forgot poor Carmagnola," said he; "but my cook and butler will have
+provided for him."
+
+At this juncture, a waiting-woman came in, lightly humming an air from
+the _Barbiere_. She tossed a woman's dress on a chair, a whole outfit
+for the night, and said as she did so:
+
+"Here they come!"
+
+And in fact a few minutes later a young lady came in, dressed in the
+latest French style, who might have sat for some English fancy
+portrait engraved for a _Forget-me-not_, a _Belle Assemblee_, or a
+_Book of Beauty_.
+
+The Prince shivered with delight and with fear, for, as you know, he
+was in love with Massimilla. But, in spite of this faith in love which
+fired his blood, and which of old inspired the painters of Spain,
+which gave Italy her Madonnas, created Michael Angelo's statues and
+Ghilberti's doors of the Baptistery,--desire had him in its toils, and
+agitated him without infusing into his heart that warm, ethereal glow
+which he felt at a look or a word from the Duchess. His soul, his
+heart, his reason, every impulse of his will, revolted at the thought
+of an infidelity; and yet that brutal, unreasoning infidelity
+domineered over his spirit. But the woman was not alone.
+
+The Prince saw one of those figures in which nobody believes when they
+are transferred from real life, where we wonder at them, to the
+imaginary existence of a more or less literary description. The dress
+of this stranger, like that of all Neapolitans, displayed five colors,
+if the black of his hat may count for a color; his trousers were
+olive-brown, his red waistcoat shone with gilt buttons, his coat was
+greenish, and his linen was more yellow than white. This personage
+seemed to have made it his business to verify the Neapolitan as
+represented by Gerolamo on the stage of his puppet show. His eyes
+looked like glass beads. His nose, like the ace of clubs, was horribly
+long and bulbous; in fact, it did its best to conceal an opening which
+it would be an insult to the human countenance to call a mouth;
+within, three or four tusks were visible, endowed, as it seemed, with
+a proper motion and fitting into each other. His fleshy ears drooped
+by their own weight, giving the creature a whimsical resemblance to a
+dog.
+
+His complexion, tainted, no doubt, by various metallic infusions as
+prescribed by some Hippocrates, verged on black. A pointed skull,
+scarcely covered by a few straight hairs like spun glass, crowned this
+forbidding face with red spots. Finally, though the man was very thin
+and of medium height, he had long arms and broad shoulders.
+
+In spite of these hideous details, and though he looked fully seventy,
+he did not lack a certain cyclopean dignity; he had aristocratic
+manners and the confident demeanor of a rich man.
+
+Any one who could have found courage enough to study him, would have
+seen his history written by base passions on this noble clay degraded
+to mud. Here was the man of high birth, who, rich from his earliest
+youth, had given up his body to debauchery for the sake of extravagant
+enjoyment. And debauchery had destroyed the human being and made
+another after its own image. Thousands of bottles of wine had
+disappeared under the purple archway of that preposterous nose, and
+left their dregs on his lips. Long and slow digestion had destroyed
+his teeth. His eyes had grown dim under the lamps of the gaming table.
+The blood tainted with impurities had vitiated the nervous system. The
+expenditure of force in the task of digestion had undermined his
+intellect. Finally, amours had thinned his hair. Each vice, like a
+greedy heir, had stamped possession on some part of the living body.
+
+Those who watch nature detect her in jests of the shrewdest irony. For
+instance, she places toads in the neighborhood of flowers, as she had
+placed this man by the side of this rose of love.
+
+"Will you play the violin this evening, my dear Duke?" asked the
+woman, as she unhooked a cord to let a handsome curtain fall over the
+door.
+
+"Play the violin!" thought Prince Emilio. "What can have happened to
+my palazzo? Am I awake? Here I am, in that woman's bed, and she
+certainly thinks herself at home--she has taken off her cloak! Have I,
+like Vendramin, inhaled opium, and am I in the midst of one of those
+dreams in which he sees Venice as it was three centuries ago?"
+
+The unknown fair one, seated in front of a dressing-table blazing with
+wax lights, was unfastening her frippery with the utmost calmness.
+
+"Ring for Giulia," said she; "I want to get my dress off."
+
+At that instant, the Duke noticed that the supper had been disturbed;
+he looked round the room, and discovered the Prince's trousers hanging
+over a chair at the foot of the bed.
+
+"Clarina, I will not ring!" cried the Duke, in a shrill voice of fury.
+"I will not play the violin this evening, nor tomorrow, nor ever
+again--"
+
+"Ta, ta, ta, ta!" sang Clarina, on the four octaves of the same note,
+leaping from one to the next with the ease of a nightingale.
+
+"In spite of that voice, which would make your patron saint Clara
+envious, you are really too impudent, you rascally hussy!"
+
+"You have not brought me up to listen to such abuse," said she, with
+some pride.
+
+"Have I brought you up to hide a man in your bed? You are unworthy
+alike of my generosity and of my hatred--"
+
+"A man in my bed!" exclaimed Clarina, hastily looking round.
+
+"And after daring to eat our supper, as if he were at home," added the
+Duke.
+
+"But am I not at home?" cried Emilio. "I am the Prince of Varese; this
+palace is mine."
+
+As he spoke, Emilio sat up in bed, his handsome and noble Venetian
+head framed in the flowing hangings.
+
+At first Clarina laughed--one of those irrepressible fits of laughter
+which seize a girl when she meets with an adventure comic beyond all
+conception. But her laughter ceased as she saw the young man, who, as
+has been said, was remarkably handsome, though but lightly attired;
+the madness that possessed Emilio seized her, too, and, as she had no
+one to adore, no sense of reason bridled her sudden fancy--a Sicilian
+woman in love.
+
+"Although this is the palazzo Memmi, I will thank your Highness to
+quit," said the Duke, assuming the cold irony of a polished gentleman.
+"I am at home here."
+
+"Let me tell you, Monsieur le Duc, that you are in my room, not in
+your own," said Clarina, rousing herself from her amazement. "If you
+have any doubts of my virtue, at any rate give me the benefit of my
+crime--"
+
+"Doubts! Say proof positive, my lady!"
+
+"I swear to you that I am innocent," replied Clarina.
+
+"What, then, do I see in that bed?" asked the Duke.
+
+"Old Ogre!" cried Clarina. "If you believe your eyes rather than my
+assertion, you have ceased to love me. Go, and do not weary my ears!
+Do you hear? Go, Monsieur le Duc. This young Prince will repay you the
+million francs I have cost you, if you insist."
+
+"I will repay nothing," said Emilio in an undertone.
+
+"There is nothing due! A million is cheap for Clara Tinti when a man
+is so ugly. Now, go," said she to the Duke. "You dismissed me; now I
+dismiss you. We are quits."
+
+At a gesture on Cataneo's part, as he seemed inclined to dispute this
+order, which was given with an action worthy of Semiramis,--the part
+in which la Tinti had won her fame,--the prima donna flew at the old
+ape and put him out of the room.
+
+"If you do not leave me in quiet this evening, we never meet again.
+And my _never_ counts for more than yours," she added.
+
+"Quiet!" retorted the Duke, with a bitter laugh. "Dear idol, it
+strikes me that I am leaving you _agitata_!"
+
+The Duke departed.
+
+His mean spirit was no surprise to Emilio.
+
+Every man who has accustomed himself to some particular taste, chosen
+from among the various effects of love, in harmony with his own
+nature, knows that no consideration can stop a man who has allowed his
+passions to become a habit.
+
+Clarina bounded like a fawn from the door to the bed.
+
+"A prince, and poor, young, and handsome!" cried she. "Why, it is a
+fairy tale!"
+
+The Sicilian perched herself on the bed with the artless freedom of an
+animal, the yearning of a plant for the sun, the airy motion of a
+branch waltzing to the breeze. As she unbuttoned the wristbands of her
+sleeves, she began to sing, not in the pitch that won her the applause
+of an audience at the _Fenice_, but in a warble tender with emotion.
+Her song was a zephyr carrying the caresses of her love to the heart.
+
+She stole a glance at Emilio, who was as much embarrassed as she; for
+this woman of the stage had lost all the boldness that had sparkled in
+her eyes and given decision to her voice and gestures when she
+dismissed the Duke. She was as humble as a courtesan who has fallen in
+love.
+
+To picture la Tinti you must recall one of our best French singers
+when she came out in _Il Fazzoletto_, an opera by Garcia that was then
+being played by an Italian company at the theatre in the Rue Lauvois.
+She was so beautiful that a Naples guardsman, having failed to win a
+hearing, killed himself in despair. The prima donna of the _Fenice_
+had the same refinement of features, the same elegant figure, and was
+equally young; but she had in addition the warm blood of Sicily that
+gave a glow to her loveliness. Her voice was fuller and richer, and
+she had that air of native majesty that is characteristic of Italian
+women.
+
+La Tinti--whose name also resembled that which the French singer
+assumed--was now seventeen, and the poor Prince three-and-twenty. What
+mocking hand had thought it sport to bring the match so near the
+powder? A fragrant room hung with rose-colored silk and brilliant with
+wax lights, a bed dressed in lace, a silent palace, and Venice! Two
+young and beautiful creatures! every ravishment at once.
+
+Emilio snatched up his trousers, jumped out of bed, escaped into the
+dressing-room, put on his clothes, came back and hurried to the door.
+
+These were his thoughts while dressing:--
+
+"Massimilla, beloved daughter of the Doni, in whom Italian beauty is
+an hereditary prerogative, you who are worthy of the portrait of
+_Margherita_, one of the few canvases painted entirely by Raphael to
+his glory! My beautiful and saintly mistress, shall I not have
+deserved you if I fly from this abyss of flowers? Should I be worthy
+of you if I profaned a heart that is wholly yours? No; I will not fall
+into the vulgar snare laid for me by my rebellious senses! This girl
+has her Duke, mine be my Duchess!"
+
+As he lifted the curtain, he heard a moan. The heroic lover looked
+round and saw Clarina on her knees, her face hidden in the bed,
+choking with sobs. Is it to be believed? The singer was lovelier
+kneeling thus, her face invisible, than even in her confusion with a
+glowing countenance. Her hair, which had fallen over her shoulders,
+her Magdalen-like attitude, the disorder of her half-unfastened dress,
+--the whole picture had been composed by the devil, who, as is well
+known, is a fine colorist.
+
+The Prince put his arm round the weeping girl, who slipped from him
+like a snake, and clung to one foot, pressing it to her beautiful
+bosom.
+
+"Will you explain to me," said he, shaking his foot to free it from
+her embrace, "how you happen to be in my palazzo? How the impoverished
+Emilio Memmi--"
+
+"Emilio Memmi!" cried Tinti, rising. "You said you were a Prince."
+
+"A Prince since yesterday."
+
+"You are in love with the Duchess Cataneo!" said she, looking at him
+from head to foot.
+
+Emilio stood mute, seeing that the prima dona was smiling at him
+through her tears.
+
+"Your Highness does not know that the man who had me trained for the
+stage--that the Duke--is Cataneo himself. And your friend Vendramini,
+thinking to do you a service, let him this palace for a thousand
+crowns, for the period of my season at the _Fenice_. Dear idol of my
+heart!" she went on, taking his hand and drawing him towards her, "why
+do you fly from one for whom many a man would run the risk of broken
+bones? Love, you see, is always love. It is the same everywhere; it is
+the sun of our souls; we can warm ourselves whenever it shines, and
+here--now--it is full noonday. If to-morrow you are not satisfied,
+kill me! But I shall survive, for I am a real beauty!"
+
+Emilio decided on remaining. When he signified his consent by a nod
+the impulse of delight that sent a shiver through Clarina seemed to
+him like a light from hell. Love had never before appeared to him in
+so impressive a form.
+
+At that moment Carmagnola whistled loudly.
+
+"What can he want of me?" said the Prince.
+
+But bewildered by love, Emilio paid no heed to the gondolier's
+repeated signals.
+
+If you have never traveled in Switzerland you may perhaps read this
+description with pleasure; and if you have clambered among those
+mountains you will not be sorry to be reminded of the scenery.
+
+In that sublime land, in the heart of a mass of rock riven by a gorge,
+--a valley as wide as the Avenue de Neuilly in Paris, but a hundred
+fathoms deep and broken into ravines,--flows a torrent coming from
+some tremendous height of the Saint-Gothard on the Simplon, which has
+formed a pool, I know not how many yards deep or how many feet long
+and wide, hemmed in by splintered cliffs of granite on which meadows
+find a place, with fir-trees between them, and enormous elms, and
+where violets also grow, and strawberries. Here and there stands a
+chalet and at the window you may see the rosy face of a yellow-haired
+Swiss girl. According to the moods of the sky the water in this tarn
+is blue and green, but as a sapphire is blue, as an emerald is green.
+Well, nothing in the world can give such an idea of depth, peace,
+immensity, heavenly love, and eternal happiness--to the most heedless
+traveler, the most hurried courier, the most commonplace tradesman--as
+this liquid diamond into which the snow, gathering from the highest
+Alps, trickles through a natural channel hidden under the trees and
+eaten through the rock, escaping below through a gap without a sound.
+The watery sheet overhanging the fall glides so gently that no ripple
+is to be seen on the surface which mirrors the chaise as you drive
+past. The postboy smacks his whip; you turn past a crag; you cross a
+bridge: suddenly there is a terrific uproar of cascades tumbling
+together one upon another. The water, taking a mighty leap, is broken
+into a hundred falls, dashed to spray on the boulders; it sparkles in
+a myriad jets against a mass that has fallen from the heights that
+tower over the ravine exactly in the middle of the road that has been
+so irresistibly cut by the most formidable of active forces.
+
+If you have formed a clear idea of this landscape, you will see in
+those sleeping waters the image of Emilio's love for the Duchess, and
+in the cascades leaping like a flock of sheep, an idea of his passion
+shared with la Tinti. In the midst of his torrent of love a rock stood
+up against which the torrent broke. The Prince, like Sisyphus, was
+constantly under the stone.
+
+"What on earth does the Duke do with a violin?" he wondered. "Do I owe
+this symphony to him?"
+
+He asked Clara Tinti.
+
+"My dear child,"--for she saw that Emilio was but a child,--"dear
+child," said she, "that man, who is a hundred and eighteen in the
+parish register of vice, and only forty-seven in the register of the
+Church, has but one single joy left to him in life. Yes, everything is
+broken, everything in him is ruin or rags; his soul, intellect, heart,
+nerves,--everything in man that can supply an impulse and remind him
+of heaven, either by desire or enjoyment, is bound up with music, or
+rather with one of the many effects produced by music, the perfect
+unison of two voices, or of a voice with the top string of his violin.
+The old ape sits on my knee, takes his instrument,--he plays fairly
+well,--he produces the notes, and I try to imitate them. Then, when
+the long-sought-for moment comes when it is impossible to distinguish
+in the body of sound which is the note on the violin and which
+proceeds from my throat, the old man falls into an ecstasy, his dim
+eyes light up with their last remaining fires, he is quite happy and
+will roll on the floor like a drunken man.
+
+"That is why he pays Genovese such a price. Genovese is the only tenor
+whose voice occasionally sounds in unison with mine. Either we really
+do sing exactly together once or twice in an evening, or the Duke
+imagines that we do; and for that imaginary pleasure he has bought
+Genovese. Genovese belongs to him. No theatrical manager can engage
+that tenor without me, nor have me to sing without him. The Duke
+brought me up on purpose to gratify that whim; to him I owe my talent,
+my beauty,--my fortune, no doubt. He will die of an attack of perfect
+unison. The sense of hearing alone has survived the wreck of his
+faculties; that is the only thread by which he holds on to life. A
+vigorous shoot springs from that rotten stump. There are, I am told,
+many men in the same predicament. May Madonna preserve them!
+
+"You have not come to that! You can do all you want--all I want of
+you, I know."
+
+
+
+Towards morning the Prince stole away and found Carmagnola lying
+asleep across the door.
+
+"Altezza," said the gondolier, "the Duchess ordered me to give you
+this note."
+
+He held out a dainty sheet of paper folded into a triangle. The Prince
+felt dizzy; he went back into the room and dropped into a chair, for
+his sight was dim, and his hands shook as he read:--
+
+  "DEAR EMILIO:--Your gondola stopped at your palazzo. Did you not
+  know that Cataneo has taken it for la Tinti? If you love me, go
+  to-night to Vendramin, who tells me he has a room ready for you in
+  his house. What shall I do? Can I remain in Venice to see my
+  husband and his opera singer? Shall we go back together to Friuli?
+  Write me one word, if only to tell me what the letter was you
+  tossed into the lagoon.
+
+                                              "MASSIMILLA DONI."
+
+
+The writing and the scent of the paper brought a thousand memories
+back to the young Venetian's mind. The sun of a single-minded passion
+threw its radiance on the blue depths come from so far, collected in a
+bottomless pool, and shining like a star. The noble youth could not
+restrain the tears that flowed freely from his eyes, for in the
+languid state produced by satiated senses he was disarmed by the
+thought of that purer divinity.
+
+Even in her sleep Clarina heard his weeping; she sat up in bed, saw
+her Prince in a dejected attitude, and threw herself at his knees.
+
+"They are still waiting for the answer," said Carmagnola, putting the
+curtain aside.
+
+"Wretch, you have undone me!" cried Emilio, starting up and spurning
+Clarina with his foot.
+
+She clutched it so lovingly, her look imploring some explanation,--the
+look of a tear-stained Samaritan,--that Emilio, enraged to find
+himself still in the toils of the passion that had wrought his fall,
+pushed away the singer with an unmanly kick.
+
+"You told me to kill you,--then die, venomous reptile!" he exclaimed.
+
+He left the palace, and sprang into his gondola.
+
+"Pull," said he to Carmagnola.
+
+"Where?" asked the old servant.
+
+"Where you will."
+
+The gondolier divined his master's wishes, and by many windings
+brought him at last into the Canareggio, to the door of a wonderful
+palazzo, which you will admire when you see Venice, for no traveler
+ever fails to stop in front of those windows, each of a different
+design, vying with each other in fantastic ornament, with balconies
+like lace-work; to study the corners finishing in tall and slender
+twisted columns, the string-courses wrought by so inventive a chisel
+that no two shapes are alike in the arabesques on the stones.
+
+How charming is that doorway! how mysterious the vaulted arcade
+leading to the stairs! Who could fail to admire the steps on which
+ingenious art has laid a carpet that will last while Venice stands,--a
+carpet as rich as if wrought in Turkey, but composed of marbles in
+endless variety of shapes, inlaid in white marble. You will delight in
+the charming ornament of the colonnades of the upper story,--gilt like
+those of a ducal palace,--so that the marvels of art are both under
+your feet and above your head.
+
+What delicate shadows! How silent, how cool! But how solemn, too, was
+that old palace! where, to delight Emilio and his friend Vendramin,
+the Duchess had collected antique Venetian furniture, and employed
+skilled hands to restore the ceilings. There, old Venice lived again.
+The splendor was not merely noble, it was instructive. The
+archaeologist would have found there such models of perfection as the
+middle ages produced, having taken example from Venice. Here were to
+be seen the original ceilings of woodwork covered with scrolls and
+flowers in gold on a colored ground, or in colors on gold, and
+ceilings of gilt plaster castings, with a picture of many figures in
+each corner, with a splendid fresco in the centre,--a style so costly
+that there are not two in the Louvre, and that the extravagance of
+Louis XIV. shrunk from such expense at Versailles. On all sides
+marble, wood, and silk had served as materials for exquisite
+workmanship.
+
+Emilio pushed open a carved oak door, made his way down the long,
+vaulted passage which runs from end to end on each floor of a Venetian
+palazzo, and stopped before another door, so familiar that it made his
+heart beat. On seeing him, a lady companion came out of a vast
+drawing-room, and admitted him to a study where he found the Duchess
+on her knees in front of a Madonna.
+
+He had come to confess and ask forgiveness. Massimilla, in prayer, had
+converted him. He and God; nothing else dwelt in that heart.
+
+The Duchess rose very unaffectedly, and held out her hand. Her lover
+did not take it.
+
+"Did not Gianbattista see you, yesterday?" she asked.
+
+"No," he replied.
+
+"That piece of ill-luck gave me a night of misery. I was so afraid
+lest you might meet the Duke, whose perversity I know too well. What
+made Vendramin let your palace to him?"
+
+"It was a good idea, Milla, for your Prince is poor enough."
+
+Massimilla was so beautiful in her trust of him, and so wonderfully
+lovely, so happy in Emilio's presence, that at this moment the Prince,
+wide awake, experienced the sensations of the horrible dream that
+torments persons of a lively imagination, in which after arriving in a
+ballroom full of women in full dress, the dreamer is suddenly aware
+that he is naked, without even a shirt; shame and terror possess him
+by turns, and only waking can relieve him from his misery. Thus stood
+Emilio's soul in the presence of his mistress. Hitherto that soul had
+known only the fairest flowers of feeling; a debauch had plunged it
+into dishonor. This none knew but he, for the beautiful Florentine
+ascribed so many virtues to her lover that the man she adored could
+not but be incapable of any stain.
+
+As Emilio had not taken her hand, the Duchess pushed her fingers
+through his hair that the singer had kissed. Then she perceived that
+Emilio's hand was clammy and his brow moist.
+
+"What ails you?" she asked, in a voice to which tenderness gave the
+sweetness of a flute.
+
+"Never till this moment have I known how much I love you," he replied.
+
+"Well, dear idol, what would you have?" said she.
+
+"What have I done to make her ask that?" he wondered to himself.
+
+"Emilio, what letter was that which you threw into the lagoon?"
+
+"Vendramini's. I had not read it to the end, or I should never have
+gone to my palazzo, and there have met the Duke; for no doubt it told
+me all about it."
+
+Massimilla turned pale, but a caress from Emilio reassured her.
+
+"Stay with me all day; we will go to the opera together. We will not
+set out for Friuli; your presence will no doubt enable me to endure
+Cataneo's," said Massimilla.
+
+Though this would be torment to her lover's soul, he consented with
+apparent joy.
+
+If anything can give us a foretaste of what the damned will suffer on
+finding themselves so unworthy of God, is it not the state of a young
+man, as yet unpolluted, in the presence of a mistress he reveres,
+while he still feels on his lips the taste of infidelity, and brings
+into the sanctuary of the divinity he worships the tainted atmosphere
+of the courtesan?
+
+Baader, who in his lectures eliminated things divine by erotic
+imagery, had no doubt observed, like some Catholic writers, the
+intimate resemblance between human and heavenly love.
+
+This distress of mind cast a hue of melancholy over the pleasure the
+young Venetian felt in his mistress' presence. A woman's instinct has
+amazing aptitude for harmony of feeling; it assumes the hue, it
+vibrates to the note suggested by her lover. The pungent flavor of
+coquettish spice is far indeed from spurring affection so much as this
+gentle sympathy of tenderness. The smartness of a coquette too clearly
+marks opposition; however transient it is displeasing; but this
+intimate comprehension shows a perfect fusion of souls. The hapless
+Emilio was touched by the unspoken divination which led the Duchess to
+pity a fault unknown to her.
+
+Massimilla, feeling that her strength lay in the absence of any
+sensual side to her love, could allow herself to be expansive; she
+boldly and confidently poured out her angelic spirit, she stripped it
+bare, just as during that diabolical night, La Tinti had displayed the
+soft lines of her body, and her firm, elastic flesh. In Emilio's eyes
+there was as it were a conflict between the saintly love of this white
+soul and that of the vehement and muscular Sicilian.
+
+The day was spent in long looks following on deep meditations. Each of
+them gauged the depths of tender feeling, and found it bottomless; a
+conviction that brought fond words to their lips. Modesty, the goddess
+who in a moment of forgetfulness with Love, was the mother of
+Coquettishness, need not have put her hand before her face as she
+looked at these lovers. As a crowning joy, an orgy of happiness,
+Massimilla pillowed Emilio's head in her arms, and now and then
+ventured to press her lips to his; but only as a bird dips its beak
+into the clear waters of a spring, looking round lest it should be
+seen. Their fancy worked upon this kiss, as a composer develops a
+subject by the endless resources of music, and it produced in them
+such tumultuous and vibrating echoes as fevered their blood.
+
+The Idea must always be stronger than the Fact, otherwise desire would
+be less perfect than satisfaction, and it is in fact the stronger,--it
+gives birth to wit. And, indeed, they were perfectly happy; for
+enjoyment must always take something off happiness. Married in heaven
+alone, these two lovers admired each other in their purest aspect,
+--that of two souls incandescent, and united in celestial light,
+radiant to the eyes that faith has touched; and, above all, filled
+with the rapture which the brush of a Raphael, a Titian, a Murillo,
+has depicted, and which those who have ever known it, taste again as
+they gaze at those paintings. Do not such peerless spirits scorn the
+coarser joys lavished by the Sicilian singer--the material expression
+of that angelic union?
+
+These noble thoughts were in the Prince's mind as he reposed in
+heavenly calm on Massimilla's cool, soft, white bosom, under the
+gentle radiance of her eyes veiled by long, bright lashes; and he gave
+himself up to this dream of an ideal orgy. At such a moment,
+Massimilla was as one of the Virgin visions seen in dreams, which
+vanish at cock-crow, but whom we recognize when we find them again in
+their realm of glory,--in the works of some great painters of Heaven.
+
+In the evening the lovers went to the theatre. This is the way of
+Italian life: love in the morning; music in the evening; the night for
+sleep. How far preferable is this existence to that of a country where
+every one expends his lungs and strength in politics, without
+contributing any more, single-minded, to the progress of affairs than
+a grain of sand can make a cloud of dust. Liberty, in those strange
+lands, consists in the right to squabble over public concerns, to take
+care of oneself, to waste time in patriotic undertakings each more
+futile than the last, inasmuch as they all weaken that noble, holy
+self-concern which is the parent of all great human achievement. At
+Venice, on the contrary, love and its myriad ties, the sweet business
+of real happiness, fills up all the time.
+
+In that country, love is so much a matter of course that the Duchess
+was regarded as a wonder; for, in spite of her violent attachment to
+Emilio, everybody was confident of her immaculate purity. And women
+gave their sincere pity to the poor young man, who was regarded as a
+victim to the virtue of his lady-love. At the same time, no one cared
+to blame the Duchess, for in Italy religion is a power as much
+respected as love.
+
+Evening after evening Massimilla's box was the first object of every
+opera-glass, and each woman would say to her lover, as she studied the
+Duchess and her adorer:
+
+"How far have they got?"
+
+The lover would examine Emilio, seeking some evidence of success;
+would find no expression but that of a pure and dejected passion. And
+throughout the house, as they visited from box to box, the men would
+say to the ladies:
+
+"La Cataneo is not yet Emilio's."
+
+"She is unwise," said the old women. "She will tire him out."
+
+"_Forse!_" (Perhaps) the young wives would reply, with the solemn
+accent that Italians can infuse into that great word--the answer to
+many questions here below.
+
+Some women were indignant, thought the whole thing ill-judged, and
+declared that it was a misapprehension of religion to allow it to
+smother love.
+
+"My dear, love that poor Emilio," said the Signora Vulpato to
+Massimilla, as they met on the stairs in going out.
+
+"I do love him with all my might," replied the Duchess.
+
+"Then why does not he look happy?"
+
+Massimilla's reply was a little shrug of her shoulders.
+
+We in France--France as the growing mania for English proprieties has
+made it--can form no idea of the serious interest taken in this affair
+by Venetian society.
+
+Vendramini alone knew Emilio's secret, which was carefully kept
+between two men who had, for private pleasure, combined their coats of
+arms with the motto _Non amici, frates_.
+
+
+
+The opening night of the opera season is an event at Venice, as in
+every capital in Italy. The _Fenice_ was crowded.
+
+The five hours of the night that are spent at the theatre fill so
+important a place in Italian life that it is well to give an account
+of the customs that have risen from this manner of spending time.
+
+The boxes in Italy are unlike those of any other country, inasmuch as
+that elsewhere the women go to be seen, and that Italian ladies do not
+care to make a show of themselves. Each box is long and narrow,
+sloping at an angle to the front and to the passage behind. On each
+side is a sofa, and at the end stand two armchairs, one for the
+mistress of the box, and the other for a lady friend when she brings
+one, which she rarely does. Each lady is in fact too much engaged in
+her own box to call on others, or to wish to see them; also no one
+cares to introduce a rival. An Italian woman almost always reigns
+alone in her box; the mothers are not the slaves of their daughters,
+the daughters have no mother on their hands; thus there are no
+children, no relations to watch and censure and bore, or cut into a
+conversation.
+
+In front every box is draped in the same way, with the same silk: from
+the cornice hang curtains, also all to match; and these remain drawn
+when the family to whom the box belongs is in mourning. With very few
+exceptions, and those only at Milan, there is no light inside the box;
+they are illuminated only from the stage, and from a not very
+brilliant hanging lustre which, in spite of protests, has been
+introduced into the house in some towns; still, screened by the
+curtains, they are never very light, and their arrangement leaves the
+back of the box so dark that it is very difficult to see what is going
+on.
+
+The boxes, large enough to accommodate eight or ten persons, are
+decorated with handsome silks, the ceilings are painted and ornamented
+in light and pleasing colors; the woodwork is gilt. Ices and sorbets
+are served there, and sweetmeats; for only the plebeian classes ever
+have a serious meal. Each box is freehold property, and of
+considerable value; some are estimated at as much as thirty thousand
+lire; the Litta family at Milan own three adjoining. These facts
+sufficiently indicate the importance attributed to this incident of
+fashionable life.
+
+Conversation reigns supreme in this little apartment, which Stendhal,
+one of the most ingenious of modern writers, and a keen student of
+Italian manners, has called a boudoir with a window opening on to a
+pit. The music and the spectacle are in fact purely accessory; the
+real interest of the evening is in the social meeting there, the
+all-important trivialities of love that are discussed, the
+assignations held, the anecdotes and gossip that creep in. The theatre
+is an inexpensive meeting-place for a whole society which is content
+and amused with studying itself.
+
+The men who are admitted take their seats on one of the sofas, in the
+order of their arrival. The first comer naturally is next to the
+mistress of the box, but when both seats are full, if another visitor
+comes in, the one who has sat longest rises, takes his leave and
+departs. All move up one place, and so each in turn is next the
+sovereign.
+
+This futile gossip, or serious colloquy, these elegant trivialities of
+Italian life, inevitably imply some general intimacy. The lady may be
+in full dress or not, as she pleases. She is so completely at home
+that a stranger who has been received in her box may call on her next
+day at her residence. The foreign visitor cannot at first understand
+this life of idle wit, this _dolce far niente_ on a background of
+music. Only long custom and keen observation can ever reveal to a
+foreigner the meaning of Italian life, which is like the free sky of
+the south, and where a rich man will not endure a cloud. A man of rank
+cares little about the management of his fortune; he leaves the
+details to his stewards (ragionati), who rob and ruin him. He has no
+instinct for politics, and they would presently bore him; he lives
+exclusively for passion, which fills up all his time; hence the
+necessity felt by the lady and her lover for being constantly
+together; for the great feature of such a life is the lover, who for
+five hours is kept under the eye of a woman who has had him at her
+feet all day. Thus Italian habits allow of perpetual satisfaction, and
+necessitate a constant study of the means fitted to insure it, though
+hidden under apparent light-heartedness.
+
+It is a beautiful life, but a reckless one, and in no country in the
+world are men so often found worn out.
+
+The Duchess' box was on the pit tier--_pepiano_, as it is called in
+Venice; she always sat where the light from the stage fell on her
+face, so that her handsome head, softly illuminated, stood out against
+the dark background. The Florentine attracted every gaze by her broad,
+high brow, as white as snow, crowned with plaits of black hair that
+gave her a really royal look; by the refinement of her features,
+resembling the noble features of Andrea del Sarto's heads; by the
+outline of her face, the setting of her eyes; and by those velvet eyes
+themselves, which spoke of the rapture of a woman dreaming of
+happiness, still pure though loving, at once attractive and dignified.
+
+Instead of _Mose_, in which la Tinti was to have appeared with
+Genovese, _Il Barbiere_ was given, and the tenor was to sing without
+the celebrated prima donna. The manager announced that he had been
+obliged to change the opera in consequence of la Tinti's being ill;
+and the Duke was not to be seen in the theatre.
+
+Was this a clever trick on the part of the management, to secure two
+full houses by bringing out Genovese and Tinti separately, or was
+Clarina's indisposition genuine? While this was open to discussion by
+others, Emilio might be better informed; and though the announcement
+caused him some remorse, as he remembered the singer's beauty and
+vehemence, her absence and the Duke's put both the Prince and the
+Duchess very much at their ease.
+
+And Genovese sang in such a way as to drive out all memories of a
+night of illicit love, and to prolong the heavenly joys of this
+blissful day. Happy to be alone to receive the applause of the house,
+the tenor did his best with the powers which have since achieved
+European fame. Genovese, then but three-and-twenty, born at Bergamo, a
+pupil of Veluti's and devoted to his art, a fine man, good-looking,
+clever in apprehending the spirit of a part, was already developing
+into the great artist destined to win fame and fortune. He had a wild
+success,--a phrase which is literally exact only in Italy, where the
+applause of the house is absolutely frenzied when a singer procures it
+enjoyment.
+
+Some of the Prince's friends came to congratulate him on coming into
+his title, and to discuss the news. Only last evening la Tinti, taken
+by the Duke to the Vulpatos', had sung there, apparently in health as
+sound as her voice was fine; hence her sudden disposition gave rise to
+much comment. It was rumored at the Cafe Florian that Genovese was
+desperately in love with Clarina; that she was only anxious to avoid
+his declarations, and that the manager had tried in vain to induce her
+to appear with him. The Austrian General, on the other hand, asserted
+that it was the Duke who was ill, that the prima donna was nursing
+him, and that Genovese had been commanded to make amends to the
+public.
+
+The Duchess owed this visit from the Austrian General to the fact that
+a French physician had come to Venice whom the General wished to
+introduce to her. The Prince, seeing Vendramin wandering about the
+_parterre_, went out for a few minutes of confidential talk with his
+friend, whom he had not seen for three months; and as they walked
+round the gangway which divides the seats in the pit from the lowest
+tier of boxes, he had an opportunity of observing Massimilla's
+reception of the foreigner.
+
+"Who is that Frenchman?" asked the Prince.
+
+"A physician sent for by Cataneo, who wants to know how long he is
+likely to live," said Vendramin. "The Frenchman is waiting for
+Malfatti, with whom he is to hold a consultation."
+
+Like every Italian woman who is in love, the Duchess kept her eyes
+fixed on Emilio; for in that land a woman is so wholly wrapped up in
+her lover that it is difficult to detect an expressive glance directed
+at anybody else.
+
+"Caro," said the Prince to his friend, "remember I slept at your house
+last night."
+
+"Have you triumphed?" said Vendramin, putting his arm round Emilio's
+waist.
+
+"No; but I hope I may some day be happy with Massimilla."
+
+"Well," replied Marco, "then you will be the most envied man on earth.
+The Duchess is the most perfect woman in Italy. To me, seeing things
+as I do through the dazzling medium of opium, she seems the very
+highest expression of art; for nature, without knowing it, has made
+her a Raphael picture. Your passion gives no umbrage to Cataneo, who
+has handed over to me a thousand crowns, which I am to give to you."
+
+"Well," added Emilio, "whatever you may hear said, I sleep every night
+at your house. Come, for every minute spent away from her, when I
+might be with her, is torment."
+
+Emilio took his seat at the back of the box and remained there in
+silence, listening to the Duchess, enchanted by her wit and beauty. It
+was for him, and not out of vanity, that Massimilla lavished the
+charms of her conversation bright with Italian wit, in which sarcasm
+lashed things but not persons, laughter attacked nothing that was not
+laughable, mere trifles were seasoned with Attic salt.
+
+Anywhere else she might have been tiresome. The Italians, an eminently
+intelligent race, have no fancy for displaying their talents where
+they are not in demand; their chat is perfectly simple and effortless,
+it never makes play, as in France, under the lead of a fencing master,
+each one flourishing his foil, or, if he has nothing to say, sitting
+humiliated.
+
+Conversation sparkles with a delicate and subtle satire that plays
+gracefully with familiar facts; and instead of a compromising epigram
+an Italian has a glance or a smile of unutterable meaning. They think
+--and they are right--that to be expected to understand ideas when
+they only seek enjoyment, is a bore.
+
+Indeed, la Vulpato had said to Massimilla:
+
+"If you loved him you would not talk so well."
+
+Emilio took no part in the conversation; he listened and gazed. This
+reserve might have led foreigners to suppose that the Prince was a man
+of no intelligence,--their impression very commonly of an Italian in
+love,--whereas he was simply a lover up to his ears in rapture.
+Vendramin sat down by Emilio, opposite the Frenchman, who, as the
+stranger, occupied the corner facing the Duchess.
+
+"Is that gentleman drunk?" said the physician in an undertone to
+Massimilla, after looking at Vendramin.
+
+"Yes," replied she, simply.
+
+In that land of passion, each passion bears its excuse in itself, and
+gracious indulgence is shown to every form of error. The Duchess
+sighed deeply, and an expression of suppressed pain passed over her
+features.
+
+"You will see strange things in our country, monsieur," she went on.
+"Vendramin lives on opium, as this one lives on love, and that one
+buries himself in learning; most young men have a passion for a
+dancer, as older men are miserly. We all create some happiness or some
+madness for ourselves."
+
+"Because you all want to divert your minds from some fixed idea, for
+which a revolution would be a radical cure," replied the physician.
+"The Genoese regrets his republic, the Milanese pines for his
+independence, the Piemontese longs for a constitutional government,
+the Romagna cries for liberty--"
+
+"Of which it knows nothing," interrupted the Duchess. "Alas! there are
+men in Italy so stupid as to long for your idiotic Charter, which
+destroys the influence of woman. Most of my fellow-countrywomen must
+need read your French books--useless rhodomontade--"
+
+"Useless!" cried the Frenchman.
+
+"Why, monsieur," the Duchess went on, "what can you find in a book
+that is better than what we have in our hearts? Italy is mad."
+
+"I cannot see that a people is mad because it wishes to be its own
+master," said the physician.
+
+"Good Heavens!" exclaimed the Duchess, eagerly, "does not that mean
+paying with a great deal of bloodshed for the right of quarreling, as
+you do, over crazy ideas?"
+
+"Then you approve of despotism?" said the physician.
+
+"Why should I not approve of a system of government which, by
+depriving us of books and odious politics, leaves men entirely to us?"
+
+"I had thought that the Italians were more patriotic," said the
+Frenchman.
+
+Massimilla laughed so slyly that her interlocutor could not
+distinguish mockery from serious meaning, nor her real opinion from
+ironical criticism.
+
+"Then you are not a liberal?" said he.
+
+"Heaven preserve me!" said she. "I can imagine nothing in worse taste
+than such opinions in a woman. Could you love a woman whose heart was
+occupied by all mankind?"
+
+"Those who love are naturally aristocrats," the Austrian General
+observed, with a smile.
+
+"As I came into the theatre," the Frenchman observed, "you were the
+first person I saw; and I remarked to his Excellency that if there was
+a woman who could personify a nation it was you. But I grieve to
+discover that, though you represent its divine beauty, you have not
+the constitutional spirit."
+
+"Are you not bound," said the Duchess, pointing to the ballet now
+being danced, "to find all our dancers detestable and our singers
+atrocious? Paris and London rob us of all our leading stars. Paris
+passes judgment on them, and London pays them. Genovese and la Tinti
+will not be left to us for six months--"
+
+At this juncture, the Austrian left the box. Vendramin, the Prince,
+and the other two Italians exchanged a look and a smile, glancing at
+the French physician. He, for a moment, felt doubtful of himself,--a
+rare thing in a Frenchman,--fancying he had said or done something
+incongruous; but the riddle was immediately solved.
+
+"Do you thing it would be judicious," said Emilio, "if we spoke our
+mind in the presence of our masters?"
+
+"You are in a land of slaves," said the Duchess, in a tone and with a
+droop of the head which gave her at once the look for which the
+physician had sought in vain. "Vendramin," she went on, speaking so
+that only the stranger could hear her, "took to smoking opium, a
+villainous idea suggested to him by an Englishman who, for other
+reasons of his, craved an easy death--not death as men see it in the
+form of a skeleton, but death draped with the frippery you in France
+call a flag--a maiden form crowned with flowers or laurels; she
+appears in a cloud of gunpowder borne on the flight of a cannon-ball
+--or else stretched on a bed between two courtesans; or again, she
+rises in the steam of a bowl of punch, or the dazzling vapor of a
+diamond--but a diamond in the form of carbon.
+
+"Whenever Vendramin chooses, for three Austrian lire, he can be a
+Venetian Captain, he can sail in the galleys of the Republic, and
+conquer the gilded domes of Constantinople. Then he can lounge on the
+divans in the Seraglio among the Sultan's wives, while the Grand
+Signor himself is the slave of the Venetian conqueror. He returns to
+restore his palazzo with the spoils of the Ottoman Empire. He can quit
+the women of the East for the doubly masked intrigues of his beloved
+Venetians, and fancy that he dreads the jealousy which has ceased to
+exist.
+
+"For three zwanziger he can transport himself into the Council of Ten,
+can wield there terrible power, and leave the Doges' Palace to sleep
+under the watch of a pair of flashing eyes, or to climb a balcony from
+which a fair hand has hung a silken ladder. He can love a woman to
+whom opium lends such poetic grace as we women of flesh and blood
+could never show.
+
+"Presently he turns over, and he is face to face with the dreadful
+frown of the senator, who holds a dagger. He hears the blade plunged
+into his mistress' heart. She dies smiling on him; for she has saved
+him.
+
+"And she is a happy woman!" added the Duchess, looking at Emilio.
+
+"He escapes and flies to command the Dalmatians, to conquer the
+Illyrian coast for his beloved Venice. His glory wins him forgiveness,
+and he enjoys a life of domestic happiness,--a home, a winter evening,
+a young wife and charming children, who pray to San Marco under the
+care of an old nurse. Yes, for three francs' worth of opium he
+furnishes our empty arsenal, he watches convoys of merchandise coming
+in, going to the four quarters of the world. The forces of modern
+industry no longer reign in London, but in his own Venice, where the
+hanging gardens of Semiramis, the Temple of Jerusalem, the marvels of
+Rome, live once more. He adds to the glories of the middle ages by the
+labors of steam, by new masterpieces of art under the protection of
+Venice, who protected it of old. Monuments and nations crowd into his
+little brain; there is room for them all. Empires and cities and
+revolutions come and vanish in the course of a few hours, while Venice
+alone expands and lives; for the Venice of his dreams is the empress
+of the seas. She has two millions of inhabitants, the sceptre of
+Italy, the mastery of the Mediterranean and the Indies!"
+
+"What an opera is the brain of man! What an unfathomed abyss!--even to
+those who, like Gall, have mapped it out," cried the physician.
+
+"Dear Duchess," said Vendramin, "do not omit the last service that my
+elixir will do me. After hearing ravishing voices and imbibing music
+through every pore, after experiencing the keenest pleasures and the
+fiercest delights of Mahomet's paradise, I see none but the most
+terrible images. I have visions of my beloved Venice full of
+children's faces, distorted, like those of the dying; of women covered
+with dreadful wounds, torn and wailing; of men mangled and crushed by
+the copper sides of crashing vessels. I begin to see Venice as she is,
+shrouded in crape, stripped, robbed, destitute. Pale phantoms wander
+through her streets!
+
+"Already the Austrian soldiers are grinning over me, already my
+visionary life is drifting into real life; whereas six months ago real
+life was the bad dream, and the life of opium held love and bliss,
+important affairs and political interests. Alas! To my grief, I see
+the dawn over my tomb, where truth and falsehood mingle in a dubious
+light, which is neither day nor darkness, but partakes of both."
+
+"So you see that in this head there is too much patriotism," said the
+Prince, laying his hand on the thick black curls that fell on
+Vendramin's brow.
+
+"Oh, if he loves us he will give up his dreadful opium!" said
+Massimilla.
+
+"I will cure your friend," said the Frenchman.
+
+"Achieve that, and we shall love you," said the Duchess. "But if on
+your return to France you do not calumniate us, we shall love you even
+better. The hapless Italians are too much crushed by foreign dominion
+to be fairly judged--for we have known yours," she added, with a
+smile.
+
+"It was more generous than Austria's," said the physician, eagerly.
+
+"Austria squeezes and gives us nothing back, and you squeeze to
+enlarge and beautify our towns; you stimulated us by giving us an
+army. You thought you could keep Italy, and they expect to lose it
+--there lies the difference.
+
+"The Austrians provide us with a sort of ease that is as stultifying
+and heavy as themselves, while you overwhelmed us by your devouring
+energy. But whether we die of tonics or of narcotics, what does it
+matter? It is death all the same, Monsieur le docteur."
+
+"Unhappy Italy! In my eyes she is like a beautiful woman whom France
+ought to protect by making her his mistress," exclaimed the Frenchman.
+
+"But you could not love us as we wish to be loved," said the Duchess,
+smiling. "We want to be free. But the liberty I crave is not your
+ignoble and middle-class liberalism, which would kill all art. I ask,"
+said she, in a tone that thrilled through the box,--"that is to say, I
+would ask,--that each Italian republic should be resuscitated, with
+its nobles, its citizens, its special privileges for each caste. I
+would have the old aristocratic republics once more with their
+intestine warfare and rivalry that gave birth to the noblest works of
+art, that created politics, that raised up the great princely houses.
+By extending the action of one government over a vast expanse of
+country it is frittered down. The Italian republics were the glory of
+Europe in the middle ages. Why has Italy succumbed when the Swiss, who
+were her porters, have triumphed?"
+
+"The Swiss republics," said the doctor, "were worthy housewives, busy
+with their own little concerns, and neither having any cause for
+envying another. Your republics were haughty queens, preferring to
+sell themselves rather than bow to a neighbor; they fell too low ever
+to rise again. The Guelphs are triumphant."
+
+"Do not pity us too much," said the Duchess, in a voice that made the
+two friends start. "We are still supreme. Even in the depths of her
+misfortune Italy governs through the choicer spirits that abound in
+her cities.
+
+"Unfortunately the greater number of her geniuses learn to understand
+life so quickly that they lie sunk in poverty-stricken pleasure. As
+for those who are willing to play the melancholy game for immortality,
+they know how to get at your gold and to secure your praises. Ay, in
+this land--pitied for its fallen state by traveled simpletons and
+hypocritical poets, while its character is traduced by politicians--in
+this land, which appears so languid, powerless, and ruinous, worn out
+rather than old, there are puissant brains in every branch of life,
+genius throwing out vigorous shoots as an old vine-stock throws out
+canes productive of delicious fruit. This race of ancient rulers still
+gives birth to kings--Lagrange, Volta, Rasori, Canova, Rossini,
+Bartolini, Galvani, Vigano, Beccaria, Cicognara, Corvetto. These
+Italians are masters of the scientific peaks on which they stand, or
+of the arts to which they devote themselves. To say nothing of the
+singers and executants who captivate Europe by their amazing
+perfections: Taglioni, Paganini, and the rest. Italy still rules the
+world which will always come to worship her.
+
+"Go to Florian's to-night; you will find in Capraja one of our
+cleverest men, but in love with obscurity. No one but the Duke, my
+master, understands music so thoroughly as he does; indeed he is known
+here as _il Fanatico_."
+
+After sitting a few minutes listening to the eager war of words
+between the physician and the Duchess, who showed much ingenious
+eloquence, the Italians, one by one, took leave, and went off to tell
+the news in every box, that la Cataneo, who was regarded as a woman of
+great wit and spirit, had, on the question of Italy, defeated a famous
+French doctor. This was the talk of the evening.
+
+As soon as the Frenchman found himself alone with the Duchess and the
+Prince, he understood that they were to be left together, and took
+leave. Massimilla bowed with a bend of the neck that placed him at
+such a distance that this salute might have secured her the man's
+hatred, if he could have ignored the charm of her eloquence and
+beauty.
+
+Thus at the end of the opera, Emilio and Massimilla were alone, and
+holding hands they listened together to the duet that finishes _Il
+Barbiere_.
+
+"There is nothing but music to express love," said the Duchess, moved
+by that song as of two rapturous nightingales.
+
+A tear twinkled in Emilio's eye; Massimilla, sublime in such beauty as
+beams in Raphael's Saint-Cecilia, pressed his hand, their knees
+touched, there was, as it seemed, the blossom of a kiss on her lips.
+The Prince saw on her blushing face a glow of joy like that which on a
+summer's day shines down on the golden harvest; his heart seemed
+bursting with the tide of blood that rushed to it. He fancied that he
+could hear an angelic chorus of voices, and he would have given his
+life to feel the fire of passion which at this hour last night had
+filled him for the odious Clarina; but he was at the moment hardly
+conscious of having a body.
+
+Massimilla, much distressed, ascribed this tear, in her guilelessness,
+to the remark she had made as to Genovese's cavatina.
+
+"But, _carino_," said she in Emilio's ear, "are not you as far better
+than every expression of love, as cause is superior to effect?"
+
+After handing the Duchess to her gondola, Emilio waited for Vendramin
+to go to Florian's.
+
+
+
+The Cafe Florian at Venice is a quite undefinable institution.
+Merchants transact their business there, and lawyers meet to talk over
+their most difficult cases. Florian's is at once an Exchange, a
+green-room, a newspaper office, a club, a confessional,--and it is so
+well adapted to the needs of the place that some Venetian women never
+know what their husband's business may be, for, if they have a letter
+to write, they go to write it there.
+
+Spies, of course, abound at Florian's; but their presence only
+sharpens Venetian wits, which may here exercise the discretion once so
+famous. A great many persons spend the whole day at Florian's; in
+fact, to some men Florian's is so much a matter of necessity, that
+between the acts of an opera they leave the ladies in their boxes and
+take a turn to hear what is going on there.
+
+While the two friends were walking in the narrow streets of the
+Merceria they did not speak, for there were too many people; but as
+they turned into the Piazzi di San Marco, the Prince said:
+
+"Do not go at once to the cafe. Let us walk about; I want to talk to
+you."
+
+He related his adventure with Clarina and explained his position. To
+Vendramin Emilio's despair seemed so nearly allied to madness that he
+promised to cure him completely if only he would give him _carte
+blanche_ to deal with Massimilla. This ray of hope came just in time
+to save Emilio from drowning himself that night; for, indeed, as he
+remembered the singer, he felt a horrible wish to go back to her.
+
+The two friends then went to an inner room at Florian's, where they
+listened to the conversation of some of the superior men of the town,
+who discoursed the subjects of the day. The most interesting of these
+were, in the first place, the eccentricities of Lord Byron, of whom
+the Venetians made great sport; then Cataneo's attachment for la
+Tinti, for which no reason could be assigned after twenty different
+causes had been suggested; then Genovese's debut; finally, the tilting
+match between the Duchess and the French doctor. Just as the
+discussion became vehemently musical, Duke Cataneo made his
+appearance. He bowed very courteously to Emilio, which seemed so
+natural that no one noticed it, and Emilio bowed gravely in return.
+Cataneo looked round to see if there was anybody he knew, recognized
+Vendramin and greeted him, bowed to his banker, a rich patrician, and
+finally to the man who happened to be speaking,--a celebrated musical
+fanatic, a friend of the Comtesse Albrizzi. Like some others who
+frequented Florian's, his mode of life was absolutely unknown, so
+carefully did he conceal it. Nothing was known about him but what he
+chose to tell.
+
+This was Capraja, the nobleman whom the Duchess had mentioned to the
+French doctor. This Venetian was one of a class of dreamers whose
+powerful minds divine everything. He was an eccentric theorist, and
+cared no more for celebrity than for a broken pipe.
+
+His life was in accordance with his ideas. Capraja made his appearance
+at about ten every morning under the _Procuratie_, without anyone
+knowing whence he came. He lounged about Venice, smoking cigars. He
+regularly went to the Fenice, sitting in the pit-stalls, and between
+the acts went round to Florian's, where he took three or four cups of
+coffee a day; and he ended the evening at the cafe, never leaving it
+till about two in the morning. Twelve hundred francs a year paid all
+his expenses; he ate but one meal a day at an eating-house in the
+Merceria, where the cook had his dinner ready for him at a fixed hour,
+on a little table at the back of the shop; the pastry-cook's daughter
+herself prepared his stuffed oysters, provided him with cigars, and
+took care of his money. By his advice, this girl, though she was very
+handsome, would never countenance a lover, lived very steadily, and
+still wore the old Venetian costume. This purely-bred Venetian girl
+was twelve years old when Capraja first took an interest in her, and
+six-and-twenty when he died. She was very fond of him, though he had
+never even kissed her hand or her brow, and she knew nothing whatever
+of the poor old nobleman's intentions with regard to her. The girl had
+at last as complete control of the old gentleman as a mother has of
+her child; she would tell him when he wanted clean linen; next day he
+would come without a shirt, and she would give him a clean one to put
+on in the morning.
+
+He never looked at a woman either in the theatre or out walking.
+Though he was the descendant of an old patrician family he never
+thought his rank worth mentioning. But at night, after twelve, he
+awoke from his apathy, talked, and showed that he had seen and heard
+everything. This peaceful Diogenes, quite incapable of explaining his
+tenets, half a Turk, half a Venetian, was thick-set, short, and fat;
+he had a Doge's sharp nose, an inquisitive, satirical eye, and a
+discreet though smiling mouth.
+
+When he died, it became known that he had lived in a little den near
+San Benedetto. He had two million francs invested in the funds of
+various countries of Europe, and had left the interest untouched ever
+since he had first bought the securities in 1814, so the sum was now
+enormous, alike from the increased value of the capital and the
+accumulated interest. All this money was left to the pastry-cook's
+daughter.
+
+"Genovese," he was saying, "will do wonders. Whether he really
+understands the great end of music, or acts only on instinct, I know
+not; but he is the first singer who ever satisfied me. I shall not die
+without hearing a _cadenza_ executed as I have heard them in my
+dreams, waking with a feeling as though the sounds were floating in
+the air. The clear _cadenza_ is the highest achievement of art; it is
+the arabesque, decorating the finest room in the house; a shade too
+little and it is nothing, a touch too much and all is confusion. Its
+task is to awake in the soul a thousand dormant ideas; it flies up and
+sweeps through space, scattering seeds in the air to be taken in by
+our ears and blossom in our heart. Believe me, in painting his
+Saint-Cecilia, Raphael gave the preference to music over poetry. And he
+was right; music appeals to the heart, whereas writing is addressed to
+the intellect; it communicates ideas directly, like a perfume. The
+singer's voice impinges not on the mind, not on the memory of
+happiness, but on the first principle of thought; it stirs the
+elements of sensation.
+
+"It is a grievous thing that the populace should have compelled
+musicians to adapt their expression to words, to factitious emotions;
+but then they were not otherwise intelligible to the vulgar. Thus the
+_cadenza_ is the only thing left to the lovers of pure music, the
+devotees of unfettered art. To-night, as I listened to that last
+_cavatina_, I felt as if I were beckoned by a fair creature whose look
+alone had made me young again. The enchantress placed a crown on my
+brow, and led me to the ivory door through which we pass to the
+mysterious land of day-dreams. I owe it to Genovese that I escaped for
+a few minutes from this old husk--minutes, short no doubt by the
+clock, but very long by the record of sensation. For a brief
+spring-time, scented with roses, I was young again--and beloved!"
+
+"But you are mistaken, _caro_ Capraja," said the Duke. "There is in
+music an effect yet more magical than that of the _cadenza_."
+
+"What is that?" asked Capraja.
+
+"The unison of two voices, or of a voice and a violin,--the instrument
+which has tones most nearly resembling those of the human voice,"
+replied Cataneo. "This perfect concord bears us on to the very heart
+of life, on the tide of elements which can resuscitate rapture and
+carry man up to the centre of the luminous sphere where his mind can
+command the whole universe. You still need a _thema_, Capraja, but the
+pure element is enough for me. You need that the current should flow
+through the myriad canals of the machine to fall in dazzling cascades,
+while I am content with the pure tranquil pool. My eye gazes across a
+lake without a ripple. I can embrace the infinite."
+
+"Speak no more, Cataneo," said Capraja, haughtily. "What! Do you fail
+to see the fairy, who, in her swift rush through the sparkling
+atmosphere, collects and binds with the golden thread of harmony, the
+gems of melody she smilingly sheds on us? Have you ever felt the touch
+of her wand, as she says to Curiosity, 'Awake!' The divinity rises up
+radiant from the depths of the brain; she flies to her store of
+wonders and fingers them lightly as an organist touches the keys.
+Suddenly, up starts Memory, bringing us the roses of the past,
+divinely preserved and still fresh. The mistress of our youth revives,
+and strokes the young man's hair. Our heart, too full, overflows; we
+see the flowery banks of the torrent of love. Every burning bush we
+ever knew blazes afresh, and repeats the heavenly words we once heard
+and understood. The voice rolls on; it embraces in its rapid turns
+those fugitive horizons, and they shrink away; they vanish, eclipsed
+by newer and deeper joys--those of an unrevealed future, to which the
+fairy points as she returns to the blue heaven."
+
+"And you," retorted Cataneo, "have you never seen the direct ray of a
+star opening the vistas above; have you never mounted on that beam
+which guides you to the sky, to the heart of the first causes which
+move the worlds?"
+
+To their hearers, the Duke and Capraja were playing a game of which
+the premises were unknown.
+
+"Genovese's voice thrills through every fibre," said Capraja.
+
+"And la Tinti's fires the blood," replied the Duke.
+
+"What a paraphrase of happy love is that _cavatina_!" Capraja went on.
+"Ah! Rossini was young when he wrote that interpretation of
+effervescent ecstasy. My heart filled with renewed blood, a thousand
+cravings tingled in my veins. Never have sounds more angelic delivered
+me more completely from my earthly bonds! Never did the fairy wave
+more beautiful arms, smile more invitingly, lift her tunic more
+cunningly to display an ankle, raising the curtain that hides my other
+life!"
+
+"To-morrow, my old friend," replied Cataneo, "you shall ride on the
+back of a dazzling, white swan, who will show you the loveliest land
+there is; you shall see the spring-time as children see it. Your heart
+shall open to the radiance of a new sun; you shall sleep on crimson
+silk, under the gaze of a Madonna; you shall feel like a happy lover
+gently kissed by a nymph whose bare feet you still may see, but who is
+about to vanish. That swan will be the voice of Genovese, if he can
+unite it to its Leda, the voice of Clarina. To-morrow night we are to
+hear _Mose_, the grandest opera produced by Italy's greatest genius."
+
+All present left the conversation to the Duke and Capraja, not wishing
+to be the victims of mystification. Only Vendramin and the French
+doctor listened to them for a few minutes. The opium-smoker understood
+these poetic flights; he had the key of the palace where those two
+sensuous imaginations were wandering. The doctor, too, tried to
+understand, and he understood, for he was one of the Pleiades of
+genius belonging to the Paris school of medicine, from which a true
+physician comes out as much a metaphysician as an accomplished
+analyst.
+
+"Do you understand them?" said Emilio to Vendramin as they left the
+cafe at two in the morning.
+
+"Yes, my dear boy," said Vendramin, taking Emilio home with him.
+"Those two men are of the legion of unearthly spirits to whom it is
+given here below to escape from the wrappings of the flesh, who can
+fly on the shoulders of the queen of witchcraft up to the blue
+empyrean where the sublime marvels are wrought of the intellectual
+life; they, by the power of art, can soar whither your immense love
+carries you, whither opium transports me. Then none can understand
+them but those who are like them.
+
+"I, who can inspire my soul by such base means, who can pack a hundred
+years of life into a single night, I can understand those lofty
+spirits when they talk of that glorious land, deemed a realm of
+chimeras by some who think themselves wise; but the realm of reality
+to us whom they think mad. Well, the Duke and Capraja, who were
+acquainted at Naples,--where Cataneo was born,--are mad about music."
+
+"But what is that strange system that Capraja was eager to explain to
+the Duke? Did you understand?"
+
+"Yes," replied Vendramin. "Capraja's great friend is a musician from
+Cremona, lodging in the Capello palace, who has a theory that sounds
+meet with an element in man, analogous to that which produces ideas.
+According to him, man has within him keys acted on by sound, and
+corresponding to his nerve-centres, where ideas and sensations take
+their rise. Capraja, who regards the arts as an assemblage of means by
+which he can harmonize, in himself, all external nature with another
+mysterious nature that he calls the inner life, shares all ideas of
+this instrument-maker, who at this moment is composing an opera.
+
+"Conceive of a sublime creation, wherein the marvels of the visible
+universe are reproduced with immeasurable grandeur, lightness,
+swiftness, and extension; wherein sensation is infinite, and whither
+certain privileged natures, possessed of divine powers, are able to
+penetrate, and you will have some notion of the ecstatic joys of which
+Cataneo and Capraja were speaking; both poets, each for himself alone.
+Only, in matters of the intellect, as soon as a man can rise above the
+sphere where plastic art is produced by a process of imitation, and
+enter into that transcendental sphere of abstractions where everything
+is understood as an elementary principle, and seen in the omnipotence
+of results, that man is no longer intelligible to ordinary minds."
+
+"You have thus explained my love for Massimilla," said Emilio. "There
+is in me, my friend, a force which awakes under the fire of her look,
+at her lightest touch, and wafts me to a world of light where effects
+are produced of which I dare not speak. It has seemed to me often that
+the delicate tissue of her skin has stamped flowers on mine as her
+hand lies on my hand. Her words play on those inner keys in me, of
+which you spoke. Desire excites my brain, stirring that invisible
+world, instead of exciting my passive flesh; the air seems red and
+sparkling, unknown perfumes of indescribable strength relax my sinews,
+roses wreathe my temples, and I feel as though my blood were escaping
+through opened arteries, so complete is my inanition."
+
+"That is the effect on me of smoking opium," replied Vendramin.
+
+"Then do you wish to die?" cried Emilio, in alarm.
+
+"With Venice!" said Vendramin, waving his hand in the direction of San
+Marco. "Can you see a single pinnacle or spire that stands straight?
+Do you not perceive that the sea is claiming its prey?"
+
+The Prince bent his head; he dared no more speak to his friend of
+love.
+
+To know what a free country means, you must have traveled in a
+conquered land.
+
+When they reached the Palazzo Vendramin, they saw a gondola moored at
+the water-gate. The Prince put his arm round Vendramin and clasped him
+affectionately, saying:
+
+"Good-night to you, my dear fellow!"
+
+"What! a woman? for me, whose only love is Venice?" exclaimed Marco.
+
+At this instant the gondolier, who was leaning against a column,
+recognizing the man he was to look out for, murmured in Emilio's ear:
+
+"The Duchess, monseigneur."
+
+Emilio sprang into the gondola, where he was seized in a pair of soft
+arms--an embrace of iron--and dragged down on to the cushions, where
+he felt the heaving bosom of an ardent woman. And then he was no more
+Emilio, but Clarina's lover; for his ideas and feelings were so
+bewildering that he yielded as if stupefied by her first kiss.
+
+"Forgive this trick, my beloved," said the Sicilian. "I shall die if
+you do not come with me."
+
+And the gondola flew over the secret water.
+
+
+
+At half-past seven on the following evening, the spectators were again
+in their places in the theatre, excepting that those in the pit always
+took their chances of where they might sit. Old Capraja was in
+Cataneo's box.
+
+Before the overture the Duke paid a call on the Duchess; he made a
+point of standing behind her and leaving the front seat to Emilio next
+the Duchess. He made a few trivial remarks, without sarcasm or
+bitterness, and with as polite a manner as if he were visiting a
+stranger.
+
+But in spite of his efforts to seem amiable and natural, the Prince
+could not control his expression, which was deeply anxious. Bystanders
+would have ascribed such a change in his usually placid features to
+jealousy. The Duchess no doubt shared Emilio's feelings; she looked
+gloomy and was evidently depressed. The Duke, uncomfortable enough
+between two sulky people, took advantage of the French doctor's
+entrance to slip away.
+
+"Monsieur," said Cataneo to his physician before dropping the curtain
+over the entrance to the box, "you will hear to-night a grand musical
+poem, not easy of comprehension at a first hearing. But in leaving you
+with the Duchess I know that you can have no more competent
+interpreter, for she is my pupil."
+
+The doctor, like the Duke, was struck by the expression stamped on the
+faces of the lovers, a look of pining despair.
+
+"Then does an Italian opera need a guide to it?" he asked Massimilla,
+with a smile.
+
+Recalled by this question to her duties as mistress of the box, the
+Duchess tried to chase away the clouds that darkened her brow, and
+replied, with eager haste, to open a conversation in which she might
+vent her irritation:--
+
+"This is not so much an opera, monsieur," said she, "as an oratorio--a
+work which is in fact not unlike a most magnificent edifice, and I
+shall with pleasure be your guide. Believe me, it will not be too much
+to give all your mind to our great Rossini, for you need to be at once
+a poet and a musician to appreciate the whole bearing of such a work.
+
+"You belong to a race whose language and genius are too practical for
+it to enter into music without an effort; but France is too
+intellectual not to learn to love it and cultivate it, and to succeed
+in that as in everything else. Also, it must be acknowledged that
+music, as created by Lulli, Rameau, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven,
+Cimarosa, Paisiello, and Rossini, and as it will be carried on by the
+great geniuses of the future, is a new art, unknown to former
+generations; they had indeed no such variety of instruments on which
+the flowers of melody now blossom as on some rich soil.
+
+"So novel an art demands study in the public, study of a kind that may
+develop the feelings to which music appeals. That sentiment hardly
+exists as yet among you--a nation given up to philosophical theories,
+to analysis and discussion, and always torn by civil disturbances.
+Modern music demands perfect peace; it is the language of loving and
+sentimental souls, inclined to lofty emotional aspiration.
+
+"That language, a thousand times fuller than the language of words, is
+to speech and ideas what the thought is to its utterance; it arouses
+sensations and ideas in their primitive form, in that part of us where
+sensations and ideas have their birth, but leaves them as they are in
+each of us. That power over our inmost being is one of the grandest
+facts in music. All other arts present to the mind a definite
+creation; those of music are indefinite--infinite. We are compelled to
+accept the ideas of the poet, the painter's picture, the sculptor's
+statue; but music each one can interpret at the will of his sorrow or
+his gladness, his hope or his despair. While other arts restrict our
+mind by fixing it on a predestined object, music frees it to roam over
+all nature which it alone has the power of expressing. You shall hear
+how I interpret Rossini's _Mose_."
+
+She leaned across to the Frenchman to speak to him, without being
+overheard.
+
+"Moses is the liberator of an enslaved race!" said she. "Remember
+that, and you will see with what religious hope the whole house will
+listen to the prayer of the rescued Hebrews, with what a thunder of
+applause it will respond!"
+
+As the leader raised his bow, Emilio flung himself into a back seat.
+The Duchess pointed out the place he had left, for the physician to
+take it. But the Frenchman was far more curious to know what had gone
+wrong between the lovers than to enter the halls of music built up by
+the man whom all Italy was applauding--for it was the day of Rossini's
+triumph in his own country. He was watching the Duchess, and she was
+talking with a feverish excitement. She reminded him of the Niobe he
+had admired at Florence: the same dignity in woe, the same physical
+control; and yet her soul shone though, in the warm flush of her
+cheeks; and her eyes, where anxiety was disguised under a flash of
+pride, seemed to scorch the tears away by their fire. Her suppressed
+grief seemed calmer when she looked at Emilio, who never took his eyes
+off her; it was easy to see that she was trying to mollify some fierce
+despair. The state of her feelings gave a certain loftiness to her
+mind.
+
+Like most women when under the stress of some unusual agitation, she
+overstepped her ordinary limitations and assumed something of the
+Pythoness, though still remaining calm and beautiful; for it was the
+form of her thoughts that was wrung with desperation, not the features
+of her face. And perhaps she wanted to shine with all her wit to lend
+some charm to life and detain her lover from death.
+
+When the orchestra had given out the three chords in C major, placed
+at the opening by the composer to announce that the overture will be
+sung--for the real overture is the great movement beginning with this
+stern attack, and ending only when light appears at the command of
+Moses--the Duchess could not control a little spasmodic start, that
+showed how entirely the music was in accordance with her concealed
+distress.
+
+"Those three chords freeze the blood," said she. "They announce
+trouble. Listen attentively to this introduction; the terrible lament
+of a nation stricken by the hand of God. What wailing! The King, the
+Queen, their first-born son, all the dignitaries of the kingdom are
+sighing; they are wounded in their pride, in their conquests; checked
+in their avarice. Dear Rossini! you have done well to throw this bone
+to gnaw to the _Tedeschi_, who declared we had no harmony, no science!
+
+"Now you will hear the ominous melody the maestro has engrafted on to
+this profound harmonic composition, worthy to compare with the most
+elaborate structures of the Germans, but never fatiguing or tiresome.
+
+"You French, who carried through such a bloodthirsty revolution, who
+crushed your aristocracy under the paw of the lion mob, on the day
+when this oratorio is performed in your capital, you will understand
+this glorious dirge of the victims on whom God is avenging his chosen
+people. None but an Italian could have written this pregnant and
+inexhaustible theme--truly Dantesque. Do you think that it is nothing
+to have such a dream of vengeance, even for a moment? Handel,
+Sebastian Bach, all you old German masters, nay, even you, great
+Beethoven, on your knees! Here is the queen of arts, Italy
+triumphant!"
+
+The Duchess had spoken while the curtain was being raised. And now the
+physician heard the sublime symphony with which the composer
+introduces the great Biblical drama. It is to express the sufferings
+of a whole nation. Suffering is uniform in its expression, especially
+physical suffering. Thus, having instinctively felt, like all men of
+genius, that here there must be no variety of idea, the musician,
+having hit on his leading phrase, has worked it out in various keys,
+grouping the masses and the dramatis personae to take up the theme
+through modulations and cadences of admirable structure. In such
+simplicity is power.
+
+"The effect of this strain, depicting the sensations of night and cold
+in a people accustomed to live in the bright rays of the sun, and sung
+by the people and their princes, is most impressive. There is
+something relentless in that slow phrase of music; it is cold and
+sinister, like an iron bar wielded by some celestial executioner, and
+dropping in regular rhythm on the limbs of all his victims. As we hear
+it passing from C minor into G minor, returning to C and again to the
+dominant G, starting afresh and _fortissimo_ on the tonic B flat,
+drifting into F major and back to C minor, and in each key in turn
+more ominously terrible, chill, and dark, we are compelled at last to
+enter into the impression intended by the composer."
+
+The Frenchman was, in fact, deeply moved when all this united sorrow
+exploded in the cry:
+
+  "O Nume d'Israel,
+  Se brami in liberta
+  Il popol tuo fedel,
+  Di lui di noi pieta!"
+
+(O God of Israel, if thou wouldst see thy faithful people free, have
+mercy on them, and on us.)
+
+"Never was a grander synthesis composed of natural effects or a more
+perfect idealization of nature. In a great national disaster, each one
+for a long time bewails himself alone; then, from out of the mass,
+rises up, here and there, a more emphatic and vehement cry of anguish;
+finally, when the misery has fallen on all, it bursts forth like a
+tempest.
+
+"As soon as they all recognize a common grievance, the dull murmurs of
+the people become cries of impatience. Rossini has proceeded on this
+hypothesis. After the outcry in C major, Pharoah sings his grand
+recitative: _Mano ultrice di un Dio_ (Avenging hand of God), after
+which the original subject is repeated with more vehement expression.
+All Egypt appeals to Moses for help."
+
+The Duchess had taken advantage of the pause for the entrance of Moses
+and Aaron to give this interpretation of that fine introduction.
+
+"Let them weep!" she added passionately. "They have done much ill.
+Expiate your sins, Egyptians, expiate the crimes of your maddened
+Court! With what amazing skill has this great painter made use of all
+the gloomy tones of music, of all that is saddest on the musical
+palette! What creepy darkness! what a mist! Is not your very spirit in
+mourning? Are you not convinced of the reality of the blackness that
+lies over the land? Do you not feel that Nature is wrapped in the
+deepest shades? There are no palm-trees, no Egyptian palaces, no
+landscape. And what a healing to your soul will the deeply religious
+strain be of the heaven-sent Healer who will stay this cruel plague!
+How skilfully is everything wrought up to end in that glorious
+invocation of Moses to God.
+
+"By a learned elaboration, which Capraja could explain to you, this
+appeal to heaven is accompanied by brass instruments only; it is that
+which gives it such a solemn, religious cast. And not merely is the
+artifice fine in its place; note how fertile in resource is genius.
+Rossini has derived fresh beauty from the difficulty he himself
+created. He has the strings in reserve to express daylight when it
+succeeds to the darkness, and thus produces one of the greatest
+effects ever achieved in music.
+
+"Till this inimitable genius showed the way never was such a result
+obtained with mere _recitative_. We have not, so far, had an air or a
+duet. The poet has relied on the strength of the idea, on the
+vividness of his imagery, and the realism of the declamatory passages.
+This scene of despair, this darkness that may be felt, these cries of
+anguish,--the whole musical picture is as fine as your great Poussin's
+_Deluge_."
+
+Moses waved his staff, and it was light.
+
+"Here, monsieur, does not the music vie with the sun, whose splendor
+it has borrowed, with nature, whose phenomena it expresses in every
+detail?" the Duchess went on, in an undertone. "Art here reaches its
+climax; no musician can get beyond this. Do not you hear Egypt waking
+up after its long torpor? Joy comes in with the day. In what
+composition, ancient or modern, will you find so grand a passage? The
+greatest gladness in contrast to the deepest woe! What exclamations!
+What gleeful notes! The oppressed spirit breathes again. What delirium
+in the _tremolo_ of the orchestra! What a noble _tutti_! This is the
+rejoicing of a delivered nation. Are you not thrilled with joy?"
+
+The physician, startled by the contrast, was, in fact, clapping his
+hands, carried away by admiration for one of the finest compositions
+of modern music.
+
+"_Brava la Doni!_" said Vendramin, who had heard the Duchess.
+
+"Now the introduction is ended," said she. "You have gone through a
+great sensation," she added, turning to the Frenchman. "Your heart is
+beating; in the depths of your imagination you have a splendid
+sunrise, flooding with light a whole country that before was cold and
+dark. Now, would you know the means by which the musician has worked,
+so as to admire him to-morrow for the secrets of his craft after
+enjoying the results to-night? What do you suppose produces this
+effect of daylight--so sudden, so complicated, and so complete? It
+consists of a simple chord of C, constantly reiterated, varied only by
+the chord of 4-6. This reveals the magic of his touch. To show you the
+glory of light he has worked by the same means that he used to
+represent darkness and sorrow.
+
+"This dawn in imagery is, in fact, absolutely the same as the natural
+dawn; for light is one and the same thing everywhere, always alike in
+itself, the effects varying only with the objects it falls on. Is it
+not so? Well, the musician has taken for the fundamental basis of his
+music, for its sole _motif_, a simple chord in C. The sun first sheds
+its light on the mountain-tops and then in the valleys. In the same
+way the chord is first heard on the treble string of the violins with
+boreal mildness; it spreads through the orchestra, it awakes the
+instruments one by one, and flows among them. Just as light glides
+from one thing to the next, giving them color, the music moves on,
+calling out each rill of harmony till all flow together in the
+_tutti_.
+
+"The violins, silent until now, give the signal with their tender
+_tremolo_, softly _agitato_ like the first rays of morning. That
+light, cheerful movement, which caresses the soul, is cleverly
+supported by chords in the bass, and by a vague _fanfare_ on the
+trumpets, restricted to their lowest notes, so as to give a vivid idea
+of the last cool shadows that linger in the valleys while the first
+warm rays touch the heights. Then all the wind is gradually added to
+strengthen the general harmony. The voices come in with sighs of
+delight and surprise. At last the brass breaks out, the trumpets
+sound. Light, the source of all harmony, inundates all nature; every
+musical resource is produced with a turbulence, a splendor, to compare
+with that of the Eastern sun. Even the triangle, with its reiterated
+C, reminds us by its shrill accent and playful rhythm of the song of
+early birds.
+
+"Thus the same key, freshly treated by the master's hand, expresses
+the joy of all nature, while it soothes the grief it uttered before.
+
+"There is the hall-mark of the great genius: Unity. It is the same but
+different. In one and the same phrase we find a thousand various
+feelings of woe, the misery of a nation. In one and the same chord we
+have all the various incidents of awakening nature, every expression
+of the nation's joy. These two tremendous passages are soldered into
+one by the prayer to an ever-living God, author of all things, of that
+woe and that gladness alike. Now is not that introduction by itself a
+grand poem?"
+
+"It is, indeed," said the Frenchman.
+
+"Next comes a quintette such as Rossini can give us. If he was ever
+justified in giving vent to that flowery, voluptuous grace for which
+Italian music is blamed, is it not in this charming movement in which
+each person expresses joy? The enslaved people are delivered, and yet
+a passion in peril is fain to moan. Pharaoh's son loves a Hebrew
+woman, and she must leave him. What gives its ravishing charm to this
+quintette is the return to the homelier feelings of life after the
+grandiose picture of two stupendous and national emotions:--general
+misery, general joy, expressed with the magic force stamped on them by
+divine vengeance and with the miraculous atmosphere of the Bible
+narrative. Now, was not I right?" added Massimilla, as the noble
+_sretto_ came to a close.
+
+  "Voci di giubilo,
+  D' in'orno eccheggino,
+  Di pace l' Iride
+  Per noi spunto."
+
+(Cries of joy sound about us. The rainbow of peace dawns upon us.)
+
+"How ingeniously the composer has constructed this passage!" she went
+on, after waiting for a reply. "He begins with a solo on the horn, of
+divine sweetness, supported by _arpeggios_ on the harps; for the first
+voices to be heard in this grand concerted piece are those of Moses
+and Aaron returning thanks to the true God. Their strain, soft and
+solemn, reverts to the sublime ideas of the invocation, and mingles,
+nevertheless, with the joy of the heathen people. This transition
+combines the heavenly and the earthly in a way which genius alone
+could invent, giving the _andante_ of this quintette a glow of color
+that I can only compare to the light thrown by Titian on his Divine
+Persons. Did you observe the exquisite interweaving of the voices? the
+clever entrances by which the composer has grouped them round the main
+idea given out by the orchestra? the learned progressions that prepare
+us for the festal _allegro_? Did you not get a glimpse, as it were, of
+dancing groups, the dizzy round of a whole nation escaped from danger?
+And when the clarionet gives the signal for the _stretto_,--'_Voci di
+giubilo_,'--so brilliant and gay, was not your soul filled with the
+sacred pyrrhic joy of which David speaks in the Psalms, ascribing it
+to the hills?"
+
+"Yes, it would make a delightful dance tune," said the doctor.
+
+"French! French! always French!" exclaimed the Duchess, checked in her
+exultant mood by this sharp thrust. "Yes; you would be capable of
+taking that wonderful burst of noble and dainty rejoicing and turning
+it into a rigadoon. Sublime poetry finds no mercy in your eyes. The
+highest genius,--saints, kings, disasters,--all that is most sacred
+must pass under the rods of caricature. And the vulgarizing of great
+music by turning it into a dance tune is to caricature it. With you,
+wit kills soul, as argument kills reason."
+
+They all sat in silence through the _recitative_ of Osiride and
+Membrea, who plot to annul the order given by Pharaoh for the
+departure of the Hebrews.
+
+"Have I vexed you?" asked the physician to the Duchess. "I should be
+in despair. Your words are like a magic wand. They unlock the
+pigeon-holes of my brain, and let out new ideas, vivified by this
+sublime music."
+
+"No," replied she, "you have praised our great composer after your own
+fashion. Rossini will be a success with you, for the sake of his witty
+and sensual gifts. Let us hope that he may find some noble souls, in
+love with the ideal--which must exist in your fruitful land,--to
+appreciate the sublimity, the loftiness, of such music. Ah, now we
+have the famous duet, between Elcia and Osiride!" she exclaimed, and
+she went on, taking advantage of the triple salvo of applause which
+hailed la Tinti, as she made her first appearance on the stage.
+
+"If la Tinti has fully understood the part of Elcia, you will hear the
+frenzied song of a woman torn by her love for her people, and her
+passion for one of their oppressors, while Osiride, full of mad
+adoration for his beautiful vassal, tries to detain her. The opera is
+built up as much on that grand idea as on that of Pharaoh's resistance
+to the power of God and of liberty; you must enter into it thoroughly
+or you will not understand this stupendous work.
+
+"Notwithstanding the disfavor you show to the dramas invented by our
+_libretto_ writers, you must allow me to point out the skill with
+which this one is constructed. The antithesis required in every fine
+work, and eminently favorable to music, is well worked out. What can
+be finer than a whole nation demanding liberty, held in bondage by bad
+faith, upheld by God, and piling marvel on marvel to gain freedom?
+What more dramatic than the Prince's love for a Hebrew woman, almost
+justifying treason to the oppressor's power?
+
+"And this is what is expressed in this bold and stupendous musical
+poem; Rossini has stamped each nation with its fantastic
+individuality, for we have attributed to them a certain historic
+grandeur to which every imagination subscribes. The songs of the
+Hebrews, and their trust in God, are perpetually contrasted with
+Pharaoh's shrieks of rage and vain efforts, represented with a strong
+hand.
+
+"At this moment Osiride, thinking only of love, hopes to detain his
+mistress by the memories of their joys as lovers; he wants to conquer
+the attractions of her feeling for her people. Here, then, you will
+find delicious languor, the glowing sweetness, the voluptuous
+suggestions of Oriental love, in the air '_Ah! se puoi cosi
+lasciarmi_,' sung by Osiride, and in Elcia's reply, '_Ma perche cosi
+straziarmi?_' No; two hearts in such melodious unison could never
+part," she went on, looking at the Prince.
+
+"But the lovers are suddenly interrupted by the exultant voice of the
+Hebrew people in the distance, which recalls Elcia. What a delightful
+and inspiriting _allegro_ is the theme of this march, as the
+Israelites set out for the desert! No one but Rossini can make wind
+instruments and trumpets say so much. And is not the art which can
+express in two phrases all that is meant by the 'native land'
+certainly nearer to heaven than the others? This clarion-call always
+moves me so deeply that I cannot find words to tell you how cruel it
+is to an enslaved people to see those who are free march away!"
+
+The Duchess' eyes filled with tears as she listened to the grand
+movement, which in fact crowns the opera.
+
+"_Dov' e mai quel core amante_," she murmured in Italian, as la Tinti
+began the delightful _aria_ of the _stretto_ in which she implores
+pity for her grief. "But what is the matter? The pit are
+dissatisfied--"
+
+"Genovese is braying like a stage," replied the Prince.
+
+In point of fact, this first duet with la Tinti was spoilt by
+Genovese's utter breakdown. His excellent method, recalling that of
+Crescentini and Veluti, seemed to desert him completely. A _sostenuto_
+in the wrong place, an embellishment carried to excess, spoilt the
+effect; or again a loud climax with no due _crescendo_, an outburst of
+sound like water tumbling through a suddenly opened sluice, showed
+complete and wilful neglect of the laws of good taste.
+
+The pit was in the greatest excitement. The Venetian public believed
+there was a deliberate plot between Genovese and his friends. La Tinti
+was recalled and applauded with frenzy while Genovese had a hint or
+two warning him of the hostile feeling of the audience. During this
+scene, highly amusing to a Frenchman, while la Tinti was recalled
+eleven times to receive alone the frantic acclamations of the house,
+--Genovese, who was all but hissed, not daring to offer her his hand,
+--the doctor made a remark to the Duchess as to the _stretto_ of the
+duet.
+
+"In this place," said he, "Rossini ought to have expressed the
+deepest grief, and I find on the contrary an airy movement, a tone
+of ill-timed cheerfulness."
+
+"You are right," said she. "This mistake is the result of a tyrannous
+custom which composers are expected to obey. He was thinking more of
+his prima donna than of Elcia when he wrote that _stretto_. But this
+evening, even if la Tinti had been more brilliant than ever, I could
+throw myself so completely into the situation, that the passage,
+lively as it is, is to me full of sadness."
+
+The physician looked attentively from the Prince to the Duchess, but
+could not guess the reason that held them apart, and that made this
+duet seem to them so heartrending.
+
+"Now comes a magnificent thing, the scheming of Pharaoh against the
+Hebrews. The great _aria 'A rispettarmi apprenda'_ (Learn to respect
+me) is a triumph for Carthagenova, who will express superbly the
+offended pride and the duplicity of a sovereign. The Throne will
+speak. He will withdraw the concessions that have been made, he arms
+himself in wrath. Pharaoh rises to his feet to clutch the prey that is
+escaping.
+
+"Rossini never wrote anything grander in style, or stamped with more
+living and irresistible energy. It is a consummate work, supported by
+an accompaniment of marvelous orchestration, as indeed is every
+portion of this opera. The vigor of youth illumines the smallest
+details."
+
+The whole house applauded this noble movement, which was admirably
+rendered by the singer, and thoroughly appreciated by the Venetians.
+
+"In the _finale_," said the Duchess, "you hear a repetition of the
+march, expressive of the joy of deliverance and of faith in God, who
+allows His people to rush off gleefully to wander in the Desert! What
+lungs but would be refreshed by the aspirations of a whole nation
+freed from slavery.
+
+"Oh, beloved and living melodies! Glory to the great genius who has
+known how to give utterance to such feelings! There is something
+essentially warlike in that march, proclaiming that the God of armies
+is on the side of these people. How full of feeling are these strains
+of thanksgiving! The imagery of the Bible rises up in our mind; this
+glorious musical _scena_ enables us to realize one of the grandest
+dramas of that ancient and solemn world. The religious form given to
+some of the voice parts, and the way in which they come in, one by
+one, to group with the others, express all we have ever imagined of
+the sacred marvels of that early age of humanity.
+
+"And yet this fine concerted piece is no more than a development of
+the theme of the march into all its musical outcome. That theme is the
+inspiring element alike for the orchestra and the voices, for the air,
+and for the brilliant instrumentation that supports it.
+
+"Elcia now comes to join the crowd; and to give shade to the rejoicing
+spirit of this number, Rossini has made her utter her regrets. Listen
+to her _duettino_ with Amenofi. Did blighted love ever express itself
+in lovelier song? It is full of the grace of a _notturno_, of the
+secret grief of hopeless love. How sad! how sad! The Desert will
+indeed be a desert to her!
+
+"After this comes the fierce conflict of the Egyptians and the
+Hebrews. All their joy is spoiled, their march stopped by the arrival
+of the Egyptians. Pharaoh's edict is proclaimed in a musical phrase,
+hollow and dread, which is the leading _motif_ of the _finale_; we
+could fancy that we hear the tramp of the great Egyptian army,
+surrounding the sacred phalanx of the true God, curling round it, like
+a long African serpent enveloping its prey. But how beautiful is the
+lament of the duped and disappointed Hebrews! Though, in truth, it is
+more Italian than Hebrew. What a superb passage introduces Pharaoh's
+arrival, when his presence brings the two leaders face to face, and
+all the moving passions of the drama. The conflict of sentiments in
+that sublime _ottetto_, where the wrath of Moses meets that of the two
+Pharaohs, is admirable. What a medley of voices and of unchained
+furies!
+
+"No grander subject was ever wrought out by a composer. The famous
+_finale_ of _Don Giovanni_, after all, only shows us a libertine at
+odds with his victims, who invoke the vengeance of Heaven; while here
+earth and its dominions try to defeat God. Two nations are here face
+to face. And Rossini, having every means at his command, has made
+wonderful use of them. He has succeeded in expressing the turmoil of a
+tremendous storm as a background to the most terrible imprecations,
+without making it ridiculous. He has achieved it by the use of chords
+repeated in triple time--a monotonous rhythm of gloomy musical
+emphasis--and so persistent as to be quite overpowering. The horror of
+the Egyptians at the torrent of fire, the cries of vengeance from the
+Hebrews, needed a delicate balance of masses; so note how he has made
+the development of the orchestral parts follow that of the chorus. The
+_allegro assai_ in C minor is terrible in the midst of that deluge of
+fire.
+
+"Confess now," said Massimilla, at the moment when Moses, lifting his
+rod, brings down the rain of fire, and when the composer puts forth
+all his powers in the orchestra and on the stage, "that no music ever
+more perfectly expressed the idea of distress and confusion."
+
+"They have spread to the pit," remarked the Frenchman.
+
+"What is it now? The pit is certainly in great excitement," said the
+Duchess.
+
+In the _finale_, Genovese, his eyes fixed on la Tinti, had launched
+into such preposterous flourishes, that the pit, indignant at this
+interference with their enjoyment, were at a height of uproar. Nothing
+could be more exasperating to Italian ears than this contrast of good
+and bad singing. The manager went so far as to appear on the stage, to
+say that in reply to his remarks to his leading singer, Signor
+Genovese had replied that he knew not how or by what offence he had
+lost the countenance of the public, at the very moment when he was
+endeavoring to achieve perfection in his art.
+
+"Let him be as bad as he was yesterday--that was good enough for us!"
+roared Capraja, in a rage.
+
+This suggestion put the house into a good humor again.
+
+Contrary to Italian custom, the ballet was not much attended to. In
+every box the only subject of conversation was Genovese's strange
+behavior, and the luckless manager's speech. Those who were admitted
+behind the scenes went off at once to inquire into the mystery of this
+performance, and it was presently rumored that la Tinti had treated
+her colleague Genovese to a dreadful scene, in which she had accused
+the tenor of being jealous of her success, of having hindered it by
+his ridiculous behavior, and even of trying to spoil her performance
+by acting passionate devotion. The lady was shedding bitter tears over
+this catastrophe. She had been hoping, she said, to charm her lover,
+who was somewhere in the house, though she had failed to discover him.
+
+Without knowing the peaceful course of daily life in Venice at the
+present day, so devoid of incident that a slight altercation between
+two lovers, or the transient huskiness of a singer's voice becomes a
+subject of discussion, regarded of as much importance as politics in
+England, it is impossible to conceive of the excitement in the theatre
+and at the Cafe Florian. La Tinti was in love; la Tinti had been
+hindered in her performance; Genovese was mad or purposely malignant,
+inspired by the artist's jealousy so familiar to Italians! What a mine
+of matter for eager discussion!
+
+The whole pit was talking as men talk at the Bourse, and the result
+was such a clamor as could not fail to amaze a Frenchman accustomed to
+the quiet of the Paris theatres. The boxes were in a ferment like the
+stir of swarming bees.
+
+One man alone remained passive in the turmoil. Emilio Memmi, with his
+back to the stage and his eyes fixed on Massimilla with a melancholy
+expression, seemed to live in her gaze; he had not once looked round
+at the prima donna.
+
+"I need not ask you, _caro carino_, what was the result of my
+negotiation," said Vendramin to Emilio. "Your pure and pious
+Massimilla has been supremely kind--in short, she has been la Tinti?"
+
+The Prince's reply was a shake of his head, full of the deepest
+melancholy.
+
+"Your love has not descended from the ethereal spaces where you soar,"
+said Vendramin, excited by opium. "It is not yet materialized. This
+morning, as every day for six months--you felt flowers opening their
+scented cups under the dome of your skull that had expanded to vast
+proportions. All your blood moved to your swelling heart that rose to
+choke your throat. There, in there,"--and he laid his hand on Emilio's
+breast,--"you felt rapturous emotions. Massimilla's voice fell on your
+soul in waves of light; her touch released a thousand imprisoned joys
+which emerged from the convolutions of your brain to gather about you
+in clouds, to waft your etherealized body through the blue air to a
+purple glow far above the snowy heights, to where the pure love of
+angels dwells. The smile, the kisses of her lips wrapped you in a
+poisoned robe which burnt up the last vestiges of your earthly nature.
+Her eyes were twin stars that turned you into shadowless light. You
+knelt together on the palm-branches of heaven, waiting for the gates
+of Paradise to be opened; but they turned heavily on their hinges, and
+in your impatience you struck at them, but could not reach them. Your
+hand touched nothing but clouds more nimble than your desires. Your
+radiant companion, crowned with white roses like a bride of Heaven,
+wept at your anguish. Perhaps she was murmuring melodious litanies to
+the Virgin, while the demoniacal cravings of the flesh were haunting
+you with their shameless clamor, and you disdained the divine fruits
+of that ecstasy in which I live, though shortening my life."
+
+"Your exaltation, my dear Vendramin," replied Emilio, calmly, "is
+still beneath reality. Who can describe that purely physical
+exhaustion in which we are left by the abuse of a dream of pleasure,
+leaving the soul still eternally craving, and the spirit in clear
+possession of its faculties?
+
+"But I am weary of this torment, which is that of Tantalus. This is my
+last night on earth. After one final effort, our Mother shall have her
+child again--the Adriatic will silence my last sigh--"
+
+"Are you idiotic?" cried Vendramin. "No; you are mad; for madness, the
+crisis we despise, is the memory of an antecedent condition acting on
+our present state of being. The genius of my dreams has taught me
+that, and much else! You want to make one of the Duchess and la Tinti;
+nay, dear Emilio, take them separately; it will be far wiser. Raphael
+alone ever united form and idea. You want to be the Raphael of love;
+but chance cannot be commanded. Raphael was a 'fluke' of God's
+creation, for He foreordained that form and idea should be
+antagonistic; otherwise nothing could live. When the first cause is
+more potent than the outcome, nothing comes of it. We must live either
+on earth or in the skies. Remain in the skies; it is always too soon
+to come down to earth."
+
+"I will take the Duchess home," said the Prince, "and make a last
+attempt--afterwards?"
+
+"Afterwards," cried Vendramin, anxiously, "promise to call for me at
+Florian's."
+
+"I will."
+
+This dialogue, in modern Greek, with which Vendramin and Emilio were
+familiar, as many Venetians are, was unintelligible to the Duchess and
+to the Frenchman. Although he was quite outside the little circle that
+held the Duchess, Emilio and Vendramin together--for these three
+understood each other by means of Italian glances, by turns arch and
+keen, or veiled and sidelong--the physician at last discerned part of
+the truth. An earnest entreaty from the Duchess had prompted
+Vendramin's suggestion to Emilio, for Massimilla had begun to suspect
+the misery endured by her lover in that cold empyrean where he was
+wandering, though she had no suspicions of la Tinti.
+
+"These two young men are mad!" said the doctor.
+
+"As to the Prince," said the Duchess, "trust me to cure him. As to
+Vendramin, if he cannot understand this sublime music, he is perhaps
+incurable."
+
+"If you would but tell me the cause of their madness, I could cure
+them," said the Frenchman.
+
+"And since when have great physicians ceased to read men's minds?"
+said she, jestingly.
+
+The ballet was long since ended; the second act of _Mose_ was
+beginning. The pit was perfectly attentive. A rumor had got abroad
+that Duke Cataneo had lectured Genovese, representing to him what
+injury he was doing to Clarina, the _diva_ of the day. The second act
+would certainly be magnificent.
+
+"The Egyptian Prince and his father are on the stage," said the
+Duchess. "They have yielded once more, though insulting the Hebrews,
+but they are trembling with rage. The father congratulates himself on
+his son's approaching marriage, and the son is in despair at this
+fresh obstacle, though it only increases his love, to which everything
+is opposed. Genovese and Carthagenova are singing admirably. As you
+see, the tenor is making his peace with the house. How well he brings
+out the beauty of the music! The phrase given out by the son on the
+tonic, and repeated by the father on the dominant, is all in character
+with the simple, serious scheme which prevails throughout the score;
+the sobriety of it makes the endless variety of the music all the more
+wonderful. All Egypt is there.
+
+"I do not believe that there is in modern music a composition more
+perfectly noble. The solemn and majestic paternity of a king is fully
+expressed in that magnificent theme, in harmony with the grand style
+that stamps the opera throughout. The idea of a Pharaoh's son pouring
+out his sorrows on his father's bosom could surely not be more
+admirably represented than in this grand imagery. Do you not feel a
+sense of the splendor we are wont to attribute to that monarch of
+antiquity?"
+
+"It is indeed sublime music," said the Frenchman.
+
+"The air _Pace mia smarrita_, which the Queen will now sing, is one of
+those _bravura_ songs which every composer is compelled to introduce,
+though they mar the general scheme of the work; but an opera would as
+often as not never see the light, if the prima donna's vanity were not
+duly flattered. Still, this musical 'sop' is so fine in itself that it
+is performed as written, on every stage; it is so brilliant that the
+leading lady does not substitute her favorite show piece, as is very
+commonly done in operas.
+
+"And now comes the most striking movement in the score: the duet
+between Osiride and Elcia in the subterranean chamber where he has
+hidden her to keep her from the departing Israelites, and to fly with
+her himself from Egypt. The lovers are then intruded on by Aaron, who
+has been to warn Amalthea, and we get the grandest of all quartettes:
+_Mi manca la voce, mi sento morire_. This is one of those masterpieces
+that will survive in spite of time, that destroyer of fashion in
+music, for it speaks the language of the soul which can never change.
+Mozart holds his own by the famous _finale_ to _Don Giovanni_;
+Marcello, by his psalm, _Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei_; Cimarosa, by the
+air _Pria che spunti_; Beethoven by his C minor symphony; Pergolesi,
+by his _Stabat Mater_; Rossini will live by _Mi manca la voce_. What
+is most to be admired in Rossini is his command of variety to form; to
+produce the effect here required, he has had recourse to the old
+structure of the canon in unison, to bring the voices in, and merge
+them in the same melody. As the form of these sublime melodies was
+new, he set them in an old frame; and to give it the more relief he
+has silenced the orchestra, accompanying the voices with the harps
+alone. It is impossible to show greater ingenuity of detail, or to
+produce a grander general effect.--Dear me! again an outbreak!" said
+the Duchess.
+
+Genovese, who had sung his duet with Carthagenova so well, was
+caricaturing himself now that la Tinti was on the stage. From a great
+singer he sank to the level of the most worthless chorus singer.
+
+The most formidable uproar arose that had ever echoed to the roof of
+the _Fenice_. The commotion only yielded to Clarina, and she, furious
+at the difficulties raised by Genovese's obstinacy, sang _Mi manca la
+voce_ as it will never be sung again. The enthusiasm was tremendous;
+the audience forgot their indignation and rage in pleasure that was
+really acute.
+
+"She floods my soul with purple glow!" said Capraja, waving his hand
+in benediction at la _Diva_ Tinti.
+
+"Heaven send all its blessings on your head!" cried a gondolier.
+
+"Pharaoh will now revoke his commands," said the Duchess, while the
+commotion in the pit was calming down. "Moses will overwhelm him, even
+on his throne, by declaring the death of every first-born son in
+Egypt, singing that strain of vengeance which augurs thunders from
+heaven, while above it the Hebrew clarions ring out. But you must
+clearly understand that this air is by Pacini; Carthagenova introduces
+it instead of that by Rossini. This air, _Paventa_, will no doubt hold
+its place in the score; it gives a bass too good an opportunity for
+displaying the quality of his voice, and expression here will carry
+the day rather than science. However, the air is full of magnificent
+menace, and it is possible that we may not be long allowed to hear
+it."
+
+A thunder of clapping and _bravos_ hailed the song, followed by deep
+and cautious silence; nothing could be more significant or more
+thoroughly Venetian than the outbreak and its sudden suppression.
+
+"I need say nothing of the coronation march announcing the
+enthronement of Osiride, intended by the King as a challenge to Moses;
+to hear it is enough. Their famous Beethoven has written nothing
+grander. And this march, full of earthly pomp, contrasts finely with
+the march of the Israelites. Compare them, and you will see that the
+music is full of purpose.
+
+"Elcia declares her love in the presence of the two Hebrew leaders,
+and then renounces it in the fine _aria_, _Porge la destra amata_.
+(Place your beloved hand.) Ah! What anguish! Only look at the house!"
+
+The pit was shouting _bravo_, when Genovese left the stage.
+
+"Now, free from her deplorable lover, we shall hear Tinti sing, _O
+desolata Elcia_--the tremendous _cavatina_ expressive of love
+disapproved by God."
+
+"Where art thou, Rossini?" cried Cataneo. "If he could but hear the
+music created by his genius so magnificently performed," he went on.
+"Is not Clarina worthy of him?" he asked Capraja. "To give life to
+those notes by such gusts of flame, starting from the lungs and
+feeding in the air on some unknown matter which our ears inhale, and
+which bears us heavenwards in a rapture of love, she must be divine!"
+
+"She is like the gorgeous Indian plant, which deserting the earth
+absorbs invisible nourishment from the atmosphere, and sheds from its
+spiral white blossom such fragrant vapors as fill the brain with
+dreams," replied Capraja.
+
+On being recalled, la Tinti appeared alone. She was received with
+a storm of applause; a thousand kisses were blown to her from
+finger-tips; she was pelted with roses, and a wreath was made of
+the flowers snatched from the ladies' caps, almost all sent out
+from Paris.
+
+The _cavatina_ was encored.
+
+"How eagerly Capraja, with his passion for embellishments, must have
+looked forward to this air, which derives all its value from
+execution," remarked Massimilla. "Here Rossini has, so to speak, given
+the reins over to the singer's fancy. Her _cadenzas_ and her feeling
+are everything. With a poor voice or inferior execution, it would be
+nothing--the throat is responsible for the effects of this _aria_.
+
+"The singer has to express the most intense anguish,--that of a woman
+who sees her lover dying before her very eyes. La Tinti makes the
+house ring with her highest notes; and Rossini, to leave pure singing
+free to do its utmost, has written it in the simplest, clearest style.
+Then, as a crowning effort, he has composed those heartrending musical
+cries: _Tormenti! Affanni! Smanie!_ What grief, what anguish, in those
+runs. And la Tinti, you see, has quite carried the house off its
+feet."
+
+The Frenchman, bewildered by this adoring admiration throughout a vast
+theatre for the source of its delight, here had a glimpse of genuine
+Italian nature. But neither the Duchess nor the two young men paid any
+attention to the ovation. Clarina began again.
+
+The Duchess feared that she was seeing her Emilio for the last time.
+As to the Prince: in the presence of the Duchess, the sovereign
+divinity who lifted him to the skies, he had forgotten where he was,
+he no longer heard the voice of the woman who had initiated him into
+the mysteries of earthly pleasure, for deep dejection made his ears
+tingle with a chorus of plaintive voices, half-drowned in a rushing
+noise as of pouring rain.
+
+Vendramin saw himself in an ancient Venetian costume, looking on at
+the ceremony of the _Bucentaur_. The Frenchman, who plainly discerned
+that some strange and painful mystery stood between the Prince and the
+Duchess, was racking his brain with shrewd conjecture to discover what
+it could be.
+
+The scene had changed. In front of a fine picture, representing the
+Desert and the Red Sea, the Egyptians and Hebrews marched and
+countermarched without any effect on the feelings of the four persons
+in the Duchess' box. But when the first chords on the harps preluded
+the hymn of the delivered Israelites, the Prince and Vendramin rose
+and stood leaning against the opposite sides of the box, and the
+Duchess, resting her elbow on the velvet ledge, supported her head on
+her left hand.
+
+The Frenchman, understanding from this little stir, how important this
+justly famous chorus was in the opinion of the house, listened with
+devout attention.
+
+The audience, with one accord, shouted for its repetition.
+
+"I feel as if I were celebrating the liberation of Italy," thought a
+Milanese.
+
+"Such music lifts up bowed heads, and revives hope in the most
+torpid," said a man from the Romagna.
+
+"In this scene," said Massimilla, whose emotion was evident, "science
+is set aside. Inspiration, alone, dictated this masterpiece; it rose
+from the composer's soul like a cry of love! As to the accompaniment,
+it consists of the harps; the orchestra appears only at the last
+repetition of that heavenly strain. Rossini can never rise higher than
+in this prayer; he will do as good work, no doubt, but never better:
+the sublime is always equal to itself; but this hymn is one of the
+things that will always be sublime. The only match for such a
+conception might be found in the psalms of the great Marcello, a noble
+Venetian, who was to music what Giotto was to painting. The majesty of
+the phrase, unfolding itself with episodes of inexhaustible melody, is
+comparable with the finest things ever invented by religious writers.
+
+"How simple is the structure! Moses opens the attack in G minor,
+ending in a cadenza in B flat which allows the chorus to come in,
+_pianissimo_ at first, in B flat, returning by modulations to G minor.
+This splendid treatment of the voices, recurring three times, ends in
+the last strophe with a _stretto_ in G major of absolutely
+overpowering effect. We feel as though this hymn of a nation released
+from slavery, as it mounts to heaven, were met by kindred strains
+falling from the higher spheres. The stars respond with joy to the
+ecstasy of liberated mortals. The rounded fulness of the rhythm, the
+deliberate dignity of the graduations leading up to the outbursts of
+thanksgiving, and its slow return raise heavenly images in the soul.
+Could you not fancy that you saw heaven open, angels holding sistrums
+of gold, prostrate seraphs swinging their fragrant censers, and the
+archangels leaning on the flaming swords with which they have
+vanquished the heathen?
+
+"The secret of this music and its refreshing effect on the soul is, I
+believe, that of a very few works of human genius: it carries us for
+the moment into the infinite; we feel it within us; we see it, in
+those melodies as boundless as the hymns sung round the throne of God.
+Rossini's genius carries us up to prodigious heights, whence we look
+down on a promised land, and our eyes, charmed by heavenly light, gaze
+into limitless space. Elcia's last strain, having almost recovered
+from her grief, brings a feeling of earth-born passions into this hymn
+of thanksgiving. This, again, is a touch of genius.
+
+"Ay, sing!" exclaimed the Duchess, as she listened to the last stanza
+with the same gloomy enthusiasm as the singers threw into it. "Sing!
+You are free!"
+
+The words were spoken in a voice that startled the physician. To
+divert Massimilla from her bitter reflections, while the excitement of
+recalling la Tinti was at its height, he engaged her in one of the
+arguments in which the French excel.
+
+"Madame," said he, "in explaining this grand work--which I shall come
+to hear again to-morrow with a fuller comprehension, thanks to you, of
+its structure and its effect--you have frequently spoken of the color
+of the music, and of the ideas it depicts; now I, as an analyst, a
+materialist, must confess that I have always rebelled against the
+affectation of certain enthusiasts, who try to make us believe that
+music paints with tones. Would it not be the same thing if Raphael's
+admirers spoke of his singing with colors?"
+
+"In the language of musicians," replied the Duchess, "_painting_ is
+arousing certain associations in our souls, or certain images in our
+brain; and these memories and images have a color of their own; they
+are sad or cheerful. You are battling for a word, that is all.
+According to Capraja, each instrument has its task, its mission, and
+appeals to certain feelings in our souls. Does a pattern in gold on a
+blue ground produce the same sensations in you as a red pattern on
+black or green? In these, as in music, there are no figures, no
+expression of feeling; they are purely artistic, and yet no one looks
+at them with indifference. Has not the oboe the peculiar tone that we
+associate with the open country, in common with most wind instruments?
+The brass suggests martial ideas, and rouses us to vehement or even
+somewhat furious feelings. The strings, for which the material is
+derived from the organic world, seem to appeal to the subtlest fibres
+of our nature; they go to the very depths of the heart. When I spoke
+of the gloomy hue, and the coldness of the tones in the introduction
+to _Mose_, was I not fully as much justified as your critics are when
+they speak of the 'color' in a writer's language? Do you not
+acknowledge that there is a nervous style, a pallid style, a lively,
+and a highly-colored style? Art can paint with words, sounds, colors,
+lines, form; the means are many; the result is one.
+
+"An Italian architect might give us the same sensation that is
+produced in us by the introduction to _Mose_, by constructing a walk
+through dark, damp avenues of tall, thick trees, and bringing us out
+suddenly in a valley full of streams, flowers, and mills, and basking
+in the sunshine. In their greatest moments the arts are but the
+expression of the grand scenes of nature.
+
+"I am not learned enough to enlarge on the philosophy of music; go and
+talk to Capraja; you will be amazed at what he can tell you. He will
+say that every instrument that depends on the touch or breath of man
+for its expression and length of note, is superior as a vehicle of
+expression to color, which remains fixed, or speech, which has its
+limits. The language of music is infinite; it includes everything; it
+can express all things.
+
+"Now do you see wherein lies the pre-eminence of the work you have
+just heard? I can explain it in a few words. There are two kinds of
+music: one, petty, poor, second-rate, always the same, based on a
+hundred or so of phrases which every musician has at his command, a
+more or less agreeable form of babble which most composers live in. We
+listen to their strains, their would-be melodies, with more or less
+satisfaction, but absolutely nothing is left in our mind; by the end
+of the century they are forgotten. But the nations, from the beginning
+of time till our own day, have cherished as a precious treasure
+certain strains which epitomize their instincts and habits; I might
+almost say their history. Listen to one of these primitive tones,--the
+Gregorian chant, for instance, is, in sacred song, the inheritance of
+the earliest peoples,--and you will lose yourself in deep dreaming.
+Strange and immense conceptions will unfold within you, in spite of
+the extreme simplicity of these rudimentary relics. And once or twice
+in a century--not oftener, there arises a Homer of music, to whom God
+grants the gift of being ahead of his age; men who can compact
+melodies full of accomplished facts, pregnant with mighty poetry.
+Think of this; remember it. The thought, repeated by you, will prove
+fruitful; it is melody, not harmony, that can survive the shocks of
+time.
+
+"The music of this oratorio contains a whole world of great and sacred
+things. A work which begins with that introduction and ends with that
+prayer is immortal--as immortal as the Easter hymn, _O filii et
+filioe_, as the _Dies iroe_ of the dead, as all the songs which in
+every land have outlived its splendor, its happiness, and its ruined
+prosperity."
+
+The tears the Duchess wiped away as she quitted her box showed plainly
+that she was thinking of the Venice that is no more; and Vendramin
+kissed her hand.
+
+The performance ended with the most extraordinary chaos of noises:
+abuse and hisses hurled at Genovese and a fit of frenzy in praise of
+la Tinti. It was a long time since the Venetians had had so lively an
+evening. They were warmed and revived by that antagonism which is
+never lacking in Italy, where the smallest towns always throve on the
+antagonistic interests of two factions: the Geulphs and Ghibellines
+everywhere; the Capulets and the Montagues at Verona; the Geremei and
+the Lomelli at Bologna; the Fieschi and the Doria at Genoa; the
+patricians and the populace, the Senate and tribunes of the Roman
+republic; the Pazzi and the Medici at Florence; the Sforza and the
+Visconti at Milan; the Orsini and the Colonna at Rome,--in short,
+everywhere and on every occasion there has been the same impulse.
+
+Out in the streets there were already _Genovists_ and _Tintists_.
+
+The Prince escorted the Duchess, more depressed than ever by the loves
+of Osiride; she feared some similar disaster to her own, and could
+only cling to Emilio, as if to keep him next her heart.
+
+"Remember your promise," said Vendramin. "I will wait for you in the
+square."
+
+
+
+Vendramin took the Frenchman's arm, proposing that they should walk
+together on the Piazza San Marco while awaiting the Prince.
+
+"I shall be only too glad if he should not come," he added.
+
+This was the text for a conversation between the two, Vendramin
+regarding it as a favorable opportunity for consulting the physician,
+and telling him the singular position Emilio had placed himself in.
+
+The Frenchman did as every Frenchman does on all occasions: he
+laughed. Vendramin, who took the matter very seriously, was angry; but
+he was mollified when the disciple of Majendie, of Cuvier, of
+Dupuytren, and of Brossais assured him that he believed he could cure
+the Prince of his high-flown raptures, and dispel the heavenly poetry
+in which he shrouded Massimilla as in a cloud.
+
+"A happy form of misfortune!" said he. "The ancients, who were not
+such fools as might be inferred from their crystal heaven and their
+ideas on physics, symbolized in the fable of Ixion the power which
+nullifies the body and makes the spirit lord of all."
+
+Vendramin and the doctor presently met Genovese, and with him the
+fantastic Capraja. The melomaniac was anxious to learn the real cause
+of the tenor's _fiasco_. Genovese, the question being put to him,
+talked fast, like all men who can intoxicate themselves by the
+ebullition of ideas suggested to them by a passion.
+
+"Yes, signori, I love her, I worship her with a frenzy of which I
+never believed myself capable, now that I am tired of women. Women
+play the mischief with art. Pleasure and work cannot be carried on
+together. Clara fancies that I was jealous of her success, that I
+wanted to hinder her triumph at Venice; but I was clapping in the
+side-scenes, and shouted _Diva_ louder than any one in the house."
+
+"But even that," said Cataneo, joining them, "does not explain why,
+from being a divine singer, you should have become one of the most
+execrable performers who ever piped air through his larynx, giving
+none of the charm even which enchants and bewitches us."
+
+"I!" said the singer. "I a bad singer! I who am the equal of the
+greatest performers!"
+
+By this time, the doctor and Vendramin, Capraja, Cataneo, and Genovese
+had made their way to the piazzetta. It was midnight. The glittering
+bay, outlined by the churches of San Giorgio and San Paulo at the end
+of the Giudecca, and the beginning of the Grand Canal, that opens so
+mysteriously under the _Dogana_ and the church of Santa Maria della
+Salute, lay glorious and still. The moon shone on the barques along
+the Riva de' Schiavoni. The waters of Venice, where there is no tide,
+looked as if they were alive, dancing with a myriad spangles. Never
+had a singer a more splendid stage.
+
+Genovese, with an emphatic flourish, seemed to call Heaven and Earth
+to witness; and then, with no accompaniment but the lapping waves, he
+sang _Ombra adorata_, Crescentini's great air. The song, rising up
+between the statues of San Teodoro and San Giorgio, in the heart of
+sleeping Venice lighted by the moon, the words, in such strange
+harmony with the scene, and the melancholy passion of the singer, held
+the Italians and the Frenchman spellbound.
+
+At the very first notes, Vendramin's face was wet with tears. Capraja
+stood as motionless as one of the statues in the ducal palace. Cataneo
+seemed moved to some feeling. The Frenchman, taken by surprise, was
+meditative, like a man of science in the presence of a phenomenon that
+upsets all his fundamental axioms. These four minds, all so different,
+whose hopes were so small, who believed in nothing for themselves or
+after themselves, who regarded their own existence as that of a
+transient and a fortuitous being,--like the little life of a plant or
+a beetle,--had a glimpse of Heaven. Never did music more truly merit
+the epithet divine. The consoling notes, as they were poured out,
+enveloped their souls in soft and soothing airs. On these vapors,
+almost visible, as it seemed to the listeners, like the marble shapes
+about them in the silver moonlight, angels sat whose wings, devoutly
+waving, expressed adoration and love. The simple, artless melody
+penetrated to the soul as with a beam of light. It was a holy passion!
+
+But the singer's vanity roused them from their emotion with a terrible
+shock.
+
+"Now, am I a bad singer?" he exclaimed, as he ended.
+
+His audience only regretted that the instrument was not a thing of
+Heaven. This angelic song was then no more than the outcome of a man's
+offended vanity! The singer felt nothing, thought nothing, of the
+pious sentiments and divine images he could create in others,--no
+more, in fact, than Paganini's violin knows what the player makes it
+utter. What they had seen in fancy was Venice lifting its shroud and
+singing--and it was merely the result of a tenor's _fiasco_!
+
+"Can you guess the meaning of such a phenomenon?" the Frenchman asked
+of Capraja, wishing to make him talk, as the Duchess had spoken of him
+as a profound thinker.
+
+"What phenomenon?" said Capraja.
+
+"Genovese--who is admirable in the absence of la Tinti, and when he
+sings with her is a braying ass."
+
+"He obeys an occult law of which one of your chemists might perhaps
+give you the mathematical formula, and which the next century will no
+doubt express in a statement full of _x_, _a_, and _b_, mixed up with
+little algebraic signs, bars, and quirks that give me the colic; for
+the finest conceptions of mathematics do not add much to the sum total
+of our enjoyment.
+
+"When an artist is so unfortunate as to be full of the passion he
+wishes to express, he cannot depict it because he is the thing itself
+instead of its image. Art is the work of the brain, not of the heart.
+When you are possessed by a subject you are a slave, not a master; you
+are like a king besieged by his people. Too keen a feeling, at the
+moment when you want to represent that feeling, causes an insurrection
+of the senses against the governing faculty."
+
+"Might we not convince ourselves of this by some further experiment?"
+said the doctor.
+
+"Cataneo, you might bring your tenor and the prima donna together
+again," said Capraja to his friend.
+
+"Well, gentlemen," said the Duke, "come to sup with me. We ought to
+reconcile the tenor and la Clarina; otherwise the season will be
+ruined in Venice."
+
+The invitation was accepted.
+
+"Gondoliers!" called Cataneo.
+
+"One minute," said Vendramin. "Memmi is waiting for me at Florian's; I
+cannot leave him to himself. We must make him tipsy to-night, or he
+will kill himself to-morrow."
+
+"_Corpo santo!_" exclaimed the Duke. "I must keep that young fellow
+alive, for the happiness and future prospects of my race. I will
+invite him, too."
+
+They all went back to Florian's, where the assembled crowd were
+holding an eager and stormy discussion to which the tenor's arrival
+put an end. In one corner, near a window looking out on the colonnade,
+gloomy, with a fixed gaze and rigid attitude, Emilio was a dismal
+image of despair.
+
+"That crazy fellow," said the physician, in French, to Vendramin,
+"does not know what he wants. Here is a man who can make of a
+Massimilla Doni a being apart from the rest of creation, possessing
+her in heaven, amid ideal splendor such as no power on earth can make
+real. He can behold his mistress for ever sublime and pure, can always
+hear within him what we have just heard on the seashore; can always
+live in the light of a pair of eyes which create for him the warm and
+golden glow that surrounds the Virgin in Titian's Assumption,--after
+Raphael had invented it or had it revealed to him for the
+Transfiguration,--and this man only longs to smirch the poem.
+
+"By my advice he must needs combine his sensual joys and his heavenly
+adoration in one woman. In short, like all the rest of us, he will
+have a mistress. He had a divinity, and the wretched creature insists
+on her being a female! I assure you, monsieur, he is resigning heaven.
+I will not answer for it that he may not ultimately die of despair.
+
+"O ye women's faces, delicately outlined in a pure and radiant oval,
+reminding us of those creations of art where it has most successfully
+competed with nature! Divine feet that cannot walk, slender forms that
+an earthly breeze would break, shapes too frail ever to conceive,
+virgins that we dreamed of as we grew out of childhood, admired in
+secret, and adored without hope, veiled in the beams of some
+unwearying desire,--maids whom we may never see again, but whose smile
+remains supreme in our life, what hog of Epicurus could insist on
+dragging you down to the mire of this earth!
+
+"The sun, monsieur, gives light and heat to the world, only because it
+is at a distance of thirty-three millions of leagues. Get nearer to
+it, and science warns you that it is not really hot or luminous,--for
+science is of some use," he added, looking at Capraja.
+
+"Not so bad for a Frenchman and a doctor," said Capraja, patting the
+foreigner on the shoulder. "You have in those words explained the
+thing which Europeans least understand in all Dante: his Beatrice.
+Yes, Beatrice, that ideal figure, the queen of the poet's fancies,
+chosen above all the elect, consecrated with tears, deified by memory,
+and for ever young in the presence of ineffectual desire!"
+
+"Prince," said the Duke to Emilio, "come and sup with me. You cannot
+refuse the poor Neapolitan whom you have robbed both of his wife and
+of his mistress."
+
+This broad Neapolitan jest, spoken with an aristocratic good manner,
+made Emilio smile; he allowed the Duke to take his arm and lead him
+away.
+
+Cataneo had already sent a messenger to his house from the cafe.
+
+As the Palazzo Memmi was on the Grand Canal, not far from Santa Maria
+della Salute, the way thither on foot was round by the Rialto, or it
+could be reached in a gondola. The four guests would not separate and
+preferred to walk; the Duke's infirmities obliged him to get into his
+gondola.
+
+At about two in the morning anybody passing the Memmi palace would
+have seen light pouring out of every window across the Grand Canal,
+and have heard the delightful overture to _Semiramide_ performed at
+the foot of the steps by the orchestra of the _Fenice_, as a serenade
+to la Tinti.
+
+The company were at supper in the second floor gallery. From the
+balcony la Tinti in return sang Almavida's _Buona sera_ from _Il
+Barbiere_, while the Duke's steward distributed payment from his
+master to the poor artists and bid them to dinner the next day, such
+civilities as are expected of grand signors who protect singers, and
+of fine ladies who protect tenors and basses. In these cases there is
+nothing for it but to marry all the _corps de theatre_.
+
+Cataneo did things handsomely; he was the manager's banker, and this
+season was costing him two thousand crowns.
+
+He had had all the palace furnished, had imported a French cook, and
+wines of all lands. So the supper was a regal entertainment.
+
+The Prince, seated next la Tinti, was keenly alive, all through the
+meal, to what poets in every language call the darts of love. The
+transcendental vision of Massimilla was eclipsed, just as the idea of
+God is sometimes hidden by clouds of doubt in the consciousness of
+solitary thinkers. Clarina thought herself the happiest woman in the
+world as she perceived Emilio was in love with her. Confident of
+retaining him, her joy was reflected in her features, her beauty was
+so dazzling that the men, as they lifted their glasses, could not
+resist bowing to her with instinctive admiration.
+
+"The Duchess is not to compare with la Tinti," said the Frenchman,
+forgetting his theory under the fire of the Sicilian's eyes.
+
+The tenor ate and drank languidly; he seemed to care only to identify
+himself with the prima donna's life, and had lost the hearty sense of
+enjoyment which is characteristic of Italian men singers.
+
+"Come, signorina," said the Duke, with an imploring glance at Clarina,
+"and you, _caro prima uomo_," he added to Genovese, "unite your voices
+in one perfect sound. Let us have the C of _Qual portento_, when light
+appears in the oratorio we have just heard, to convince my old friend
+Capraja of the superiority of unison to any embellishment."
+
+"I will carry her off from that Prince she is in love with; for she
+adores him--it stares me in the face!" said Genovese to himself.
+
+What was the amazement of the guests who had heard Genovese out of
+doors, when he began to bray, to coo, mew, squeal, gargle, bellow,
+thunder, bark, shriek, even produce sounds which could only be
+described as a hoarse rattle,--in short, go through an
+incomprehensible farce, while his face was transfigured with rapturous
+expression like that of a martyr, as painted by Zurbaran or Murillo,
+Titian or Raphael. The general shout of laughter changed to almost
+tragical gravity when they saw that Genovese was in utter earnest. La
+Tinti understood that her companion was in love with her, and had
+spoken the truth on the stage, the land of falsehood.
+
+"_Poverino!_" she murmured, stroking the Prince's hand under the
+table.
+
+"By all that is holy!" cried Capraja, "will you tell me what score you
+are reading at this moment--murdering Rossini? Pray inform us what you
+are thinking about, what demon is struggling in your throat."
+
+"A demon!" cried Genovese, "say rather the god of music. My eyes, like
+those of Saint-Cecilia, can see angels, who, pointing with their
+fingers, guide me along the lines of the score which is written in
+notes of fire, and I am trying to keep up with them. PER DIO! do you
+not understand? The feeling that inspires me has passed into my being;
+it fills my heart and my lungs; my soul and throat have but one life.
+
+"Have you never, in a dream, listened to the most glorious strains,
+the ideas of unknown composers who have made use of pure sound as
+nature has hidden it in all things,--sound which we call forth, more
+or less perfectly, by the instruments we employ to produce masses of
+various color; but which in those dream-concerts are heard free from
+the imperfections of the performers who cannot be all feeling, all
+soul? And I, I give you that perfection, and you abuse me!
+
+"You are as mad at the pit of the _Fenice_, who hissed me! I scorned
+the vulgar crowd for not being able to mount with me to the heights
+whence we reign over art, and I appeal to men of mark, to a Frenchman
+--Why, he is gone!"
+
+"Half an hour ago," said Vendramin.
+
+"That is a pity. He, perhaps, would have understood me, since
+Italians, lovers of art, do not--"
+
+"On you go!" said Capraja, with a smile, and tapping lightly on the
+tenor's head. "Ride off on the divine Ariosto's hippogriff; hunt down
+your radiant chimera, musical visionary as you are!"
+
+In point of fact, all the others, believing that Genovese was drunk,
+let him talk without listening to him. Capraja alone had understood
+the case put by the French physician.
+
+
+
+While the wine of Cyprus was loosening every tongue, and each one was
+prancing on his favorite hobby, the doctor, in a gondola, was waiting
+for the Duchess, having sent her a note written by Vendramin.
+Massimilla appeared in her night wrapper, so much had she been alarmed
+by the tone of the Prince's farewell, and so startled by the hopes
+held out by the letter.
+
+"Madame," said the Frenchman, as he placed her in a seat and desired
+the gondoliers to start, "at this moment Prince Emilio's life is in
+danger, and you alone can save him."
+
+"What is to be done?" she asked.
+
+"Ah! Can you resign yourself to play a degrading part--in spite of the
+noblest face to be seen in Italy? Can you drop from the blue sky where
+you dwell, into the bed of a courtesan? In short, can you, an angel of
+refinement, of pure and spotless beauty, condescend to imagine what
+the love must be of a Tinti--in her room, and so effectually as to
+deceive the ardor of Emilio, who is indeed too drunk to be very
+clear-sighted?"
+
+"Is that all?" said she, with a smile that betrayed to the Frenchman a
+side he had not as yet perceived of the delightful nature of an
+Italian woman in love. "I will out-do la Tinti, if need be, to save my
+friend's life."
+
+"And you will thus fuse into one two kinds of love, which he sees as
+distinct--divided by a mountain of poetic fancy, that will melt away
+like the snow on a glacier under the beams of the midsummer sun."
+
+"I shall be eternally your debtor," said the Duchess, gravely.
+
+When the French doctor returned to the gallery, where the orgy had by
+this time assumed the stamp of Venetian frenzy, he had a look of
+satisfaction which the Prince, absorbed by la Tinti, failed to
+observe; he was promising himself a repetition of the intoxicating
+delights he had known. La Tinti, a true Sicilian, was floating on the
+tide of a fantastic passion on the point of being gratified.
+
+The doctor whispered a few words to Vendramin, and la Tinti was
+uneasy.
+
+"What are you plotting?" she inquired of the Prince's friend.
+
+"Are you kind-hearted?" said the doctor in her ear, with the sternness
+of an operator.
+
+The words pierced to her comprehension like a dagger-thrust to her
+heart.
+
+"It is to save Emilio's life," added Vendramin.
+
+"Come here," said the doctor to Clarina.
+
+The hapless singer rose and went to the other end of the table where,
+between Vendramin and the Frenchman, she looked like a criminal
+between the confessor and the executioner.
+
+She struggled for a long time, but yielded at last for love of Emilio.
+
+The doctor's last words were:
+
+"And you must cure Genovese!"
+
+She spoke a word to the tenor as she went round the table. She
+returned to the Prince, put her arm round his neck and kissed his hair
+with an expression of despair which struck Vendramin and the
+Frenchman, the only two who had their wits about them, then she
+vanished into her room. Emilio, seeing Genovese leave the table, while
+Cataneo and Capraja were absorbed in a long musical discussion, stole
+to the door of the bedroom, lifted the curtain, and slipped in, like
+an eel into the mud.
+
+"But you see, Cataneo," said Capraja, "you have exacted the last drop
+of physical enjoyment, and there you are, hanging on a wire like a
+cardboard harlequin, patterned with scars, and never moving unless the
+string is pulled of a perfect unison."
+
+"And you, Capraja, who have squeezed ideas dry, are not you in the
+same predicament? Do you not live riding the hobby of a _cadenza_?"
+
+"I? I possess the whole world!" cried Capraja, with a sovereign
+gesture of his hand.
+
+"And I have devoured it!" replied the Duke.
+
+They observed that the physician and Vendramin were gone, and that
+they were alone.
+
+
+
+Next morning, after a night of perfect happiness, the Prince's sleep
+was disturbed by a dream. He felt on his heart the trickle of pearls,
+dropped there by an angel; he woke, and found himself bathed in the
+tears of Massimilla Doni. He was lying in her arms, and she gazed at
+him as he slept.
+
+That evening, at the _Fenice_,--though la Tinti had not allowed him to
+rise till two in the afternoon, which is said to be very bad for a
+tenor voice,--Genovese sang divinely in his part in _Semiramide_. He
+was recalled with la Tinti, fresh crowns were given, the pit was wild
+with delight; the tenor no longer attempted to charm the prima donna
+by angelic methods.
+
+Vendramin was the only person whom the doctor could not cure. Love for
+a country that has ceased to be is a love beyond curing. The young
+Venetian, by dint of living in his thirteenth century republic, and in
+the arms of that pernicious courtesan called opium, when he found
+himself in the work-a-day world to which reaction brought him,
+succumbed, pitied and regretted by his friends.
+
+No, how shall the end of this adventure be told--for it is too
+disastrously domestic. A word will be enough for the worshipers of the
+ideal.
+
+The Duchess was expecting an infant.
+
+The Peris, the naiads, the fairies, the sylphs of ancient legend, the
+Muses of Greece, the Marble Virgins of the Certosa at Pavia, the Day
+and Night of Michael Angelo, the little Angels which Bellini was the
+first to put at the foot of his Church pictures, and which Raphael
+painted so divinely in his Virgin with the Donor, and the Madonna who
+shivers at Dresden, the lovely Maidens by Orcagna in the Church of
+San-Michele, at Florence, the celestial choir round the tomb in
+Saint-Sebaldus, at Nuremberg, the Virgins of the Duomo, at Milan, the
+whole population of a hundred Gothic Cathedrals, all the race of beings
+who burst their mould to visit you, great imaginative artists--all these
+angelic and disembodied maidens gathered round Massimilla's bed, and
+wept!
+
+
+
+PARIS, May 25th, 1839.
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Cane, Marco-Facino
+  Facino Cane
+
+Tinti, Clarina
+  Albert Savarus
+
+Varese, Emilio Memmi, Prince of
+  Gambara
+
+Varese, Princess of
+  Gambara
+
+Vendramini, Marco
+  Facino Cane
+
+Victorine
+  Lost Illusions
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Gaudissart II
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Massimilla Doni, by Honore de Balzac
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Massimilla Doni, by Honore de Balzac
+#68 in our series by Honore de Balzac
+
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
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+Massimilla Doni
+
+by Honore de Balzac
+
+Translated by Clara Bell and James Waring
+
+July, 1999  [Etext #1811]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext of Massimilla Doni, by Honore de Balzac
+*****This file should be named msmdn10.txt or msmdn10.zip******
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+
+
+Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+and John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
+
+
+
+
+
+Massimilla Doni
+
+by Honore de Balzac
+
+
+
+
+Translated by Clara Bell and James Waring
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+  To Jacques Strunz.
+
+  MY DEAR STRUNZ:--I should be ungrateful if I did not set your name
+  at the head of one of the two tales I could never have written but
+  for your patient kindness and care. Accept this as my grateful
+  acknowledgment of the readiness with which you tried--perhaps not
+  very successfully--to initiate me into the mysteries of musical
+  knowledge. You have at least taught me what difficulties and what
+  labor genius must bury in those poems which procure us
+  transcendental pleasures. You have also afforded me the
+  satisfaction of laughing more than once at the expense of a self-
+  styled connoisseur.
+
+  Some have taxed me with ignorance, not knowing that I have taken
+  counsel of one of our best musical critics, and had the benefit of
+  your conscientious help. I have, perhaps, been an inaccurate
+  amanuensis. If this were the case, I should be the traitorous
+  translator without knowing it, and I yet hope to sign myself
+  always one of your friends.
+
+DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+
+MASSIMILLA DONI
+
+
+
+As all who are learned in such matters know, the Venetian aristocracy
+is the first in Europe. Its /Libro d'Oro/ dates from before the
+Crusades, from a time when Venice, a survivor of Imperial and
+Christian Rome which had flung itself into the waters to escape the
+Barbarians, was already powerful and illustrious, and the head of the
+political and commercial world.
+
+With a few rare exceptions this brilliant nobility has fallen into
+utter ruin. Among the gondoliers who serve the English--to whom
+history here reads the lesson of their future fate--there are
+descendants of long dead Doges whose names are older than those of
+sovereigns. On some bridge, as you glide past it, if you are ever in
+Venice, you may admire some lovely girl in rags, a poor child
+belonging, perhaps, to one of the most famous patrician families. When
+a nation of kings has fallen so low, naturally some curious characters
+will be met with. It is not surprising that sparks should flash out
+among the ashes.
+
+These reflections, intended to justify the singularity of the persons
+who figure in this narrative, shall not be indulged in any longer, for
+there is nothing more intolerable than the stale reminiscences of
+those who insist on talking about Venice after so many great poets and
+petty travelers. The interest of the tale requires only this record of
+the most startling contrast in the life of man: the dignity and
+poverty which are conspicuous there in some of the men as they are in
+most of the houses.
+
+The nobles of Venice and of Geneva, like those of Poland in former
+times, bore no titles. To be named Quirini, Doria, Brignole, Morosini,
+Sauli, Mocenigo, Fieschi, Cornaro, or Spinola, was enough for the
+pride of the haughtiest. But all things become corrupt. At the present
+day some of these families have titles.
+
+And even at a time when the nobles of the aristocratic republics were
+all equal, the title of Prince was, in fact, given at Genoa to a
+member of the Doria family, who were sovereigns of the principality of
+Amalfi, and a similar title was in use at Venice, justified by ancient
+inheritance from Facino Cane, Prince of Varese. The Grimaldi, who
+assumed sovereignty, did not take possession of Monaco till much
+later.
+
+The last Cane of the elder branch vanished from Venice thirty years
+before the fall of the Republic, condemned for various crimes more or
+less criminal. The branch on whom this nominal principality then
+devolved, the Cane Memmi, sank into poverty during the fatal period
+between 1796 and 1814. In the twentieth year of the present century
+they were represented only by a young man whose name was Emilio, and
+an old palace which is regarded as one of the chief ornaments of the
+Grand Canal. This son of Venice the Fair had for his whole fortune
+this useless Palazzo, and fifteen hundred francs a year derived from a
+country house on the Brenta, the last plot of the lands his family had
+formerly owned on /terra firma/, and sold to the Austrian government.
+This little income spared our handsome Emilio the ignominy of
+accepting, as many nobles did, the indemnity of a franc a day, due to
+every impoverished patrician under the stipulations of the cession to
+Austria.
+
+At the beginning of winter, this young gentleman was still lingering
+in a country house situated at the base of the Tyrolese Alps, and
+purchased in the previous spring by the Duchess Cataneo. The house,
+erected by Palladio for the Piepolo family, is a square building of
+the finest style of architecture. There is a stately staircase with a
+marble portico on each side; the vestibules are crowded with frescoes,
+and made light by sky-blue ceilings across which graceful figures
+float amid ornament rich in design, but so well proportioned that the
+building carries it, as a woman carries her head-dress, with an ease
+that charms the eye; in short, the grace and dignity that characterize
+the /Procuratie/ in the piazetta at Venice. Stone walls, admirably
+decorated, keep the rooms at a pleasantly cool temperature. Verandas
+outside, painted in fresco, screen off the glare. The flooring
+throughout is the old Venetian inlay of marbles, cut into unfading
+flowers.
+
+The furniture, like that of all Italian palaces, was rich with
+handsome silks, judiciously employed, and valuable pictures favorably
+hung; some by the Genoese priest, known as /il Capucino/, several by
+Leonardo da Vinci, Carlo Dolci, Tintoretto, and Titian.
+
+The shelving gardens were full of the marvels where money has been
+turned into rocky grottoes and patterns of shells,--the very madness
+of craftsmanship,--terraces laid out by the fairies, arbors of sterner
+aspect, where the cypress on its tall trunk, the triangular pines, and
+the melancholy olive mingled pleasingly with orange trees, bays, and
+myrtles, and clear pools in which blue or russet fishes swam. Whatever
+may be said in favor of the natural or English garden, these trees,
+pruned into parasols, and yews fantastically clipped; this luxury of
+art so skilfully combined with that of nature in Court dress; those
+cascades over marble steps where the water spreads so shyly, a filmy
+scarf swept aside by the wind and immediately renewed; those bronzed
+metal figures speechlessly inhabiting the silent grove; that lordly
+palace, an object in the landscape from every side, raising its light
+outline at the foot of the Alps,--all the living thoughts which
+animate the stone, the bronze, and the trees, or express themselves in
+garden plots,--this lavish prodigality was in perfect keeping with the
+loves of a duchess and a handsome youth, for they are a poem far
+removed from the coarse ends of brutal nature.
+
+Any one with a soul for fantasy would have looked to see, on one of
+those noble flights of steps, standing by a vase with medallions in
+bas-relief, a negro boy swathed about the loins with scarlet stuff,
+and holding in one hand a parasol over the Duchess' head, and in the
+other the train of her long skirt, while she listened to Emilio Memmi.
+And how far grander the Venetian would have looked in such a dress as
+the Senators wore whom Titian painted.
+
+But alas! in this fairy palace, not unlike that of the Peschieri at
+Genoa, the Duchess Cataneo obeyed the edicts of Victorine and the
+Paris fashions. She had on a muslin dress and broad straw hat, pretty
+shot silk shoes, thread lace stockings that a breath of air would have
+blown away; and over her shoulders a black lace shawl. But the thing
+which no one could ever understand in Paris, where women are sheathed
+in their dresses as a dragon-fly is cased in its annular armor, was
+the perfect freedom with which this lovely daughter of Tuscany wore
+her French attire; she had Italianized it. A Frenchwoman treats her
+shirt with the greatest seriousness; an Italian never thinks about it;
+she does not attempt self-protection by some prim glance, for she
+knows that she is safe in that of a devoted love, a passion as sacred
+and serious in her eyes as in those of others.
+
+At eleven in the forenoon, after a walk, and by the side of a table
+still strewn with the remains of an elegant breakfast, the Duchess,
+lounging in an easy-chair, left her lover the master of these muslin
+draperies, without a frown each time he moved. Emilio, seated at her
+side, held one of her hands between his, gazing at her with utter
+absorption. Ask not whether they loved; they loved only too well. They
+were not reading out of the same book, like Paolo and Francesca; far
+from it, Emilio dared not say: "Let us read." The gleam of those eyes,
+those glistening gray irises streaked with threads of gold that
+started from the centre like rifts of light, giving her gaze a soft,
+star-like radiance, thrilled him with nervous rapture that was almost
+a spasm. Sometimes the mere sight of the splendid black hair that
+crowned the adored head, bound by a simple gold fillet, and falling in
+satin tresses on each side of a spacious brow, was enough to give him
+a ringing in his ears, the wild tide of the blood rushing through his
+veins as if it must burst his heart. By what obscure phenomenon did
+his soul so overmaster his body that he was no longer conscious of his
+independent self, but was wholly one with this woman at the least word
+she spoke in that voice which disturbed the very sources of life in
+him? If, in utter seclusion, a woman of moderate charms can, by being
+constantly studied, seem supreme and imposing, perhaps one so
+magnificently handsome as the Duchess could fascinate to stupidity a
+youth in whom rapture found some fresh incitement; for she had really
+absorbed his young soul.
+
+Massimilla, the heiress of the Doni, of Florence, had married the
+Sicilian Duke Cataneo. Her mother, since dead, had hoped, by promoting
+this marriage, to leave her rich and happy, according to Florentine
+custom. She had concluded that her daughter, emerging from a convent
+to embark in life, would achieve, under the laws of love, that second
+union of heart with heart which, to an Italian woman, is all in all.
+But Massimilla Doni had acquired in her convent a real taste for a
+religious life, and, when she had pledged her troth to Duke Cataneo,
+she was Christianly content to be his wife.
+
+This was an untenable position. Cataneo, who only looked for a
+duchess, thought himself ridiculous as a husband; and, when Massimilla
+complained of this indifference, he calmly bid her look about her for
+a /cavaliere servente/, even offering his services to introduce to her
+some youths from whom to choose. The Duchess wept; the Duke made his
+bow.
+
+Massimilla looked about her at the world that crowded round her; her
+mother took her to the Pergola, to some ambassadors' drawing-rooms, to
+the Cascine--wherever handsome young men of fashion were to be met;
+she saw none to her mind, and determined to travel. Then she lost her
+mother, inherited her property, assumed mourning, and made her way to
+Venice. There she saw Emilio, who, as he went past her opera box,
+exchanged with her a flash of inquiry.
+
+This was all. The Venetian was thunderstruck, while a voice in the
+Duchess' ear called out: "This is he!"
+
+Anywhere else two persons more prudent and less guileless would have
+studied and examined each other; but these two ignorances mingled like
+two masses of homogeneous matter, which, when they meet, form but one.
+Massimilla was at once and thenceforth Venetian. She bought the
+palazzo she had rented on the Canareggio; and then, not knowing how to
+invest her wealth, she had purchased Rivalta, the country-place where
+she was now staying.
+
+Emilio, being introduced to the Duchess by the Signora Vulpato, waited
+very respectfully on the lady in her box all through the winter. Never
+was love more ardent in two souls, or more bashful in its advances.
+The two children were afraid of each other. Massimilla was no
+coquette. She had no second string to her bow, no /secondo/, no
+/terzo/, no /patito/. Satisfied with a smile and a word, she admired
+her Venetian youth, with his pointed face, his long, thin nose, his
+black eyes, and noble brow; but, in spite of her artless
+encouragement, he never went to her house till they had spent three
+months in getting used to each other.
+
+Then summer brought its Eastern sky. The Duchess lamented having to go
+alone to Rivalta. Emilio, at once happy and uneasy at the thought of
+being alone with her, had accompanied Massimilla to her retreat. And
+now this pretty pair had been there for six months.
+
+Massimilla, now twenty, had not sacrificed her religious principles to
+her passion without a struggle. Still they had yielded, though
+tardily; and at this moment she would have been ready to consummate
+the love union for which her mother had prepared her, as Emilio sat
+there holding her beautiful, aristocratic hand,--long, white, and
+sheeny, ending in fine, rosy nails, as if she had procured from Asia
+some of the henna with which the Sultan's wives dye their fingertips.
+
+A misfortune, of which she was unconscious, but which was torture to
+Emilio, kept up a singular barrier between them. Massimilla, young as
+she was, had the majestic bearing which mythological tradition
+ascribes to Juno, the only goddess to whom it does not give a lover;
+for Diana, the chaste Diana, loved! Jupiter alone could hold his own
+with his divine better-half, on whom many English ladies model
+themselves.
+
+Emilio set his mistress far too high ever to touch her. A year hence,
+perhaps, he might not be a victim to this noble error which attacks
+none but very young or very old men. But as the archer who shoots
+beyond the mark is as far from it as he whose arrow falls short of it,
+the Duchess found herself between a husband who knew he was so far
+from reaching the target, that he had ceased to try for it, and a
+lover who was carried so much past it on the white wings of an angel,
+that he could not get back to it. Massimilla could be happy with
+desire, not imagining its issue; but her lover, distressful in his
+happiness, would sometimes obtain from his beloved a promise that led
+her to the edge of what many women call "the gulf," and thus found
+himself obliged to be satisfied with plucking the flowers at the edge,
+incapable of daring more than to pull off their petals, and smother
+his torture in his heart.
+
+They had wandered out together that morning, repeating such a hymn of
+love as the birds warbled in the branches. On their return, the youth,
+whose situation can only be described by comparing him to the cherubs
+represented by painters as having only a head and wings, had been so
+impassioned as to venture to hint a doubt as to the Duchess' entire
+devotion, so as to bring her to the point of saying: "What proof do
+you need?"
+
+The question had been asked with a royal air, and Memmi had ardently
+kissed the beautiful and guileless hand. Then he suddenly started up
+in a rage with himself, and left the Duchess. Massimilla remained in
+her indolent attitude on the sofa; but she wept, wondering how, young
+and handsome as she was, she could fail to please Emilio. Memmi, on
+the other hand, knocked his head against the tree-trunks like a hooded
+crow.
+
+But at this moment a servant came in pursuit of the young Venetian to
+deliver a letter brought by express messenger.
+
+Marco Vendramini,--a name also pronounced Vendramin, in the Venetian
+dialect, which drops many final letters,--his only friend, wrote to
+tell him that Facino Cane, Prince of Varese, had died in a hospital in
+Paris. Proofs of his death had come to hand, and the Cane-Memmi were
+Princes of Varese. In the eyes of the two young men a title without
+wealth being worthless, Vendramin also informed Emilio, as a far more
+important fact, of the engagement at the /Fenice/ of the famous tenor
+Genovese, and the no less famous Signora Tinti.
+
+Without waiting to finish the letter, which he crumpled up and put in
+his pocket, Emilio ran to communicate this great news to the Duchess,
+forgetting his heraldic honors.
+
+The Duchess knew nothing of the strange story which made la Tinti an
+object of curiosity in Italy, and Emilio briefly repeated it.
+
+This illustrious singer had been a mere inn-servant, whose wonderful
+voice had captivated a great Sicilian nobleman on his travels. The
+girl's beauty--she was then twelve years old--being worthy of her
+voice, the gentleman had had the moderation to have brought her up, as
+Louis XV. had Mademoiselle de Romans educated. He had waited patiently
+till Clara's voice had been fully trained by a famous professor, and
+till she was sixteen, before taking toll of the treasure so carefully
+cultivated.
+
+La Tinti had made her debut the year before, and had enchanted the
+three most fastidious capitals of Italy.
+
+"I am perfectly certain that her great nobleman is not my husband,"
+said the Duchess.
+
+The horses were ordered, and the Duchess set out at once for Venice,
+to be present at the opening of the winter season.
+
+So one fine evening in November, the new Prince of Varese was crossing
+the lagoon from Mestre to Venice, between the lines of stakes painted
+with Austrian colors, which mark out the channel for gondolas as
+conceded by the custom-house. As he watched Massimilla's gondola,
+navigated by men in livery, and cutting through the water a few yards
+in front, poor Emilio, with only an old gondolier who had been his
+father's servant in the days when Venice was still a living city,
+could not repress the bitter reflections suggested to him by the
+assumption of his title.
+
+"What a mockery of fortune! A prince--with fifteen hundred francs a
+year! Master of one of the finest palaces in the world, and unable to
+sell the statues, stairs, paintings, sculpture, which an Austrian
+decree had made inalienable! To live on a foundation of piles of
+campeachy wood worth nearly a million of francs, and have no
+furniture! To own sumptuous galleries, and live in an attic above the
+topmost arabesque cornice constructed of marble brought from the Morea
+--the land which a Memmius had marched over as conqueror in the time
+of the Romans! To see his ancestors in effigy on their tombs of
+precious marbles in one of the most splendid churches in Venice, and
+in a chapel graced with pictures by Titian and Tintoretto, by Palma,
+Bellini, Paul Veronese--and to be prohibited from selling a marble
+Memmi to the English for bread for the living Prince Varese! Genovese,
+the famous tenor, could get in one season, by his warbling, the
+capital of an income on which this son of the Memmi could live--this
+descendant of Roman senators as venerable as Caesar and Sylla.
+Genovese may smoke an Eastern hookah, and the Prince of Varese cannot
+even have enough cigars!"
+
+He tossed the end he was smoking into the sea. The Prince of Varese
+found cigars at the Duchess Cataneo's; how gladly would he have laid
+the treasures of the world at her feet! She studied all his caprices,
+and was happy to gratify them. He made his only meal at her house--his
+supper; for all his money was spent in clothes and his place in the
+/Fenice/. He had also to pay a hundred francs a year as wages to his
+father's old gondolier; and he, to serve him for that sum, had to live
+exclusively on rice. Also he kept enough to take a cup of black coffee
+every morning at Florian's to keep himself up till the evening in a
+state of nervous excitement, and this habit, carried to excess, he
+hoped would in due time kill him, as Vendramin relied on opium.
+
+"And I am a prince!"
+
+As he spoke the words, Emilio Memmi tossed Marco Vendramin's letter
+into the lagoon without even reading it to the end, and it floated
+away like a paper boat launched by a child.
+
+"But Emilio," he went on to himself, "is but three and twenty. He is a
+better man than Lord Wellington with the gout, than the paralyzed
+Regent, than the epileptic royal family of Austria, than the King of
+France----"
+
+But as he thought of the King of France Emilio's brow was knit, his
+ivory skin burned yellower, tears gathered in his black eyes and hung
+to his long lashes; he raised a hand worthy to be painted by Titian to
+push back his thick brown hair, and gazed again at Massimilla's
+gondola.
+
+"And this insolent mockery of fate is carried even into my love
+affair," said he to himself. "My heart and imagination are full of
+precious gifts; Massimilla will have none of them; she is a
+Florentine, and she will throw me over. I have to sit by her side like
+ice, while her voice and her looks fire me with heavenly sensations!
+As I watch her gondola a few hundred feet away from my own I feel as
+if a hot iron were set on my heart. An invisible fluid courses through
+my frame and scorches my nerves, a cloud dims my sight, the air seems
+to me to glow as it did at Rivalta when the sunlight came through a
+red silk blind, and I, without her knowing it, could admire her lost
+in dreams, with her subtle smile like that of Leonardo's Mona Lisa.
+Well, either my Highness will end my days by a pistol-shot, or the
+heir of the Cane will follow old Carmagnola's advice; we will be
+sailors, pirates; and it will be amusing to see how long we can live
+without being hanged."
+
+The Prince lighted another cigar, and watched the curls of smoke as
+the wind wafted them away, as though he saw in their arabesques an
+echo of this last thought.
+
+In the distance he could now perceive the mauresque pinnacles that
+crowned his palazzo, and he was sadder than ever. The Duchess' gondola
+had vanished in the Canareggio.
+
+These fantastic pictures of a romantic and perilous existence, as the
+outcome of his love, went out with his cigar, and his lady's gondola
+no longer traced his path. Then he saw the present in its real light:
+a palace without a soul, a soul that had no effect on the body, a
+principality without money, an empty body and a full heart--a thousand
+heartbreaking contradictions. The hapless youth mourned for Venice as
+she had been,--as did Vendramini, even more bitterly, for it was a
+great and common sorrow, a similar destiny, that had engendered such a
+warm friendship between these two young men, the wreckage of two
+illustrious families.
+
+Emilio could not help dreaming of a time when the palazzo Memmi poured
+out light from every window, and rang with music carried far away over
+the Adriatic tide; when hundreds of gondolas might be seen tied up to
+its mooring-posts, while graceful masked figures and the magnates of
+the Republic crowded up the steps kissed by the waters; when its halls
+and gallery were full of a throng of intriguers or their dupes; when
+the great banqueting-hall, filled with merry feasters, and the upper
+balconies furnished with musicians, seemed to harbor all Venice coming
+and going on the great staircase that rang with laughter.
+
+The chisels of the greatest artists of many centuries had sculptured
+the bronze brackets supporting long-necked or pot-bellied Chinese
+vases, and the candelabra for a thousand tapers. Every country had
+furnished some contribution to the splendor that decked the walls and
+ceilings. But now the panels were stripped of the handsome hangings,
+the melancholy ceilings were speechless and sad. No Turkey carpets, no
+lustres bright with flowers, no statues, no pictures, no more joy, no
+money--the great means to enjoyment! Venice, the London of the Middle
+Ages, was falling stone by stone, man by man. The ominous green weed
+which the sea washes and kisses at the foot of every palace, was in
+the Prince's eyes, a black fringe hung by nature as an omen of death.
+
+And finally, a great English poet had rushed down on Venice like a
+raven on a corpse, to croak out in lyric poetry--the first and last
+utterance of social man--the burden of a /de profundis/. English
+poetry! Flung in the face of the city that had given birth to Italian
+poetry! Poor Venice!
+
+Conceive, then, of the young man's amazement when roused from such
+meditations by Carmagnola's cry:
+
+"Serenissimo, the palazzo is on fire, or the old Doges have risen from
+their tombs! There are lights in the windows of the upper floor!"
+
+Prince Emilio fancied that his dream was realized by the touch of a
+magic wand. It was dusk, and the old gondolier could by tying up his
+gondola to the top step, help his young master to land without being
+seen by the bustling servants in the palazzo, some of whom were
+buzzing about the landing-place like bees at the door of a hive.
+Emilio stole into the great hall, whence rose the finest flight of
+stairs in all Venice, up which he lightly ran to investigate the cause
+of this strange bustle.
+
+A whole tribe of workmen were hurriedly completing the furnishing and
+redecoration of the palace. The first floor, worthy of the antique
+glories of Venice, displayed to Emilio's waking eyes the magnificence
+of which he had just been dreaming, and the fairy had exercised
+admirable taste. Splendor worthy of a parvenu sovereign was to be seen
+even in the smallest details. Emilio wandered about without remark
+from anybody, and surprise followed on surprise.
+
+Curious, then, to know what was going forward on the second floor, he
+went up, and found everything finished. The unknown laborers,
+commissioned by a wizard to revive the marvels of the Arabian nights
+in behalf of an impoverished Italian prince, were exchanging some
+inferior articles of furniture brought in for the nonce. Prince Emilio
+made his way into the bedroom, which smiled on him like a shell just
+deserted by Venus. The room was so charmingly pretty, so daintily
+smart, so full of elegant contrivance, that he straightway seated
+himself in an armchair of gilt wood, in front of which a most
+appetizing cold supper stood ready, and, without more ado, proceeded
+to eat.
+
+"In all the world there is no one but Massimilla who would have
+thought of this surprise," thought he. "She heard that I was now a
+prince; Duke Cataneo is perhaps dead, and has left her his fortune;
+she is twice as rich as she was; she will marry me----"
+
+And he ate in a way that would have roused the envy of an invalid
+Croesus, if he could have seen him; and he drank floods of capital
+port wine.
+
+"Now I understand the knowing little air she put on as she said, 'Till
+this evening!' Perhaps she means to come and break the spell. What a
+fine bed! and in the bed-place such a pretty lamp! Quite a Florentine
+idea!"
+
+There are some strongly blended natures on which extremes of joy or of
+grief have a soporific effect. Now on a youth so compounded that he
+could idealize his mistress to the point of ceasing to think of her as
+a woman, this sudden incursion of wealth had the effect of a dose of
+opium. When the Prince had drunk the whole of the bottle of port,
+eaten half a fish and some portion of a French pate, he felt an
+irresistible longing for bed. Perhaps he was suffering from a double
+intoxication. So he pulled off the counterpane, opened the bed,
+undressed in a pretty dressing-room, and lay down to meditate on
+destiny.
+
+"I forgot poor Carmagnola," said he; "but my cook and butler will have
+provided for him."
+
+At this juncture, a waiting-woman came in, lightly humming an air from
+the /Barbiere/. She tossed a woman's dress on a chair, a whole outfit
+for the night, and said as she did so:
+
+"Here they come!"
+
+And in fact a few minutes later a young lady came in, dressed in the
+latest French style, who might have sat for some English fancy
+portrait engraved for a /Forget-me-not/, a /Belle Assemblee/, or a
+/Book of Beauty/.
+
+The Prince shivered with delight and with fear, for, as you know, he
+was in love with Massimilla. But, in spite of this faith in love which
+fired his blood, and which of old inspired the painters of Spain,
+which gave Italy her Madonnas, created Michael Angelo's statues and
+Ghilberti's doors of the Baptistery,--desire had him in its toils, and
+agitated him without infusing into his heart that warm, ethereal glow
+which he felt at a look or a word from the Duchess. His soul, his
+heart, his reason, every impulse of his will, revolted at the thought
+of an infidelity; and yet that brutal, unreasoning infidelity
+domineered over his spirit. But the woman was not alone.
+
+The Prince saw one of those figures in which nobody believes when they
+are transferred from real life, where we wonder at them, to the
+imaginary existence of a more or less literary description. The dress
+of this stranger, like that of all Neapolitans, displayed five colors,
+if the black of his hat may count for a color; his trousers were
+olive-brown, his red waistcoat shone with gilt buttons, his coat was
+greenish, and his linen was more yellow than white. This personage
+seemed to have made it his business to verify the Neapolitan as
+represented by Gerolamo on the stage of his puppet show. His eyes
+looked like glass beads. His nose, like the ace of clubs, was horribly
+long and bulbous; in fact, it did its best to conceal an opening which
+it would be an insult to the human countenance to call a mouth;
+within, three or four tusks were visible, endowed, as it seemed, with
+a proper motion and fitting into each other. His fleshy ears drooped
+by their own weight, giving the creature a whimsical resemblance to a
+dog.
+
+His complexion, tainted, no doubt, by various metallic infusions as
+prescribed by some Hippocrates, verged on black. A pointed skull,
+scarcely covered by a few straight hairs like spun glass, crowned this
+forbidding face with red spots. Finally, though the man was very thin
+and of medium height, he had long arms and broad shoulders.
+
+In spite of these hideous details, and though he looked fully seventy,
+he did not lack a certain cyclopean dignity; he had aristocratic
+manners and the confident demeanor of a rich man.
+
+Any one who could have found courage enough to study him, would have
+seen his history written by base passions on this noble clay degraded
+to mud. Here was the man of high birth, who, rich from his earliest
+youth, had given up his body to debauchery for the sake of extravagant
+enjoyment. And debauchery had destroyed the human being and made
+another after its own image. Thousands of bottles of wine had
+disappeared under the purple archway of that preposterous nose, and
+left their dregs on his lips. Long and slow digestion had destroyed
+his teeth. His eyes had grown dim under the lamps of the gaming table.
+The blood tainted with impurities had vitiated the nervous system. The
+expenditure of force in the task of digestion had undermined his
+intellect. Finally, amours had thinned his hair. Each vice, like a
+greedy heir, had stamped possession on some part of the living body.
+
+Those who watch nature detect her in jests of the shrewdest irony. For
+instance, she places toads in the neighborhood of flowers, as she had
+placed this man by the side of this rose of love.
+
+"Will you play the violin this evening, my dear Duke?" asked the
+woman, as she unhooked a cord to let a handsome curtain fall over the
+door.
+
+"Play the violin!" thought Prince Emilio. "What can have happened to
+my palazzo? Am I awake? Here I am, in that woman's bed, and she
+certainly thinks herself at home--she has taken off her cloak! Have I,
+like Vendramin, inhaled opium, and am I in the midst of one of those
+dreams in which he sees Venice as it was three centuries ago?"
+
+The unknown fair one, seated in front of a dressing-table blazing with
+wax lights, was unfastening her frippery with the utmost calmness.
+
+"Ring for Giulia," said she; "I want to get my dress off."
+
+At that instant, the Duke noticed that the supper had been disturbed;
+he looked round the room, and discovered the Prince's trousers hanging
+over a chair at the foot of the bed.
+
+"Clarina, I will not ring!" cried the Duke, in a shrill voice of fury.
+"I will not play the violin this evening, nor tomorrow, nor ever
+again--"
+
+"Ta, ta, ta, ta!" sang Clarina, on the four octaves of the same note,
+leaping from one to the next with the ease of a nightingale.
+
+"In spite of that voice, which would make your patron saint Clara
+envious, you are really too impudent, you rascally hussy!"
+
+"You have not brought me up to listen to such abuse," said she, with
+some pride.
+
+"Have I brought you up to hide a man in your bed? You are unworthy
+alike of my generosity and of my hatred--"
+
+"A man in my bed!" exclaimed Clarina, hastily looking round.
+
+"And after daring to eat our supper, as if he were at home," added the
+Duke.
+
+"But am I not at home?" cried Emilio. "I am the Prince of Varese; this
+palace is mine."
+
+As he spoke, Emilio sat up in bed, his handsome and noble Venetian
+head framed in the flowing hangings.
+
+At first Clarina laughed--one of those irrepressible fits of laughter
+which seize a girl when she meets with an adventure comic beyond all
+conception. But her laughter ceased as she saw the young man, who, as
+has been said, was remarkably handsome, though but lightly attired;
+the madness that possessed Emilio seized her, too, and, as she had no
+one to adore, no sense of reason bridled her sudden fancy--a Sicilian
+woman in love.
+
+"Although this is the palazzo Memmi, I will thank your Highness to
+quit," said the Duke, assuming the cold irony of a polished gentleman.
+"I am at home here."
+
+"Let me tell you, Monsieur le Duc, that you are in my room, not in
+your own," said Clarina, rousing herself from her amazement. "If you
+have any doubts of my virtue, at any rate give me the benefit of my
+crime--"
+
+"Doubts! Say proof positive, my lady!"
+
+"I swear to you that I am innocent," replied Clarina.
+
+"What, then, do I see in that bed?" asked the Duke.
+
+"Old Ogre!" cried Clarina. "If you believe your eyes rather than my
+assertion, you have ceased to love me. Go, and do not weary my ears!
+Do you hear? Go, Monsieur le Duc. This young Prince will repay you the
+million francs I have cost you, if you insist."
+
+"I will repay nothing," said Emilio in an undertone.
+
+"There is nothing due! A million is cheap for Clara Tinti when a man
+is so ugly. Now, go," said she to the Duke. "You dismissed me; now I
+dismiss you. We are quits."
+
+At a gesture on Cataneo's part, as he seemed inclined to dispute this
+order, which was given with an action worthy of Semiramis,--the part
+in which la Tinti had won her fame,--the prima donna flew at the old
+ape and put him out of the room.
+
+"If you do not leave me in quiet this evening, we never meet again.
+And my /never/ counts for more than yours," she added.
+
+"Quiet!" retorted the Duke, with a bitter laugh. "Dear idol, it
+strikes me that I am leaving you /agitata/!"
+
+The Duke departed.
+
+His mean spirit was no surprise to Emilio.
+
+Every man who has accustomed himself to some particular taste, chosen
+from among the various effects of love, in harmony with his own
+nature, knows that no consideration can stop a man who has allowed his
+passions to become a habit.
+
+Clarina bounded like a fawn from the door to the bed.
+
+"A prince, and poor, young, and handsome!" cried she. "Why, it is a
+fairy tale!"
+
+The Sicilian perched herself on the bed with the artless freedom of an
+animal, the yearning of a plant for the sun, the airy motion of a
+branch waltzing to the breeze. As she unbuttoned the wristbands of her
+sleeves, she began to sing, not in the pitch that won her the applause
+of an audience at the /Fenice/, but in a warble tender with emotion.
+Her song was a zephyr carrying the caresses of her love to the heart.
+
+She stole a glance at Emilio, who was as much embarrassed as she; for
+this woman of the stage had lost all the boldness that had sparkled in
+her eyes and given decision to her voice and gestures when she
+dismissed the Duke. She was as humble as a courtesan who has fallen in
+love.
+
+To picture la Tinti you must recall one of our best French singers
+when she came out in /Il Fazzoletto/, an opera by Garcia that was then
+being played by an Italian company at the theatre in the Rue Lauvois.
+She was so beautiful that a Naples guardsman, having failed to win a
+hearing, killed himself in despair. The prima donna of the /Fenice/
+had the same refinement of features, the same elegant figure, and was
+equally young; but she had in addition the warm blood of Sicily that
+gave a glow to her loveliness. Her voice was fuller and richer, and
+she had that air of native majesty that is characteristic of Italian
+women.
+
+La Tinti--whose name also resembled that which the French singer
+assumed--was now seventeen, and the poor Prince three-and-twenty. What
+mocking hand had thought it sport to bring the match so near the
+powder? A fragrant room hung with rose-colored silk and brilliant with
+wax lights, a bed dressed in lace, a silent palace, and Venice! Two
+young and beautiful creatures! every ravishment at once.
+
+Emilio snatched up his trousers, jumped out of bed, escaped into the
+dressing-room, put on his clothes, came back and hurried to the door.
+
+These were his thoughts while dressing:--
+
+"Massimilla, beloved daughter of the Doni, in whom Italian beauty is
+an hereditary prerogative, you who are worthy of the portrait of
+/Margherita/, one of the few canvases painted entirely by Raphael to
+his glory! My beautiful and saintly mistress, shall I not have
+deserved you if I fly from this abyss of flowers? Should I be worthy
+of you if I profaned a heart that is wholly yours? No; I will not fall
+into the vulgar snare laid for me by my rebellious senses! This girl
+has her Duke, mine be my Duchess!"
+
+As he lifted the curtain, he heard a moan. The heroic lover looked
+round and saw Clarina on her knees, her face hidden in the bed,
+choking with sobs. Is it to be believed? The singer was lovelier
+kneeling thus, her face invisible, than even in her confusion with a
+glowing countenance. Her hair, which had fallen over her shoulders,
+her Magdalen-like attitude, the disorder of her half-unfastened dress,
+--the whole picture had been composed by the devil, who, as is well
+known, is a fine colorist.
+
+The Prince put his arm round the weeping girl, who slipped from him
+like a snake, and clung to one foot, pressing it to her beautiful
+bosom.
+
+"Will you explain to me," said he, shaking his foot to free it from
+her embrace, "how you happen to be in my palazzo? How the impoverished
+Emilio Memmi--"
+
+"Emilio Memmi!" cried Tinti, rising. "You said you were a Prince."
+
+"A Prince since yesterday."
+
+"You are in love with the Duchess Cataneo!" said she, looking at him
+from head to foot.
+
+Emilio stood mute, seeing that the prima dona was smiling at him
+through her tears.
+
+"Your Highness does not know that the man who had me trained for the
+stage--that the Duke--is Cataneo himself. And your friend Vendramini,
+thinking to do you a service, let him this palace for a thousand
+crowns, for the period of my season at the /Fenice/. Dear idol of my
+heart!" she went on, taking his hand and drawing him towards her, "why
+do you fly from one for whom many a man would run the risk of broken
+bones? Love, you see, is always love. It is the same everywhere; it is
+the sun of our souls; we can warm ourselves whenever it shines, and
+here--now--it is full noonday. If to-morrow you are not satisfied,
+kill me! But I shall survive, for I am a real beauty!"
+
+Emilio decided on remaining. When he signified his consent by a nod
+the impulse of delight that sent a shiver through Clarina seemed to
+him like a light from hell. Love had never before appeared to him in
+so impressive a form.
+
+At that moment Carmagnola whistled loudly.
+
+"What can he want of me?" said the Prince.
+
+But bewildered by love, Emilio paid no heed to the gondolier's
+repeated signals.
+
+If you have never traveled in Switzerland you may perhaps read this
+description with pleasure; and if you have clambered among those
+mountains you will not be sorry to be reminded of the scenery.
+
+In that sublime land, in the heart of a mass of rock riven by a gorge,
+--a valley as wide as the Avenue de Neuilly in Paris, but a hundred
+fathoms deep and broken into ravines,--flows a torrent coming from
+some tremendous height of the Saint-Gothard on the Simplon, which has
+formed a pool, I know not how many yards deep or how many feet long
+and wide, hemmed in by splintered cliffs of granite on which meadows
+find a place, with fir-trees between them, and enormous elms, and
+where violets also grow, and strawberries. Here and there stands a
+chalet and at the window you may see the rosy face of a yellow-haired
+Swiss girl. According to the moods of the sky the water in this tarn
+is blue and green, but as a sapphire is blue, as an emerald is green.
+Well, nothing in the world can give such an idea of depth, peace,
+immensity, heavenly love, and eternal happiness--to the most heedless
+traveler, the most hurried courier, the most commonplace tradesman--as
+this liquid diamond into which the snow, gathering from the highest
+Alps, trickles through a natural channel hidden under the trees and
+eaten through the rock, escaping below through a gap without a sound.
+The watery sheet overhanging the fall glides so gently that no ripple
+is to be seen on the surface which mirrors the chaise as you drive
+past. The postboy smacks his whip; you turn past a crag; you cross a
+bridge: suddenly there is a terrific uproar of cascades tumbling
+together one upon another. The water, taking a mighty leap, is broken
+into a hundred falls, dashed to spray on the boulders; it sparkles in
+a myriad jets against a mass that has fallen from the heights that
+tower over the ravine exactly in the middle of the road that has been
+so irresistibly cut by the most formidable of active forces.
+
+If you have formed a clear idea of this landscape, you will see in
+those sleeping waters the image of Emilio's love for the Duchess, and
+in the cascades leaping like a flock of sheep, an idea of his passion
+shared with la Tinti. In the midst of his torrent of love a rock stood
+up against which the torrent broke. The Prince, like Sisyphus, was
+constantly under the stone.
+
+"What on earth does the Duke do with a violin?" he wondered. "Do I owe
+this symphony to him?"
+
+He asked Clara Tinti.
+
+"My dear child,"--for she saw that Emilio was but a child,--"dear
+child," said she, "that man, who is a hundred and eighteen in the
+parish register of vice, and only forty-seven in the register of the
+Church, has but one single joy left to him in life. Yes, everything is
+broken, everything in him is ruin or rags; his soul, intellect, heart,
+nerves,--everything in man that can supply an impulse and remind him
+of heaven, either by desire or enjoyment, is bound up with music, or
+rather with one of the many effects produced by music, the perfect
+unison of two voices, or of a voice with the top string of his violin.
+The old ape sits on my knee, takes his instrument,--he plays fairly
+well,--he produces the notes, and I try to imitate them. Then, when
+the long-sought-for moment comes when it is impossible to distinguish
+in the body of sound which is the note on the violin and which
+proceeds from my throat, the old man falls into an ecstasy, his dim
+eyes light up with their last remaining fires, he is quite happy and
+will roll on the floor like a drunken man.
+
+"That is why he pays Genovese such a price. Genovese is the only tenor
+whose voice occasionally sounds in unison with mine. Either we really
+do sing exactly together once or twice in an evening, or the Duke
+imagines that we do; and for that imaginary pleasure he has bought
+Genovese. Genovese belongs to him. No theatrical manager can engage
+that tenor without me, nor have me to sing without him. The Duke
+brought me up on purpose to gratify that whim; to him I owe my talent,
+my beauty,--my fortune, no doubt. He will die of an attack of perfect
+unison. The sense of hearing alone has survived the wreck of his
+faculties; that is the only thread by which he holds on to life. A
+vigorous shoot springs from that rotten stump. There are, I am told,
+many men in the same predicament. May Madonna preserve them!
+
+"You have not come to that! You can do all you want--all I want of
+you, I know."
+
+
+
+Towards morning the Prince stole away and found Carmagnola lying
+asleep across the door.
+
+"Altezza," said the gondolier, "the Duchess ordered me to give you
+this note."
+
+He held out a dainty sheet of paper folded into a triangle. The Prince
+felt dizzy; he went back into the room and dropped into a chair, for
+his sight was dim, and his hands shook as he read:--
+
+  "DEAR EMILIO:--Your gondola stopped at your palazzo. Did you not
+  know that Cataneo has taken it for la Tinti? If you love me, go
+  to-night to Vendramin, who tells me he has a room ready for you in
+  his house. What shall I do? Can I remain in Venice to see my
+  husband and his opera singer? Shall we go back together to Friuli?
+  Write me one word, if only to tell me what the letter was you
+  tossed into the lagoon.
+
+
+"MASSIMILLA DONI."
+
+The writing and the scent of the paper brought a thousand memories
+back to the young Venetian's mind. The sun of a single-minded passion
+threw its radiance on the blue depths come from so far, collected in a
+bottomless pool, and shining like a star. The noble youth could not
+restrain the tears that flowed freely from his eyes, for in the
+languid state produced by satiated senses he was disarmed by the
+thought of that purer divinity.
+
+Even in her sleep Clarina heard his weeping; she sat up in bed, saw
+her Prince in a dejected attitude, and threw herself at his knees.
+
+"They are still waiting for the answer," said Carmagnola, putting the
+curtain aside.
+
+"Wretch, you have undone me!" cried Emilio, starting up and spurning
+Clarina with his foot.
+
+She clutched it so lovingly, her look imploring some explanation,--the
+look of a tear-stained Samaritan,--that Emilio, enraged to find
+himself still in the toils of the passion that had wrought his fall,
+pushed away the singer with an unmanly kick.
+
+"You told me to kill you,--then die, venomous reptile!" he exclaimed.
+
+He left the palace, and sprang into his gondola.
+
+"Pull," said he to Carmagnola.
+
+"Where?" asked the old servant.
+
+"Where you will."
+
+The gondolier divined his master's wishes, and by many windings
+brought him at last into the Canareggio, to the door of a wonderful
+palazzo, which you will admire when you see Venice, for no traveler
+ever fails to stop in front of those windows, each of a different
+design, vying with each other in fantastic ornament, with balconies
+like lace-work; to study the corners finishing in tall and slender
+twisted columns, the string-courses wrought by so inventive a chisel
+that no two shapes are alike in the arabesques on the stones.
+
+How charming is that doorway! how mysterious the vaulted arcade
+leading to the stairs! Who could fail to admire the steps on which
+ingenious art has laid a carpet that will last while Venice stands,--a
+carpet as rich as if wrought in Turkey, but composed of marbles in
+endless variety of shapes, inlaid in white marble. You will delight in
+the charming ornament of the colonnades of the upper story,--gilt like
+those of a ducal palace,--so that the marvels of art are both under
+your feet and above your head.
+
+What delicate shadows! How silent, how cool! But how solemn, too, was
+that old palace! where, to delight Emilio and his friend Vendramin,
+the Duchess had collected antique Venetian furniture, and employed
+skilled hands to restore the ceilings. There, old Venice lived again.
+The splendor was not merely noble, it was instructive. The
+archaeologist would have found there such models of perfection as the
+middle ages produced, having taken example from Venice. Here were to
+be seen the original ceilings of woodwork covered with scrolls and
+flowers in gold on a colored ground, or in colors on gold, and
+ceilings of gilt plaster castings, with a picture of many figures in
+each corner, with a splendid fresco in the centre,--a style so costly
+that there are not two in the Louvre, and that the extravagance of
+Louis XIV. shrunk from such expense at Versailles. On all sides
+marble, wood, and silk had served as materials for exquisite
+workmanship.
+
+Emilio pushed open a carved oak door, made his way down the long,
+vaulted passage which runs from end to end on each floor of a Venetian
+palazzo, and stopped before another door, so familiar that it made his
+heart beat. On seeing him, a lady companion came out of a vast
+drawing-room, and admitted him to a study where he found the Duchess
+on her knees in front of a Madonna.
+
+He had come to confess and ask forgiveness. Massimilla, in prayer, had
+converted him. He and God; nothing else dwelt in that heart.
+
+The Duchess rose very unaffectedly, and held out her hand. Her lover
+did not take it.
+
+"Did not Gianbattista see you, yesterday?" she asked.
+
+"No," he replied.
+
+"That piece of ill-luck gave me a night of misery. I was so afraid
+lest you might meet the Duke, whose perversity I know too well. What
+made Vendramin let your palace to him?"
+
+"It was a good idea, Milla, for your Prince is poor enough."
+
+Massimilla was so beautiful in her trust of him, and so wonderfully
+lovely, so happy in Emilio's presence, that at this moment the Prince,
+wide awake, experienced the sensations of the horrible dream that
+torments persons of a lively imagination, in which after arriving in a
+ballroom full of women in full dress, the dreamer is suddenly aware
+that he is naked, without even a shirt; shame and terror possess him
+by turns, and only waking can relieve him from his misery. Thus stood
+Emilio's soul in the presence of his mistress. Hitherto that soul had
+known only the fairest flowers of feeling; a debauch had plunged it
+into dishonor. This none knew but he, for the beautiful Florentine
+ascribed so many virtues to her lover that the man she adored could
+not but be incapable of any stain.
+
+As Emilio had not taken her hand, the Duchess pushed her fingers
+through his hair that the singer had kissed. Then she perceived that
+Emilio's hand was clammy and his brow moist.
+
+"What ails you?" she asked, in a voice to which tenderness gave the
+sweetness of a flute.
+
+"Never till this moment have I known how much I love you," he replied.
+
+"Well, dear idol, what would you have?" said she.
+
+"What have I done to make her ask that?" he wondered to himself.
+
+"Emilio, what letter was that which you threw into the lagoon?"
+
+"Vendramini's. I had not read it to the end, or I should never have
+gone to my palazzo, and there have met the Duke; for no doubt it told
+me all about it."
+
+Massimilla turned pale, but a caress from Emilio reassured her.
+
+"Stay with me all day; we will go to the opera together. We will not
+set out for Friuli; your presence will no doubt enable me to endure
+Cataneo's," said Massimilla.
+
+Though this would be torment to her lover's soul, he consented with
+apparent joy.
+
+If anything can give us a foretaste of what the damned will suffer on
+finding themselves so unworthy of God, is it not the state of a young
+man, as yet unpolluted, in the presence of a mistress he reveres,
+while he still feels on his lips the taste of infidelity, and brings
+into the sanctuary of the divinity he worships the tainted atmosphere
+of the courtesan?
+
+Baader, who in his lectures eliminated things divine by erotic
+imagery, had no doubt observed, like some Catholic writers, the
+intimate resemblance between human and heavenly love.
+
+This distress of mind cast a hue of melancholy over the pleasure the
+young Venetian felt in his mistress' presence. A woman's instinct has
+amazing aptitude for harmony of feeling; it assumes the hue, it
+vibrates to the note suggested by her lover. The pungent flavor of
+coquettish spice is far indeed from spurring affection so much as this
+gentle sympathy of tenderness. The smartness of a coquette too clearly
+marks opposition; however transient it is displeasing; but this
+intimate comprehension shows a perfect fusion of souls. The hapless
+Emilio was touched by the unspoken divination which led the Duchess to
+pity a fault unknown to her.
+
+Massimilla, feeling that her strength lay in the absence of any
+sensual side to her love, could allow herself to be expansive; she
+boldly and confidently poured out her angelic spirit, she stripped it
+bare, just as during that diabolical night, La Tinti had displayed the
+soft lines of her body, and her firm, elastic flesh. In Emilio's eyes
+there was as it were a conflict between the saintly love of this white
+soul and that of the vehement and muscular Sicilian.
+
+The day was spent in long looks following on deep meditations. Each of
+them gauged the depths of tender feeling, and found it bottomless; a
+conviction that brought fond words to their lips. Modesty, the goddess
+who in a moment of forgetfulness with Love, was the mother of
+Coquettishness, need not have put her hand before her face as she
+looked at these lovers. As a crowning joy, an orgy of happiness,
+Massimilla pillowed Emilio's head in her arms, and now and then
+ventured to press her lips to his; but only as a bird dips its beak
+into the clear waters of a spring, looking round lest it should be
+seen. Their fancy worked upon this kiss, as a composer develops a
+subject by the endless resources of music, and it produced in them
+such tumultuous and vibrating echoes as fevered their blood.
+
+The Idea must always be stronger than the Fact, otherwise desire would
+be less perfect than satisfaction, and it is in fact the stronger,--it
+gives birth to wit. And, indeed, they were perfectly happy; for
+enjoyment must always take something off happiness. Married in heaven
+alone, these two lovers admired each other in their purest aspect,--
+that of two souls incandescent, and united in celestial light, radiant
+to the eyes that faith has touched; and, above all, filled with the
+rapture which the brush of a Raphael, a Titian, a Murillo, has
+depicted, and which those who have ever known it, taste again as they
+gaze at those paintings. Do not such peerless spirits scorn the
+coarser joys lavished by the Sicilian singer--the material expression
+of that angelic union?
+
+These noble thoughts were in the Prince's mind as he reposed in
+heavenly calm on Massimilla's cool, soft, white bosom, under the
+gentle radiance of her eyes veiled by long, bright lashes; and he gave
+himself up to this dream of an ideal orgy. At such a moment,
+Massimilla was as one of the Virgin visions seen in dreams, which
+vanish at cock-crow, but whom we recognize when we find them again in
+their realm of glory,--in the works of some great painters of Heaven.
+
+In the evening the lovers went to the theatre. This is the way of
+Italian life: love in the morning; music in the evening; the night for
+sleep. How far preferable is this existence to that of a country where
+every one expends his lungs and strength in politics, without
+contributing any more, single-minded, to the progress of affairs than
+a grain of sand can make a cloud of dust. Liberty, in those strange
+lands, consists in the right to squabble over public concerns, to take
+care of oneself, to waste time in patriotic undertakings each more
+futile than the last, inasmuch as they all weaken that noble, holy
+self-concern which is the parent of all great human achievement. At
+Venice, on the contrary, love and its myriad ties, the sweet business
+of real happiness, fills up all the time.
+
+In that country, love is so much a matter of course that the Duchess
+was regarded as a wonder; for, in spite of her violent attachment to
+Emilio, everybody was confident of her immaculate purity. And women
+gave their sincere pity to the poor young man, who was regarded as a
+victim to the virtue of his lady-love. At the same time, no one cared
+to blame the Duchess, for in Italy religion is a power as much
+respected as love.
+
+Evening after evening Massimilla's box was the first object of every
+opera-glass, and each woman would say to her lover, as she studied the
+Duchess and her adorer:
+
+"How far have they got?"
+
+The lover would examine Emilio, seeking some evidence of success;
+would find no expression but that of a pure and dejected passion. And
+throughout the house, as they visited from box to box, the men would
+say to the ladies:
+
+"La Cataneo is not yet Emilio's."
+
+"She is unwise," said the old women. "She will tire him out."
+
+"/Forse!/" (Perhaps) the young wives would reply, with the solemn
+accent that Italians can infuse into that great word--the answer to
+many questions here below.
+
+Some women were indignant, thought the whole thing ill-judged, and
+declared that it was a misapprehension of religion to allow it to
+smother love.
+
+"My dear, love that poor Emilio," said the Signora Vulpato to
+Massimilla, as they met on the stairs in going out.
+
+"I do love him with all my might," replied the Duchess.
+
+"Then why does not he look happy?"
+
+Massimilla's reply was a little shrug of her shoulders.
+
+We in France--France as the growing mania for English proprieties has
+made it--can form no idea of the serious interest taken in this affair
+by Venetian society.
+
+Vendramini alone knew Emilio's secret, which was carefully kept
+between two men who had, for private pleasure, combined their coats of
+arms with the motto /Non amici, frates/.
+
+
+
+The opening night of the opera season is an event at Venice, as in
+every capital in Italy. The /Fenice/ was crowded.
+
+The five hours of the night that are spent at the theatre fill so
+important a place in Italian life that it is well to give an account
+of the customs that have risen from this manner of spending time.
+
+The boxes in Italy are unlike those of any other country, inasmuch as
+that elsewhere the women go to be seen, and that Italian ladies do not
+care to make a show of themselves. Each box is long and narrow,
+sloping at an angle to the front and to the passage behind. On each
+side is a sofa, and at the end stand two armchairs, one for the
+mistress of the box, and the other for a lady friend when she brings
+one, which she rarely does. Each lady is in fact too much engaged in
+her own box to call on others, or to wish to see them; also no one
+cares to introduce a rival. An Italian woman almost always reigns
+alone in her box; the mothers are not the slaves of their daughters,
+the daughters have no mother on their hands; thus there are no
+children, no relations to watch and censure and bore, or cut into a
+conversation.
+
+In front every box is draped in the same way, with the same silk: from
+the cornice hang curtains, also all to match; and these remain drawn
+when the family to whom the box belongs is in mourning. With very few
+exceptions, and those only at Milan, there is no light inside the box;
+they are illuminated only from the stage, and from a not very
+brilliant hanging lustre which, in spite of protests, has been
+introduced into the house in some towns; still, screened by the
+curtains, they are never very light, and their arrangement leaves the
+back of the box so dark that it is very difficult to see what is going
+on.
+
+The boxes, large enough to accommodate eight or ten persons, are
+decorated with handsome silks, the ceilings are painted and ornamented
+in light and pleasing colors; the woodwork is gilt. Ices and sorbets
+are served there, and sweetmeats; for only the plebeian classes ever
+have a serious meal. Each box is freehold property, and of
+considerable value; some are estimated at as much as thirty thousand
+lire; the Litta family at Milan own three adjoining. These facts
+sufficiently indicate the importance attributed to this incident of
+fashionable life.
+
+Conversation reigns supreme in this little apartment, which Stendhal,
+one of the most ingenious of modern writers, and a keen student of
+Italian manners, has called a boudoir with a window opening on to a
+pit. The music and the spectacle are in fact purely accessory; the
+real interest of the evening is in the social meeting there, the all-
+important trivialities of love that are discussed, the assignations
+held, the anecdotes and gossip that creep in. The theatre is an
+inexpensive meeting-place for a whole society which is content and
+amused with studying itself.
+
+The men who are admitted take their seats on one of the sofas, in the
+order of their arrival. The first comer naturally is next to the
+mistress of the box, but when both seats are full, if another visitor
+comes in, the one who has sat longest rises, takes his leave and
+departs. All move up one place, and so each in turn is next the
+sovereign.
+
+This futile gossip, or serious colloquy, these elegant trivialities of
+Italian life, inevitably imply some general intimacy. The lady may be
+in full dress or not, as she pleases. She is so completely at home
+that a stranger who has been received in her box may call on her next
+day at her residence. The foreign visitor cannot at first understand
+this life of idle wit, this /dolce far niente/ on a background of
+music. Only long custom and keen observation can ever reveal to a
+foreigner the meaning of Italian life, which is like the free sky of
+the south, and where a rich man will not endure a cloud. A man of rank
+cares little about the management of his fortune; he leaves the
+details to his stewards (ragionati), who rob and ruin him. He has no
+instinct for politics, and they would presently bore him; he lives
+exclusively for passion, which fills up all his time; hence the
+necessity felt by the lady and her lover for being constantly
+together; for the great feature of such a life is the lover, who for
+five hours is kept under the eye of a woman who has had him at her
+feet all day. Thus Italian habits allow of perpetual satisfaction, and
+necessitate a constant study of the means fitted to insure it, though
+hidden under apparent light-heartedness.
+
+It is a beautiful life, but a reckless one, and in no country in the
+world are men so often found worn out.
+
+The Duchess' box was on the pit tier--/pepiano/, as it is called in
+Venice; she always sat where the light from the stage fell on her
+face, so that her handsome head, softly illuminated, stood out against
+the dark background. The Florentine attracted every gaze by her broad,
+high brow, as white as snow, crowned with plaits of black hair that
+gave her a really royal look; by the refinement of her features,
+resembling the noble features of Andrea del Sarto's heads; by the
+outline of her face, the setting of her eyes; and by those velvet eyes
+themselves, which spoke of the rapture of a woman dreaming of
+happiness, still pure though loving, at once attractive and dignified.
+
+Instead of /Mose/, in which la Tinti was to have appeared with
+Genovese, /Il Barbiere/ was given, and the tenor was to sing without
+the celebrated prima donna. The manager announced that he had been
+obliged to change the opera in consequence of la Tinti's being ill;
+and the Duke was not to be seen in the theatre.
+
+Was this a clever trick on the part of the management, to secure two
+full houses by bringing out Genovese and Tinti separately, or was
+Clarina's indisposition genuine? While this was open to discussion by
+others, Emilio might be better informed; and though the announcement
+caused him some remorse, as he remembered the singer's beauty and
+vehemence, her absence and the Duke's put both the Prince and the
+Duchess very much at their ease.
+
+And Genovese sang in such a way as to drive out all memories of a
+night of illicit love, and to prolong the heavenly joys of this
+blissful day. Happy to be alone to receive the applause of the house,
+the tenor did his best with the powers which have since achieved
+European fame. Genovese, then but three-and-twenty, born at Bergamo, a
+pupil of Veluti's and devoted to his art, a fine man, good-looking,
+clever in apprehending the spirit of a part, was already developing
+into the great artist destined to win fame and fortune. He had a wild
+success,--a phrase which is literally exact only in Italy, where the
+applause of the house is absolutely frenzied when a singer procures it
+enjoyment.
+
+Some of the Prince's friends came to congratulate him on coming into
+his title, and to discuss the news. Only last evening la Tinti, taken
+by the Duke to the Vulpatos', had sung there, apparently in health as
+sound as her voice was fine; hence her sudden disposition gave rise to
+much comment. It was rumored at the Cafe Florian that Genovese was
+desperately in love with Clarina; that she was only anxious to avoid
+his declarations, and that the manager had tried in vain to induce her
+to appear with him. The Austrian General, on the other hand, asserted
+that it was the Duke who was ill, that the prima donna was nursing
+him, and that Genovese had been commanded to make amends to the
+public.
+
+The Duchess owed this visit from the Austrian General to the fact that
+a French physician had come to Venice whom the General wished to
+introduce to her. The Prince, seeing Vendramin wandering about the
+/parterre/, went out for a few minutes of confidential talk with his
+friend, whom he had not seen for three months; and as they walked
+round the gangway which divides the seats in the pit from the lowest
+tier of boxes, he had an opportunity of observing Massimilla's
+reception of the foreigner.
+
+"Who is that Frenchman?" asked the Prince.
+
+"A physician sent for by Cataneo, who wants to know how long he is
+likely to live," said Vendramin. "The Frenchman is waiting for
+Malfatti, with whom he is to hold a consultation."
+
+Like every Italian woman who is in love, the Duchess kept her eyes
+fixed on Emilio; for in that land a woman is so wholly wrapped up in
+her lover that it is difficult to detect an expressive glance directed
+at anybody else.
+
+"Caro," said the Prince to his friend, "remember I slept at your house
+last night."
+
+"Have you triumphed?" said Vendramin, putting his arm round Emilio's
+waist.
+
+"No; but I hope I may some day be happy with Massimilla."
+
+"Well," replied Marco, "then you will be the most envied man on earth.
+The Duchess is the most perfect woman in Italy. To me, seeing things
+as I do through the dazzling medium of opium, she seems the very
+highest expression of art; for nature, without knowing it, has made
+her a Raphael picture. Your passion gives no umbrage to Cataneo, who
+has handed over to me a thousand crowns, which I am to give to you."
+
+"Well," added Emilio, "whatever you may hear said, I sleep every night
+at your house. Come, for every minute spent away from her, when I
+might be with her, is torment."
+
+Emilio took his seat at the back of the box and remained there in
+silence, listening to the Duchess, enchanted by her wit and beauty. It
+was for him, and not out of vanity, that Massimilla lavished the
+charms of her conversation bright with Italian wit, in which sarcasm
+lashed things but not persons, laughter attacked nothing that was not
+laughable, mere trifles were seasoned with Attic salt.
+
+Anywhere else she might have been tiresome. The Italians, an eminently
+intelligent race, have no fancy for displaying their talents where
+they are not in demand; their chat is perfectly simple and effortless,
+it never makes play, as in France, under the lead of a fencing master,
+each one flourishing his foil, or, if he has nothing to say, sitting
+humiliated.
+
+Conversation sparkles with a delicate and subtle satire that plays
+gracefully with familiar facts; and instead of a compromising epigram
+an Italian has a glance or a smile of unutterable meaning. They think
+--and they are right--that to be expected to understand ideas when
+they only seek enjoyment, is a bore.
+
+Indeed, la Vulpato had said to Massimilla:
+
+"If you loved him you would not talk so well."
+
+Emilio took no part in the conversation; he listened and gazed. This
+reserve might have led foreigners to suppose that the Prince was a man
+of no intelligence,--their impression very commonly of an Italian in
+love,--whereas he was simply a lover up to his ears in rapture.
+Vendramin sat down by Emilio, opposite the Frenchman, who, as the
+stranger, occupied the corner facing the Duchess.
+
+"Is that gentleman drunk?" said the physician in an undertone to
+Massimilla, after looking at Vendramin.
+
+"Yes," replied she, simply.
+
+In that land of passion, each passion bears its excuse in itself, and
+gracious indulgence is shown to every form of error. The Duchess
+sighed deeply, and an expression of suppressed pain passed over her
+features.
+
+"You will see strange things in our country, monsieur," she went on.
+"Vendramin lives on opium, as this one lives on love, and that one
+buries himself in learning; most young men have a passion for a
+dancer, as older men are miserly. We all create some happiness or some
+madness for ourselves."
+
+"Because you all want to divert your minds from some fixed idea, for
+which a revolution would be a radical cure," replied the physician.
+"The Genoese regrets his republic, the Milanese pines for his
+independence, the Piemontese longs for a constitutional government,
+the Romagna cries for liberty--"
+
+"Of which it knows nothing," interrupted the Duchess. "Alas! there are
+men in Italy so stupid as to long for your idiotic Charter, which
+destroys the influence of woman. Most of my fellow-countrywomen must
+need read your French books--useless rhodomontade--"
+
+"Useless!" cried the Frenchman.
+
+"Why, monsieur," the Duchess went on, "what can you find in a book
+that is better than what we have in our hearts? Italy is mad."
+
+"I cannot see that a people is mad because it wishes to be its own
+master," said the physician.
+
+"Good Heavens!" exclaimed the Duchess, eagerly, "does not that mean
+paying with a great deal of bloodshed for the right of quarreling, as
+you do, over crazy ideas?"
+
+"Then you approve of despotism?" said the physician.
+
+"Why should I not approve of a system of government which, by
+depriving us of books and odious politics, leaves men entirely to us?"
+
+"I had thought that the Italians were more patriotic," said the
+Frenchman.
+
+Massimilla laughed so slyly that her interlocutor could not
+distinguish mockery from serious meaning, nor her real opinion from
+ironical criticism.
+
+"Then you are not a liberal?" said he.
+
+"Heaven preserve me!" said she. "I can imagine nothing in worse taste
+than such opinions in a woman. Could you love a woman whose heart was
+occupied by all mankind?"
+
+"Those who love are naturally aristocrats," the Austrian General
+observed, with a smile.
+
+"As I came into the theatre," the Frenchman observed, "you were the
+first person I saw; and I remarked to his Excellency that if there was
+a woman who could personify a nation it was you. But I grieve to
+discover that, though you represent its divine beauty, you have not
+the constitutional spirit."
+
+"Are you not bound," said the Duchess, pointing to the ballet now
+being danced, "to find all our dancers detestable and our singers
+atrocious? Paris and London rob us of all our leading stars. Paris
+passes judgment on them, and London pays them. Genovese and la Tinti
+will not be left to us for six months--"
+
+At this juncture, the Austrian left the box. Vendramin, the Prince,
+and the other two Italians exchanged a look and a smile, glancing at
+the French physician. He, for a moment, felt doubtful of himself,--a
+rare thing in a Frenchman,--fancying he had said or done something
+incongruous; but the riddle was immediately solved.
+
+"Do you thing it would be judicious," said Emilio, "if we spoke our
+mind in the presence of our masters?"
+
+"You are in a land of slaves," said the Duchess, in a tone and with a
+droop of the head which gave her at once the look for which the
+physician had sought in vain. "Vendramin," she went on, speaking so
+that only the stranger could hear her, "took to smoking opium, a
+villainous idea suggested to him by an Englishman who, for other
+reasons of his, craved an easy death--not death as men see it in the
+form of a skeleton, but death draped with the frippery you in France
+call a flag--a maiden form crowned with flowers or laurels; she
+appears in a cloud of gunpowder borne on the flight of a cannon-ball--
+or else stretched on a bed between two courtesans; or again, she rises
+in the steam of a bowl of punch, or the dazzling vapor of a diamond--
+but a diamond in the form of carbon.
+
+"Whenever Vendramin chooses, for three Austrian lire, he can be a
+Venetian Captain, he can sail in the galleys of the Republic, and
+conquer the gilded domes of Constantinople. Then he can lounge on the
+divans in the Seraglio among the Sultan's wives, while the Grand
+Signor himself is the slave of the Venetian conqueror. He returns to
+restore his palazzo with the spoils of the Ottoman Empire. He can quit
+the women of the East for the doubly masked intrigues of his beloved
+Venetians, and fancy that he dreads the jealousy which has ceased to
+exist.
+
+"For three zwanziger he can transport himself into the Council of Ten,
+can wield there terrible power, and leave the Doges' Palace to sleep
+under the watch of a pair of flashing eyes, or to climb a balcony from
+which a fair hand has hung a silken ladder. He can love a woman to
+whom opium lends such poetic grace as we women of flesh and blood
+could never show.
+
+"Presently he turns over, and he is face to face with the dreadful
+frown of the senator, who holds a dagger. He hears the blade plunged
+into his mistress' heart. She dies smiling on him; for she has saved
+him.
+
+"And she is a happy woman!" added the Duchess, looking at Emilio.
+
+"He escapes and flies to command the Dalmatians, to conquer the
+Illyrian coast for his beloved Venice. His glory wins him forgiveness,
+and he enjoys a life of domestic happiness,--a home, a winter evening,
+a young wife and charming children, who pray to San Marco under the
+care of an old nurse. Yes, for three francs' worth of opium he
+furnishes our empty arsenal, he watches convoys of merchandise coming
+in, going to the four quarters of the world. The forces of modern
+industry no longer reign in London, but in his own Venice, where the
+hanging gardens of Semiramis, the Temple of Jerusalem, the marvels of
+Rome, live once more. He adds to the glories of the middle ages by the
+labors of steam, by new masterpieces of art under the protection of
+Venice, who protected it of old. Monuments and nations crowd into his
+little brain; there is room for them all. Empires and cities and
+revolutions come and vanish in the course of a few hours, while Venice
+alone expands and lives; for the Venice of his dreams is the empress
+of the seas. She has two millions of inhabitants, the sceptre of
+Italy, the mastery of the Mediterranean and the Indies!"
+
+"What an opera is the brain of man! What an unfathomed abyss!--even to
+those who, like Gall, have mapped it out," cried the physician.
+
+"Dear Duchess," said Vendramin, "do not omit the last service that my
+elixir will do me. After hearing ravishing voices and imbibing music
+through every pore, after experiencing the keenest pleasures and the
+fiercest delights of Mahomet's paradise, I see none but the most
+terrible images. I have visions of my beloved Venice full of
+children's faces, distorted, like those of the dying; of women covered
+with dreadful wounds, torn and wailing; of men mangled and crushed by
+the copper sides of crashing vessels. I begin to see Venice as she is,
+shrouded in crape, stripped, robbed, destitute. Pale phantoms wander
+through her streets!
+
+"Already the Austrian soldiers are grinning over me, already my
+visionary life is drifting into real life; whereas six months ago real
+life was the bad dream, and the life of opium held love and bliss,
+important affairs and political interests. Alas! To my grief, I see
+the dawn over my tomb, where truth and falsehood mingle in a dubious
+light, which is neither day nor darkness, but partakes of both."
+
+"So you see that in this head there is too much patriotism," said the
+Prince, laying his hand on the thick black curls that fell on
+Vendramin's brow.
+
+"Oh, if he loves us he will give up his dreadful opium!" said
+Massimilla.
+
+"I will cure your friend," said the Frenchman.
+
+"Achieve that, and we shall love you," said the Duchess. "But if on
+your return to France you do not calumniate us, we shall love you even
+better. The hapless Italians are too much crushed by foreign dominion
+to be fairly judged--for we have known yours," she added, with a
+smile.
+
+"It was more generous than Austria's," said the physician, eagerly.
+
+"Austria squeezes and gives us nothing back, and you squeeze to
+enlarge and beautify our towns; you stimulated us by giving us an
+army. You thought you could keep Italy, and they expect to lose it--
+there lies the difference.
+
+"The Austrians provide us with a sort of ease that is as stultifying
+and heavy as themselves, while you overwhelmed us by your devouring
+energy. But whether we die of tonics or of narcotics, what does it
+matter? It is death all the same, Monsieur le docteur."
+
+"Unhappy Italy! In my eyes she is like a beautiful woman whom France
+ought to protect by making her his mistress," exclaimed the Frenchman.
+
+"But you could not love us as we wish to be loved," said the Duchess,
+smiling. "We want to be free. But the liberty I crave is not your
+ignoble and middle-class liberalism, which would kill all art. I ask,"
+said she, in a tone that thrilled through the box,--"that is to say, I
+would ask,--that each Italian republic should be resuscitated, with
+its nobles, its citizens, its special privileges for each caste. I
+would have the old aristocratic republics once more with their
+intestine warfare and rivalry that gave birth to the noblest works of
+art, that created politics, that raised up the great princely houses.
+By extending the action of one government over a vast expanse of
+country it is frittered down. The Italian republics were the glory of
+Europe in the middle ages. Why has Italy succumbed when the Swiss, who
+were her porters, have triumphed?"
+
+"The Swiss republics," said the doctor, "were worthy housewives, busy
+with their own little concerns, and neither having any cause for
+envying another. Your republics were haughty queens, preferring to
+sell themselves rather than bow to a neighbor; they fell too low ever
+to rise again. The Guelphs are triumphant."
+
+"Do not pity us too much," said the Duchess, in a voice that made the
+two friends start. "We are still supreme. Even in the depths of her
+misfortune Italy governs through the choicer spirits that abound in
+her cities.
+
+"Unfortunately the greater number of her geniuses learn to understand
+life so quickly that they lie sunk in poverty-stricken pleasure. As
+for those who are willing to play the melancholy game for immortality,
+they know how to get at your gold and to secure your praises. Ay, in
+this land--pitied for its fallen state by traveled simpletons and
+hypocritical poets, while its character is traduced by politicians--in
+this land, which appears so languid, powerless, and ruinous, worn out
+rather than old, there are puissant brains in every branch of life,
+genius throwing out vigorous shoots as an old vine-stock throws out
+canes productive of delicious fruit. This race of ancient rulers still
+gives birth to kings--Lagrange, Volta, Rasori, Canova, Rossini,
+Bartolini, Galvani, Vigano, Beccaria, Cicognara, Corvetto. These
+Italians are masters of the scientific peaks on which they stand, or
+of the arts to which they devote themselves. To say nothing of the
+singers and executants who captivate Europe by their amazing
+perfections: Taglioni, Paganini, and the rest. Italy still rules the
+world which will always come to worship her.
+
+"Go to Florian's to-night; you will find in Capraja one of our
+cleverest men, but in love with obscurity. No one but the Duke, my
+master, understands music so thoroughly as he does; indeed he is known
+here as /il Fanatico/."
+
+After sitting a few minutes listening to the eager war of words
+between the physician and the Duchess, who showed much ingenious
+eloquence, the Italians, one by one, took leave, and went off to tell
+the news in every box, that la Cataneo, who was regarded as a woman of
+great wit and spirit, had, on the question of Italy, defeated a famous
+French doctor. This was the talk of the evening.
+
+As soon as the Frenchman found himself alone with the Duchess and the
+Prince, he understood that they were to be left together, and took
+leave. Massimilla bowed with a bend of the neck that placed him at
+such a distance that this salute might have secured her the man's
+hatred, if he could have ignored the charm of her eloquence and
+beauty.
+
+Thus at the end of the opera, Emilio and Massimilla were alone, and
+holding hands they listened together to the duet that finishes /Il
+Barbiere/.
+
+"There is nothing but music to express love," said the Duchess, moved
+by that song as of two rapturous nightingales.
+
+A tear twinkled in Emilio's eye; Massimilla, sublime in such beauty as
+beams in Raphael's Saint-Cecilia, pressed his hand, their knees
+touched, there was, as it seemed, the blossom of a kiss on her lips.
+The Prince saw on her blushing face a glow of joy like that which on a
+summer's day shines down on the golden harvest; his heart seemed
+bursting with the tide of blood that rushed to it. He fancied that he
+could hear an angelic chorus of voices, and he would have given his
+life to feel the fire of passion which at this hour last night had
+filled him for the odious Clarina; but he was at the moment hardly
+conscious of having a body.
+
+Massimilla, much distressed, ascribed this tear, in her guilelessness,
+to the remark she had made as to Genovese's cavatina.
+
+"But, /carino/," said she in Emilio's ear, "are not you as far better
+than every expression of love, as cause is superior to effect?"
+
+After handing the Duchess to her gondola, Emilio waited for Vendramin
+to go to Florian's.
+
+
+
+The Cafe Florian at Venice is a quite undefinable institution.
+Merchants transact their business there, and lawyers meet to talk over
+their most difficult cases. Florian's is at once an Exchange, a green-
+room, a newspaper office, a club, a confessional,--and it is so well
+adapted to the needs of the place that some Venetian women never know
+what their husband's business may be, for, if they have a letter to
+write, they go to write it there.
+
+Spies, of course, abound at Florian's; but their presence only
+sharpens Venetian wits, which may here exercise the discretion once so
+famous. A great many persons spend the whole day at Florian's; in
+fact, to some men Florian's is so much a matter of necessity, that
+between the acts of an opera they leave the ladies in their boxes and
+take a turn to hear what is going on there.
+
+While the two friends were walking in the narrow streets of the
+Merceria they did not speak, for there were too many people; but as
+they turned into the Piazzi di San Marco, the Prince said:
+
+"Do not go at once to the cafe. Let us walk about; I want to talk to
+you."
+
+He related his adventure with Clarina and explained his position. To
+Vendramin Emilio's despair seemed so nearly allied to madness that he
+promised to cure him completely if only he would give him /carte
+blanche/ to deal with Massimilla. This ray of hope came just in time
+to save Emilio from drowning himself that night; for, indeed, as he
+remembered the singer, he felt a horrible wish to go back to her.
+
+The two friends then went to an inner room at Florian's, where they
+listened to the conversation of some of the superior men of the town,
+who discoursed the subjects of the day. The most interesting of these
+were, in the first place, the eccentricities of Lord Byron, of whom
+the Venetians made great sport; then Cataneo's attachment for la
+Tinti, for which no reason could be assigned after twenty different
+causes had been suggested; then Genovese's debut; finally, the tilting
+match between the Duchess and the French doctor. Just as the
+discussion became vehemently musical, Duke Cataneo made his
+appearance. He bowed very courteously to Emilio, which seemed so
+natural that no one noticed it, and Emilio bowed gravely in return.
+Cataneo looked round to see if there was anybody he knew, recognized
+Vendramin and greeted him, bowed to his banker, a rich patrician, and
+finally to the man who happened to be speaking,--a celebrated musical
+fanatic, a friend of the Comtesse Albrizzi. Like some others who
+frequented Florian's, his mode of life was absolutely unknown, so
+carefully did he conceal it. Nothing was known about him but what he
+chose to tell.
+
+This was Capraja, the nobleman whom the Duchess had mentioned to the
+French doctor. This Venetian was one of a class of dreamers whose
+powerful minds divine everything. He was an eccentric theorist, and
+cared no more for celebrity than for a broken pipe.
+
+His life was in accordance with his ideas. Capraja made his appearance
+at about ten every morning under the /Procuratie/, without anyone
+knowing whence he came. He lounged about Venice, smoking cigars. He
+regularly went to the Fenice, sitting in the pit-stalls, and between
+the acts went round to Florian's, where he took three or four cups of
+coffee a day; and he ended the evening at the cafe, never leaving it
+till about two in the morning. Twelve hundred francs a year paid all
+his expenses; he ate but one meal a day at an eating-house in the
+Merceria, where the cook had his dinner ready for him at a fixed hour,
+on a little table at the back of the shop; the pastry-cook's daughter
+herself prepared his stuffed oysters, provided him with cigars, and
+took care of his money. By his advice, this girl, though she was very
+handsome, would never countenance a lover, lived very steadily, and
+still wore the old Venetian costume. This purely-bred Venetian girl
+was twelve years old when Capraja first took an interest in her, and
+six-and-twenty when he died. She was very fond of him, though he had
+never even kissed her hand or her brow, and she knew nothing whatever
+of the poor old nobleman's intentions with regard to her. The girl had
+at last as complete control of the old gentleman as a mother has of
+her child; she would tell him when he wanted clean linen; next day he
+would come without a shirt, and she would give him a clean one to put
+on in the morning.
+
+He never looked at a woman either in the theatre or out walking.
+Though he was the descendant of an old patrician family he never
+thought his rank worth mentioning. But at night, after twelve, he
+awoke from his apathy, talked, and showed that he had seen and heard
+everything. This peaceful Diogenes, quite incapable of explaining his
+tenets, half a Turk, half a Venetian, was thick-set, short, and fat;
+he had a Doge's sharp nose, an inquisitive, satirical eye, and a
+discreet though smiling mouth.
+
+When he died, it became known that he had lived in a little den near
+San Benedetto. He had two million francs invested in the funds of
+various countries of Europe, and had left the interest untouched ever
+since he had first bought the securities in 1814, so the sum was now
+enormous, alike from the increased value of the capital and the
+accumulated interest. All this money was left to the pastry-cook's
+daughter.
+
+"Genovese," he was saying, "will do wonders. Whether he really
+understands the great end of music, or acts only on instinct, I know
+not; but he is the first singer who ever satisfied me. I shall not die
+without hearing a /cadenza/ executed as I have heard them in my
+dreams, waking with a feeling as though the sounds were floating in
+the air. The clear /cadenza/ is the highest achievement of art; it is
+the arabesque, decorating the finest room in the house; a shade too
+little and it is nothing, a touch too much and all is confusion. Its
+task is to awake in the soul a thousand dormant ideas; it flies up and
+sweeps through space, scattering seeds in the air to be taken in by
+our ears and blossom in our heart. Believe me, in painting his Saint-
+Cecilia, Raphael gave the preference to music over poetry. And he was
+right; music appeals to the heart, whereas writing is addressed to the
+intellect; it communicates ideas directly, like a perfume. The
+singer's voice impinges not on the mind, not on the memory of
+happiness, but on the first principle of thought; it stirs the
+elements of sensation.
+
+"It is a grievous thing that the populace should have compelled
+musicians to adapt their expression to words, to factitious emotions;
+but then they were not otherwise intelligible to the vulgar. Thus the
+/cadenza/ is the only thing left to the lovers of pure music, the
+devotees of unfettered art. To-night, as I listened to that last
+/cavatina/, I felt as if I were beckoned by a fair creature whose look
+alone had made me young again. The enchantress placed a crown on my
+brow, and led me to the ivory door through which we pass to the
+mysterious land of day-dreams. I owe it to Genovese that I escaped for
+a few minutes from this old husk--minutes, short no doubt by the
+clock, but very long by the record of sensation. For a brief spring-
+time, scented with roses, I was young again--and beloved!"
+
+"But you are mistaken, /caro/ Capraja," said the Duke. "There is in
+music an effect yet more magical than that of the /cadenza/."
+
+"What is that?" asked Capraja.
+
+"The unison of two voices, or of a voice and a violin,--the instrument
+which has tones most nearly resembling those of the human voice,"
+replied Cataneo. "This perfect concord bears us on to the very heart
+of life, on the tide of elements which can resuscitate rapture and
+carry man up to the centre of the luminous sphere where his mind can
+command the whole universe. You still need a /thema/, Capraja, but the
+pure element is enough for me. You need that the current should flow
+through the myriad canals of the machine to fall in dazzling cascades,
+while I am content with the pure tranquil pool. My eye gazes across a
+lake without a ripple. I can embrace the infinite."
+
+"Speak no more, Cataneo," said Capraja, haughtily. "What! Do you fail
+to see the fairy, who, in her swift rush through the sparkling
+atmosphere, collects and binds with the golden thread of harmony, the
+gems of melody she smilingly sheds on us? Have you ever felt the touch
+of her wand, as she says to Curiosity, 'Awake!' The divinity rises up
+radiant from the depths of the brain; she flies to her store of
+wonders and fingers them lightly as an organist touches the keys.
+Suddenly, up starts Memory, bringing us the roses of the past,
+divinely preserved and still fresh. The mistress of our youth revives,
+and strokes the young man's hair. Our heart, too full, overflows; we
+see the flowery banks of the torrent of love. Every burning bush we
+ever knew blazes afresh, and repeats the heavenly words we once heard
+and understood. The voice rolls on; it embraces in its rapid turns
+those fugitive horizons, and they shrink away; they vanish, eclipsed
+by newer and deeper joys--those of an unrevealed future, to which the
+fairy points as she returns to the blue heaven."
+
+"And you," retorted Cataneo, "have you never seen the direct ray of a
+star opening the vistas above; have you never mounted on that beam
+which guides you to the sky, to the heart of the first causes which
+move the worlds?"
+
+To their hearers, the Duke and Capraja were playing a game of which
+the premises were unknown.
+
+"Genovese's voice thrills through every fibre," said Capraja.
+
+"And la Tinti's fires the blood," replied the Duke.
+
+"What a paraphrase of happy love is that /cavatina/!" Capraja went on.
+"Ah! Rossini was young when he wrote that interpretation of
+effervescent ecstasy. My heart filled with renewed blood, a thousand
+cravings tingled in my veins. Never have sounds more angelic delivered
+me more completely from my earthly bonds! Never did the fairy wave
+more beautiful arms, smile more invitingly, lift her tunic more
+cunningly to display an ankle, raising the curtain that hides my other
+life!"
+
+"To-morrow, my old friend," replied Cataneo, "you shall ride on the
+back of a dazzling, white swan, who will show you the loveliest land
+there is; you shall see the spring-time as children see it. Your heart
+shall open to the radiance of a new sun; you shall sleep on crimson
+silk, under the gaze of a Madonna; you shall feel like a happy lover
+gently kissed by a nymph whose bare feet you still may see, but who is
+about to vanish. That swan will be the voice of Genovese, if he can
+unite it to its Leda, the voice of Clarina. To-morrow night we are to
+hear /Mose/, the grandest opera produced by Italy's greatest genius."
+
+All present left the conversation to the Duke and Capraja, not wishing
+to be the victims of mystification. Only Vendramin and the French
+doctor listened to them for a few minutes. The opium-smoker understood
+these poetic flights; he had the key of the palace where those two
+sensuous imaginations were wandering. The doctor, too, tried to
+understand, and he understood, for he was one of the Pleiades of
+genius belonging to the Paris school of medicine, from which a true
+physician comes out as much a metaphysician as an accomplished
+analyst.
+
+"Do you understand them?" said Emilio to Vendramin as they left the
+cafe at two in the morning.
+
+"Yes, my dear boy," said Vendramin, taking Emilio home with him.
+"Those two men are of the legion of unearthly spirits to whom it is
+given here below to escape from the wrappings of the flesh, who can
+fly on the shoulders of the queen of witchcraft up to the blue
+empyrean where the sublime marvels are wrought of the intellectual
+life; they, by the power of art, can soar whither your immense love
+carries you, whither opium transports me. Then none can understand
+them but those who are like them.
+
+"I, who can inspire my soul by such base means, who can pack a hundred
+years of life into a single night, I can understand those lofty
+spirits when they talk of that glorious land, deemed a realm of
+chimeras by some who think themselves wise; but the realm of reality
+to us whom they think mad. Well, the Duke and Capraja, who were
+acquainted at Naples,--where Cataneo was born,--are mad about music."
+
+"But what is that strange system that Capraja was eager to explain to
+the Duke? Did you understand?"
+
+"Yes," replied Vendramin. "Capraja's great friend is a musician from
+Cremona, lodging in the Capello palace, who has a theory that sounds
+meet with an element in man, analogous to that which produces ideas.
+According to him, man has within him keys acted on by sound, and
+corresponding to his nerve-centres, where ideas and sensations take
+their rise. Capraja, who regards the arts as an assemblage of means by
+which he can harmonize, in himself, all external nature with another
+mysterious nature that he calls the inner life, shares all ideas of
+this instrument-maker, who at this moment is composing an opera.
+
+"Conceive of a sublime creation, wherein the marvels of the visible
+universe are reproduced with immeasurable grandeur, lightness,
+swiftness, and extension; wherein sensation is infinite, and whither
+certain privileged natures, possessed of divine powers, are able to
+penetrate, and you will have some notion of the ecstatic joys of which
+Cataneo and Capraja were speaking; both poets, each for himself alone.
+Only, in matters of the intellect, as soon as a man can rise above the
+sphere where plastic art is produced by a process of imitation, and
+enter into that transcendental sphere of abstractions where everything
+is understood as an elementary principle, and seen in the omnipotence
+of results, that man is no longer intelligible to ordinary minds."
+
+"You have thus explained my love for Massimilla," said Emilio. "There
+is in me, my friend, a force which awakes under the fire of her look,
+at her lightest touch, and wafts me to a world of light where effects
+are produced of which I dare not speak. It has seemed to me often that
+the delicate tissue of her skin has stamped flowers on mine as her
+hand lies on my hand. Her words play on those inner keys in me, of
+which you spoke. Desire excites my brain, stirring that invisible
+world, instead of exciting my passive flesh; the air seems red and
+sparkling, unknown perfumes of indescribable strength relax my sinews,
+roses wreathe my temples, and I feel as though my blood were escaping
+through opened arteries, so complete is my inanition."
+
+"That is the effect on me of smoking opium," replied Vendramin.
+
+"Then do you wish to die?" cried Emilio, in alarm.
+
+"With Venice!" said Vendramin, waving his hand in the direction of San
+Marco. "Can you see a single pinnacle or spire that stands straight?
+Do you not perceive that the sea is claiming its prey?"
+
+The Prince bent his head; he dared no more speak to his friend of
+love.
+
+To know what a free country means, you must have traveled in a
+conquered land.
+
+When they reached the Palazzo Vendramin, they saw a gondola moored at
+the water-gate. The Prince put his arm round Vendramin and clasped him
+affectionately, saying:
+
+"Good-night to you, my dear fellow!"
+
+"What! a woman? for me, whose only love is Venice?" exclaimed Marco.
+
+At this instant the gondolier, who was leaning against a column,
+recognizing the man he was to look out for, murmured in Emilio's ear:
+
+"The Duchess, monseigneur."
+
+Emilio sprang into the gondola, where he was seized in a pair of soft
+arms--an embrace of iron--and dragged down on to the cushions, where
+he felt the heaving bosom of an ardent woman. And then he was no more
+Emilio, but Clarina's lover; for his ideas and feelings were so
+bewildering that he yielded as if stupefied by her first kiss.
+
+"Forgive this trick, my beloved," said the Sicilian. "I shall die if
+you do not come with me."
+
+And the gondola flew over the secret water.
+
+
+
+At half-past seven on the following evening, the spectators were again
+in their places in the theatre, excepting that those in the pit always
+took their chances of where they might sit. Old Capraja was in
+Cataneo's box.
+
+Before the overture the Duke paid a call on the Duchess; he made a
+point of standing behind her and leaving the front seat to Emilio next
+the Duchess. He made a few trivial remarks, without sarcasm or
+bitterness, and with as polite a manner as if he were visiting a
+stranger.
+
+But in spite of his efforts to seem amiable and natural, the Prince
+could not control his expression, which was deeply anxious. Bystanders
+would have ascribed such a change in his usually placid features to
+jealousy. The Duchess no doubt shared Emilio's feelings; she looked
+gloomy and was evidently depressed. The Duke, uncomfortable enough
+between two sulky people, took advantage of the French doctor's
+entrance to slip away.
+
+"Monsieur," said Cataneo to his physician before dropping the curtain
+over the entrance to the box, "you will hear to-night a grand musical
+poem, not easy of comprehension at a first hearing. But in leaving you
+with the Duchess I know that you can have no more competent
+interpreter, for she is my pupil."
+
+The doctor, like the Duke, was struck by the expression stamped on the
+faces of the lovers, a look of pining despair.
+
+"Then does an Italian opera need a guide to it?" he asked Massimilla,
+with a smile.
+
+Recalled by this question to her duties as mistress of the box, the
+Duchess tried to chase away the clouds that darkened her brow, and
+replied, with eager haste, to open a conversation in which she might
+vent her irritation:--
+
+"This is not so much an opera, monsieur," said she, "as an oratorio--a
+work which is in fact not unlike a most magnificent edifice, and I
+shall with pleasure be your guide. Believe me, it will not be too much
+to give all your mind to our great Rossini, for you need to be at once
+a poet and a musician to appreciate the whole bearing of such a work.
+
+"You belong to a race whose language and genius are too practical for
+it to enter into music without an effort; but France is too
+intellectual not to learn to love it and cultivate it, and to succeed
+in that as in everything else. Also, it must be acknowledged that
+music, as created by Lulli, Rameau, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven,
+Cimarosa, Paisiello, and Rossini, and as it will be carried on by the
+great geniuses of the future, is a new art, unknown to former
+generations; they had indeed no such variety of instruments on which
+the flowers of melody now blossom as on some rich soil.
+
+"So novel an art demands study in the public, study of a kind that may
+develop the feelings to which music appeals. That sentiment hardly
+exists as yet among you--a nation given up to philosophical theories,
+to analysis and discussion, and always torn by civil disturbances.
+Modern music demands perfect peace; it is the language of loving and
+sentimental souls, inclined to lofty emotional aspiration.
+
+"That language, a thousand times fuller than the language of words, is
+to speech and ideas what the thought is to its utterance; it arouses
+sensations and ideas in their primitive form, in that part of us where
+sensations and ideas have their birth, but leaves them as they are in
+each of us. That power over our inmost being is one of the grandest
+facts in music. All other arts present to the mind a definite
+creation; those of music are indefinite--infinite. We are compelled to
+accept the ideas of the poet, the painter's picture, the sculptor's
+statue; but music each one can interpret at the will of his sorrow or
+his gladness, his hope or his despair. While other arts restrict our
+mind by fixing it on a predestined object, music frees it to roam over
+all nature which it alone has the power of expressing. You shall hear
+how I interpret Rossini's /Mose/."
+
+She leaned across to the Frenchman to speak to him, without being
+overheard.
+
+"Moses is the liberator of an enslaved race!" said she. "Remember
+that, and you will see with what religious hope the whole house will
+listen to the prayer of the rescued Hebrews, with what a thunder of
+applause it will respond!"
+
+As the leader raised his bow, Emilio flung himself into a back seat.
+The Duchess pointed out the place he had left, for the physician to
+take it. But the Frenchman was far more curious to know what had gone
+wrong between the lovers than to enter the halls of music built up by
+the man whom all Italy was applauding--for it was the day of Rossini's
+triumph in his own country. He was watching the Duchess, and she was
+talking with a feverish excitement. She reminded him of the Niobe he
+had admired at Florence: the same dignity in woe, the same physical
+control; and yet her soul shone though, in the warm flush of her
+cheeks; and her eyes, where anxiety was disguised under a flash of
+pride, seemed to scorch the tears away by their fire. Her suppressed
+grief seemed calmer when she looked at Emilio, who never took his eyes
+off her; it was easy to see that she was trying to mollify some fierce
+despair. The state of her feelings gave a certain loftiness to her
+mind.
+
+Like most women when under the stress of some unusual agitation, she
+overstepped her ordinary limitations and assumed something of the
+Pythoness, though still remaining calm and beautiful; for it was the
+form of her thoughts that was wrung with desperation, not the features
+of her face. And perhaps she wanted to shine with all her wit to lend
+some charm to life and detain her lover from death.
+
+When the orchestra had given out the three chords in C major, placed
+at the opening by the composer to announce that the overture will be
+sung--for the real overture is the great movement beginning with this
+stern attack, and ending only when light appears at the command of
+Moses--the Duchess could not control a little spasmodic start, that
+showed how entirely the music was in accordance with her concealed
+distress.
+
+"Those three chords freeze the blood," said she. "They announce
+trouble. Listen attentively to this introduction; the terrible lament
+of a nation stricken by the hand of God. What wailing! The King, the
+Queen, their first-born son, all the dignitaries of the kingdom are
+sighing; they are wounded in their pride, in their conquests; checked
+in their avarice. Dear Rossini! you have done well to throw this bone
+to gnaw to the /Tedeschi/, who declared we had no harmony, no science!
+
+"Now you will hear the ominous melody the maestro has engrafted on to
+this profound harmonic composition, worthy to compare with the most
+elaborate structures of the Germans, but never fatiguing or tiresome.
+
+"You French, who carried through such a bloodthirsty revolution, who
+crushed your aristocracy under the paw of the lion mob, on the day
+when this oratorio is performed in your capital, you will understand
+this glorious dirge of the victims on whom God is avenging his chosen
+people. None but an Italian could have written this pregnant and
+inexhaustible theme--truly Dantesque. Do you think that it is nothing
+to have such a dream of vengeance, even for a moment? Handel,
+Sebastian Bach, all you old German masters, nay, even you, great
+Beethoven, on your knees! Here is the queen of arts, Italy
+triumphant!"
+
+The Duchess had spoken while the curtain was being raised. And now the
+physician heard the sublime symphony with which the composer
+introduces the great Biblical drama. It is to express the sufferings
+of a whole nation. Suffering is uniform in its expression, especially
+physical suffering. Thus, having instinctively felt, like all men of
+genius, that here there must be no variety of idea, the musician,
+having hit on his leading phrase, has worked it out in various keys,
+grouping the masses and the dramatis personae to take up the theme
+through modulations and cadences of admirable structure. In such
+simplicity is power.
+
+"The effect of this strain, depicting the sensations of night and cold
+in a people accustomed to live in the bright rays of the sun, and sung
+by the people and their princes, is most impressive. There is
+something relentless in that slow phrase of music; it is cold and
+sinister, like an iron bar wielded by some celestial executioner, and
+dropping in regular rhythm on the limbs of all his victims. As we hear
+it passing from C minor into G minor, returning to C and again to the
+dominant G, starting afresh and /fortissimo/ on the tonic B flat,
+drifting into F major and back to C minor, and in each key in turn
+more ominously terrible, chill, and dark, we are compelled at last to
+enter into the impression intended by the composer."
+
+The Frenchman was, in fact, deeply moved when all this united sorrow
+exploded in the cry:
+
+  "O Nume d'Israel,
+  Se brami in liberta
+  Il popol tuo fedel,
+  Di lui di noi pieta!"
+
+(O God of Israel, if thou wouldst see thy faithful people free, have
+mercy on them, and on us.)
+
+"Never was a grander synthesis composed of natural effects or a more
+perfect idealization of nature. In a great national disaster, each one
+for a long time bewails himself alone; then, from out of the mass,
+rises up, here and there, a more emphatic and vehement cry of anguish;
+finally, when the misery has fallen on all, it bursts forth like a
+tempest.
+
+"As soon as they all recognize a common grievance, the dull murmurs of
+the people become cries of impatience. Rossini has proceeded on this
+hypothesis. After the outcry in C major, Pharoah sings his grand
+recitative: /Mano ultrice di un Dio/ (Avenging hand of God), after
+which the original subject is repeated with more vehement expression.
+All Egypt appeals to Moses for help."
+
+The Duchess had taken advantage of the pause for the entrance of Moses
+and Aaron to give this interpretation of that fine introduction.
+
+"Let them weep!" she added passionately. "They have done much ill.
+Expiate your sins, Egyptians, expiate the crimes of your maddened
+Court! With what amazing skill has this great painter made use of all
+the gloomy tones of music, of all that is saddest on the musical
+palette! What creepy darkness! what a mist! Is not your very spirit in
+mourning? Are you not convinced of the reality of the blackness that
+lies over the land? Do you not feel that Nature is wrapped in the
+deepest shades? There are no palm-trees, no Egyptian palaces, no
+landscape. And what a healing to your soul will the deeply religious
+strain be of the heaven-sent Healer who will stay this cruel plague!
+How skilfully is everything wrought up to end in that glorious
+invocation of Moses to God.
+
+"By a learned elaboration, which Capraja could explain to you, this
+appeal to heaven is accompanied by brass instruments only; it is that
+which gives it such a solemn, religious cast. And not merely is the
+artifice fine in its place; note how fertile in resource is genius.
+Rossini has derived fresh beauty from the difficulty he himself
+created. He has the strings in reserve to express daylight when it
+succeeds to the darkness, and thus produces one of the greatest
+effects ever achieved in music.
+
+"Till this inimitable genius showed the way never was such a result
+obtained with mere /recitative/. We have not, so far, had an air or a
+duet. The poet has relied on the strength of the idea, on the
+vividness of his imagery, and the realism of the declamatory passages.
+This scene of despair, this darkness that may be felt, these cries of
+anguish,--the whole musical picture is as fine as your great Poussin's
+/Deluge/."
+
+Moses waved his staff, and it was light.
+
+"Here, monsieur, does not the music vie with the sun, whose splendor
+it has borrowed, with nature, whose phenomena it expresses in every
+detail?" the Duchess went on, in an undertone. "Art here reaches its
+climax; no musician can get beyond this. Do not you hear Egypt waking
+up after its long torpor? Joy comes in with the day. In what
+composition, ancient or modern, will you find so grand a passage? The
+greatest gladness in contrast to the deepest woe! What exclamations!
+What gleeful notes! The oppressed spirit breathes again. What delirium
+in the /tremolo/ of the orchestra! What a noble /tutti/! This is the
+rejoicing of a delivered nation. Are you not thrilled with joy?"
+
+The physician, startled by the contrast, was, in fact, clapping his
+hands, carried away by admiration for one of the finest compositions
+of modern music.
+
+"/Brava la Doni!/" said Vendramin, who had heard the Duchess.
+
+"Now the introduction is ended," said she. "You have gone through a
+great sensation," she added, turning to the Frenchman. "Your heart is
+beating; in the depths of your imagination you have a splendid
+sunrise, flooding with light a whole country that before was cold and
+dark. Now, would you know the means by which the musician has worked,
+so as to admire him to-morrow for the secrets of his craft after
+enjoying the results to-night? What do you suppose produces this
+effect of daylight--so sudden, so complicated, and so complete? It
+consists of a simple chord of C, constantly reiterated, varied only by
+the chord of 4-6. This reveals the magic of his touch. To show you the
+glory of light he has worked by the same means that he used to
+represent darkness and sorrow.
+
+"This dawn in imagery is, in fact, absolutely the same as the natural
+dawn; for light is one and the same thing everywhere, always alike in
+itself, the effects varying only with the objects it falls on. Is it
+not so? Well, the musician has taken for the fundamental basis of his
+music, for its sole /motif/, a simple chord in C. The sun first sheds
+its light on the mountain-tops and then in the valleys. In the same
+way the chord is first heard on the treble string of the violins with
+boreal mildness; it spreads through the orchestra, it awakes the
+instruments one by one, and flows among them. Just as light glides
+from one thing to the next, giving them color, the music moves on,
+calling out each rill of harmony till all flow together in the
+/tutti/.
+
+"The violins, silent until now, give the signal with their tender
+/tremolo/, softly /agitato/ like the first rays of morning. That
+light, cheerful movement, which caresses the soul, is cleverly
+supported by chords in the bass, and by a vague /fanfare/ on the
+trumpets, restricted to their lowest notes, so as to give a vivid idea
+of the last cool shadows that linger in the valleys while the first
+warm rays touch the heights. Then all the wind is gradually added to
+strengthen the general harmony. The voices come in with sighs of
+delight and surprise. At last the brass breaks out, the trumpets
+sound. Light, the source of all harmony, inundates all nature; every
+musical resource is produced with a turbulence, a splendor, to compare
+with that of the Eastern sun. Even the triangle, with its reiterated
+C, reminds us by its shrill accent and playful rhythm of the song of
+early birds.
+
+"Thus the same key, freshly treated by the master's hand, expresses
+the joy of all nature, while it soothes the grief it uttered before.
+
+"There is the hall-mark of the great genius: Unity. It is the same but
+different. In one and the same phrase we find a thousand various
+feelings of woe, the misery of a nation. In one and the same chord we
+have all the various incidents of awakening nature, every expression
+of the nation's joy. These two tremendous passages are soldered into
+one by the prayer to an ever-living God, author of all things, of that
+woe and that gladness alike. Now is not that introduction by itself a
+grand poem?"
+
+"It is, indeed," said the Frenchman.
+
+"Next comes a quintette such as Rossini can give us. If he was ever
+justified in giving vent to that flowery, voluptuous grace for which
+Italian music is blamed, is it not in this charming movement in which
+each person expresses joy? The enslaved people are delivered, and yet
+a passion in peril is fain to moan. Pharaoh's son loves a Hebrew
+woman, and she must leave him. What gives its ravishing charm to this
+quintette is the return to the homelier feelings of life after the
+grandiose picture of two stupendous and national emotions:--general
+misery, general joy, expressed with the magic force stamped on them by
+divine vengeance and with the miraculous atmosphere of the Bible
+narrative. Now, was not I right?" added Massimilla, as the noble
+/sretto/ came to a close.
+
+  "Voci di giubilo,
+  D' in'orno eccheggino,
+  Di pace l' Iride
+  Per noi spunto."
+
+(Cries of joy sound about us. The rainbow of peace dawns upon us.)
+
+"How ingeniously the composer has constructed this passage!" she went
+on, after waiting for a reply. "He begins with a solo on the horn, of
+divine sweetness, supported by /arpeggios/ on the harps; for the first
+voices to be heard in this grand concerted piece are those of Moses
+and Aaron returning thanks to the true God. Their strain, soft and
+solemn, reverts to the sublime ideas of the invocation, and mingles,
+nevertheless, with the joy of the heathen people. This transition
+combines the heavenly and the earthly in a way which genius alone
+could invent, giving the /andante/ of this quintette a glow of color
+that I can only compare to the light thrown by Titian on his Divine
+Persons. Did you observe the exquisite interweaving of the voices? the
+clever entrances by which the composer has grouped them round the main
+idea given out by the orchestra? the learned progressions that prepare
+us for the festal /allegro/? Did you not get a glimpse, as it were, of
+dancing groups, the dizzy round of a whole nation escaped from danger?
+And when the clarionet gives the signal for the /stretto/,--'/Voci di
+giubilo/,'--so brilliant and gay, was not your soul filled with the
+sacred pyrrhic joy of which David speaks in the Psalms, ascribing it
+to the hills?"
+
+"Yes, it would make a delightful dance tune," said the doctor.
+
+"French! French! always French!" exclaimed the Duchess, checked in her
+exultant mood by this sharp thrust. "Yes; you would be capable of
+taking that wonderful burst of noble and dainty rejoicing and turning
+it into a rigadoon. Sublime poetry finds no mercy in your eyes. The
+highest genius,--saints, kings, disasters,--all that is most sacred
+must pass under the rods of caricature. And the vulgarizing of great
+music by turning it into a dance tune is to caricature it. With you,
+wit kills soul, as argument kills reason."
+
+They all sat in silence through the /recitative/ of Osiride and
+Membrea, who plot to annul the order given by Pharaoh for the
+departure of the Hebrews.
+
+"Have I vexed you?" asked the physician to the Duchess. "I should be
+in despair. Your words are like a magic wand. They unlock the pigeon-
+holes of my brain, and let out new ideas, vivified by this sublime
+music."
+
+"No," replied she, "you have praised our great composer after your own
+fashion. Rossini will be a success with you, for the sake of his witty
+and sensual gifts. Let us hope that he may find some noble souls, in
+love with the ideal--which must exist in your fruitful land,--to
+appreciate the sublimity, the loftiness, of such music. Ah, now we
+have the famous duet, between Elcia and Osiride!" she exclaimed, and
+she went on, taking advantage of the triple salvo of applause which
+hailed la Tinti, as she made her first appearance on the stage.
+
+"If la Tinti has fully understood the part of Elcia, you will hear the
+frenzied song of a woman torn by her love for her people, and her
+passion for one of their oppressors, while Osiride, full of mad
+adoration for his beautiful vassal, tries to detain her. The opera is
+built up as much on that grand idea as on that of Pharaoh's resistance
+to the power of God and of liberty; you must enter into it thoroughly
+or you will not understand this stupendous work.
+
+"Notwithstanding the disfavor you show to the dramas invented by our
+/libretto/ writers, you must allow me to point out the skill with
+which this one is constructed. The antithesis required in every fine
+work, and eminently favorable to music, is well worked out. What can
+be finer than a whole nation demanding liberty, held in bondage by bad
+faith, upheld by God, and piling marvel on marvel to gain freedom?
+What more dramatic than the Prince's love for a Hebrew woman, almost
+justifying treason to the oppressor's power?
+
+"And this is what is expressed in this bold and stupendous musical
+poem; Rossini has stamped each nation with its fantastic
+individuality, for we have attributed to them a certain historic
+grandeur to which every imagination subscribes. The songs of the
+Hebrews, and their trust in God, are perpetually contrasted with
+Pharaoh's shrieks of rage and vain efforts, represented with a strong
+hand.
+
+"At this moment Osiride, thinking only of love, hopes to detain his
+mistress by the memories of their joys as lovers; he wants to conquer
+the attractions of her feeling for her people. Here, then, you will
+find delicious languor, the glowing sweetness, the voluptuous
+suggestions of Oriental love, in the air '/Ah! se puoi cosi
+lasciarmi/,' sung by Osiride, and in Elcia's reply, '/Ma perche cosi
+straziarmi?/' No; two hearts in such melodious unison could never
+part," she went on, looking at the Prince.
+
+"But the lovers are suddenly interrupted by the exultant voice of the
+Hebrew people in the distance, which recalls Elcia. What a delightful
+and inspiriting /allegro/ is the theme of this march, as the
+Israelites set out for the desert! No one but Rossini can make wind
+instruments and trumpets say so much. And is not the art which can
+express in two phrases all that is meant by the 'native land'
+certainly nearer to heaven than the others? This clarion-call always
+moves me so deeply that I cannot find words to tell you how cruel it
+is to an enslaved people to see those who are free march away!"
+
+The Duchess' eyes filled with tears as she listened to the grand
+movement, which in fact crowns the opera.
+
+"/Dov' e mai quel core amante/," she murmured in Italian, as la Tinti
+began the delightful /aria/ of the /stretto/ in which she implores
+pity for her grief. "But what is the matter? The pit are
+dissatisfied--"
+
+"Genovese is braying like a stage," replied the Prince.
+
+In point of fact, this first duet with la Tinti was spoilt by
+Genovese's utter breakdown. His excellent method, recalling that of
+Crescentini and Veluti, seemed to desert him completely. A /sostenuto/
+in the wrong place, an embellishment carried to excess, spoilt the
+effect; or again a loud climax with no due /crescendo/, an outburst of
+sound like water tumbling through a suddenly opened sluice, showed
+complete and wilful neglect of the laws of good taste.
+
+The pit was in the greatest excitement. The Venetian public believed
+there was a deliberate plot between Genovese and his friends. La Tinti
+was recalled and applauded with frenzy while Genovese had a hint or
+two warning him of the hostile feeling of the audience. During this
+scene, highly amusing to a Frenchman, while la Tinti was recalled
+eleven times to receive alone the frantic acclamations of the house,--
+Genovese, who was all but hissed, not daring to offer her his hand,--
+the doctor made a remark to the Duchess as to the /stretto/ of the
+duet.
+
+"In this place," said he, "Rossini ought to have expressed the deepest
+grief, and I find on the contrary an airy movement, a tone of ill-
+timed cheerfulness."
+
+"You are right," said she. "This mistake is the result of a tyrannous
+custom which composers are expected to obey. He was thinking more of
+his prima donna than of Elcia when he wrote that /stretto/. But this
+evening, even if la Tinti had been more brilliant than ever, I could
+throw myself so completely into the situation, that the passage,
+lively as it is, is to me full of sadness."
+
+The physician looked attentively from the Prince to the Duchess, but
+could not guess the reason that held them apart, and that made this
+duet seem to them so heartrending.
+
+"Now comes a magnificent thing, the scheming of Pharaoh against the
+Hebrews. The great /aria 'A rispettarmi apprenda'/ (Learn to respect
+me) is a triumph for Carthagenova, who will express superbly the
+offended pride and the duplicity of a sovereign. The Throne will
+speak. He will withdraw the concessions that have been made, he arms
+himself in wrath. Pharaoh rises to his feet to clutch the prey that is
+escaping.
+
+"Rossini never wrote anything grander in style, or stamped with more
+living and irresistible energy. It is a consummate work, supported by
+an accompaniment of marvelous orchestration, as indeed is every
+portion of this opera. The vigor of youth illumines the smallest
+details."
+
+The whole house applauded this noble movement, which was admirably
+rendered by the singer, and thoroughly appreciated by the Venetians.
+
+"In the /finale/," said the Duchess, "you hear a repetition of the
+march, expressive of the joy of deliverance and of faith in God, who
+allows His people to rush off gleefully to wander in the Desert! What
+lungs but would be refreshed by the aspirations of a whole nation
+freed from slavery.
+
+"Oh, beloved and living melodies! Glory to the great genius who has
+known how to give utterance to such feelings! There is something
+essentially warlike in that march, proclaiming that the God of armies
+is on the side of these people. How full of feeling are these strains
+of thanksgiving! The imagery of the Bible rises up in our mind; this
+glorious musical /scena/ enables us to realize one of the grandest
+dramas of that ancient and solemn world. The religious form given to
+some of the voice parts, and the way in which they come in, one by
+one, to group with the others, express all we have ever imagined of
+the sacred marvels of that early age of humanity.
+
+"And yet this fine concerted piece is no more than a development of
+the theme of the march into all its musical outcome. That theme is the
+inspiring element alike for the orchestra and the voices, for the air,
+and for the brilliant instrumentation that supports it.
+
+"Elcia now comes to join the crowd; and to give shade to the rejoicing
+spirit of this number, Rossini has made her utter her regrets. Listen
+to her /duettino/ with Amenofi. Did blighted love ever express itself
+in lovelier song? It is full of the grace of a /notturno/, of the
+secret grief of hopeless love. How sad! how sad! The Desert will
+indeed be a desert to her!
+
+"After this comes the fierce conflict of the Egyptians and the
+Hebrews. All their joy is spoiled, their march stopped by the arrival
+of the Egyptians. Pharaoh's edict is proclaimed in a musical phrase,
+hollow and dread, which is the leading /motif/ of the /finale/; we
+could fancy that we hear the tramp of the great Egyptian army,
+surrounding the sacred phalanx of the true God, curling round it, like
+a long African serpent enveloping its prey. But how beautiful is the
+lament of the duped and disappointed Hebrews! Though, in truth, it is
+more Italian than Hebrew. What a superb passage introduces Pharaoh's
+arrival, when his presence brings the two leaders face to face, and
+all the moving passions of the drama. The conflict of sentiments in
+that sublime /ottetto/, where the wrath of Moses meets that of the two
+Pharaohs, is admirable. What a medley of voices and of unchained
+furies!
+
+"No grander subject was ever wrought out by a composer. The famous
+/finale/ of /Don Giovanni/, after all, only shows us a libertine at
+odds with his victims, who invoke the vengeance of Heaven; while here
+earth and its dominions try to defeat God. Two nations are here face
+to face. And Rossini, having every means at his command, has made
+wonderful use of them. He has succeeded in expressing the turmoil of a
+tremendous storm as a background to the most terrible imprecations,
+without making it ridiculous. He has achieved it by the use of chords
+repeated in triple time--a monotonous rhythm of gloomy musical
+emphasis--and so persistent as to be quite overpowering. The horror of
+the Egyptians at the torrent of fire, the cries of vengeance from the
+Hebrews, needed a delicate balance of masses; so note how he has made
+the development of the orchestral parts follow that of the chorus. The
+/allegro assai/ in C minor is terrible in the midst of that deluge of
+fire.
+
+"Confess now," said Massimilla, at the moment when Moses, lifting his
+rod, brings down the rain of fire, and when the composer puts forth
+all his powers in the orchestra and on the stage, "that no music ever
+more perfectly expressed the idea of distress and confusion."
+
+"They have spread to the pit," remarked the Frenchman.
+
+"What is it now? The pit is certainly in great excitement," said the
+Duchess.
+
+In the /finale/, Genovese, his eyes fixed on la Tinti, had launched
+into such preposterous flourishes, that the pit, indignant at this
+interference with their enjoyment, were at a height of uproar. Nothing
+could be more exasperating to Italian ears than this contrast of good
+and bad singing. The manager went so far as to appear on the stage, to
+say that in reply to his remarks to his leading singer, Signor
+Genovese had replied that he knew not how or by what offence he had
+lost the countenance of the public, at the very moment when he was
+endeavoring to achieve perfection in his art.
+
+"Let him be as bad as he was yesterday--that was good enough for us!"
+roared Capraja, in a rage.
+
+This suggestion put the house into a good humor again.
+
+Contrary to Italian custom, the ballet was not much attended to. In
+every box the only subject of conversation was Genovese's strange
+behavior, and the luckless manager's speech. Those who were admitted
+behind the scenes went off at once to inquire into the mystery of this
+performance, and it was presently rumored that la Tinti had treated
+her colleague Genovese to a dreadful scene, in which she had accused
+the tenor of being jealous of her success, of having hindered it by
+his ridiculous behavior, and even of trying to spoil her performance
+by acting passionate devotion. The lady was shedding bitter tears over
+this catastrophe. She had been hoping, she said, to charm her lover,
+who was somewhere in the house, though she had failed to discover him.
+
+Without knowing the peaceful course of daily life in Venice at the
+present day, so devoid of incident that a slight altercation between
+two lovers, or the transient huskiness of a singer's voice becomes a
+subject of discussion, regarded of as much importance as politics in
+England, it is impossible to conceive of the excitement in the theatre
+and at the Cafe Florian. La Tinti was in love; la Tinti had been
+hindered in her performance; Genovese was mad or purposely malignant,
+inspired by the artist's jealousy so familiar to Italians! What a mine
+of matter for eager discussion!
+
+The whole pit was talking as men talk at the Bourse, and the result
+was such a clamor as could not fail to amaze a Frenchman accustomed to
+the quiet of the Paris theatres. The boxes were in a ferment like the
+stir of swarming bees.
+
+One man alone remained passive in the turmoil. Emilio Memmi, with his
+back to the stage and his eyes fixed on Massimilla with a melancholy
+expression, seemed to live in her gaze; he had not once looked round
+at the prima donna.
+
+"I need not ask you, /caro carino/, what was the result of my
+negotiation," said Vendramin to Emilio. "Your pure and pious
+Massimilla has been supremely kind--in short, she has been la Tinti?"
+
+The Prince's reply was a shake of his head, full of the deepest
+melancholy.
+
+"Your love has not descended from the ethereal spaces where you soar,"
+said Vendramin, excited by opium. "It is not yet materialized. This
+morning, as every day for six months--you felt flowers opening their
+scented cups under the dome of your skull that had expanded to vast
+proportions. All your blood moved to your swelling heart that rose to
+choke your throat. There, in there,"--and he laid his hand on Emilio's
+breast,--"you felt rapturous emotions. Massimilla's voice fell on your
+soul in waves of light; her touch released a thousand imprisoned joys
+which emerged from the convolutions of your brain to gather about you
+in clouds, to waft your etherealized body through the blue air to a
+purple glow far above the snowy heights, to where the pure love of
+angels dwells. The smile, the kisses of her lips wrapped you in a
+poisoned robe which burnt up the last vestiges of your earthly nature.
+Her eyes were twin stars that turned you into shadowless light. You
+knelt together on the palm-branches of heaven, waiting for the gates
+of Paradise to be opened; but they turned heavily on their hinges, and
+in your impatience you struck at them, but could not reach them. Your
+hand touched nothing but clouds more nimble than your desires. Your
+radiant companion, crowned with white roses like a bride of Heaven,
+wept at your anguish. Perhaps she was murmuring melodious litanies to
+the Virgin, while the demoniacal cravings of the flesh were haunting
+you with their shameless clamor, and you disdained the divine fruits
+of that ecstasy in which I live, though shortening my life."
+
+"Your exaltation, my dear Vendramin," replied Emilio, calmly, "is
+still beneath reality. Who can describe that purely physical
+exhaustion in which we are left by the abuse of a dream of pleasure,
+leaving the soul still eternally craving, and the spirit in clear
+possession of its faculties?
+
+"But I am weary of this torment, which is that of Tantalus. This is my
+last night on earth. After one final effort, our Mother shall have her
+child again--the Adriatic will silence my last sigh--"
+
+"Are you idiotic?" cried Vendramin. "No; you are mad; for madness, the
+crisis we despise, is the memory of an antecedent condition acting on
+our present state of being. The genius of my dreams has taught me
+that, and much else! You want to make one of the Duchess and la Tinti;
+nay, dear Emilio, take them separately; it will be far wiser. Raphael
+alone ever united form and idea. You want to be the Raphael of love;
+but chance cannot be commanded. Raphael was a 'fluke' of God's
+creation, for He foreordained that form and idea should be
+antagonistic; otherwise nothing could live. When the first cause is
+more potent than the outcome, nothing comes of it. We must live either
+on earth or in the skies. Remain in the skies; it is always too soon
+to come down to earth."
+
+"I will take the Duchess home," said the Prince, "and make a last
+attempt--afterwards?"
+
+"Afterwards," cried Vendramin, anxiously, "promise to call for me at
+Florian's."
+
+"I will."
+
+This dialogue, in modern Greek, with which Vendramin and Emilio were
+familiar, as many Venetians are, was unintelligible to the Duchess and
+to the Frenchman. Although he was quite outside the little circle that
+held the Duchess, Emilio and Vendramin together--for these three
+understood each other by means of Italian glances, by turns arch and
+keen, or veiled and sidelong--the physician at last discerned part of
+the truth. An earnest entreaty from the Duchess had prompted
+Vendramin's suggestion to Emilio, for Massimilla had begun to suspect
+the misery endured by her lover in that cold empyrean where he was
+wandering, though she had no suspicions of la Tinti.
+
+"These two young men are mad!" said the doctor.
+
+"As to the Prince," said the Duchess, "trust me to cure him. As to
+Vendramin, if he cannot understand this sublime music, he is perhaps
+incurable."
+
+"If you would but tell me the cause of their madness, I could cure
+them," said the Frenchman.
+
+"And since when have great physicians ceased to read men's minds?"
+said she, jestingly.
+
+The ballet was long since ended; the second act of /Mose/ was
+beginning. The pit was perfectly attentive. A rumor had got abroad
+that Duke Cataneo had lectured Genovese, representing to him what
+injury he was doing to Clarina, the /diva/ of the day. The second act
+would certainly be magnificent.
+
+"The Egyptian Prince and his father are on the stage," said the
+Duchess. "They have yielded once more, though insulting the Hebrews,
+but they are trembling with rage. The father congratulates himself on
+his son's approaching marriage, and the son is in despair at this
+fresh obstacle, though it only increases his love, to which everything
+is opposed. Genovese and Carthagenova are singing admirably. As you
+see, the tenor is making his peace with the house. How well he brings
+out the beauty of the music! The phrase given out by the son on the
+tonic, and repeated by the father on the dominant, is all in character
+with the simple, serious scheme which prevails throughout the score;
+the sobriety of it makes the endless variety of the music all the more
+wonderful. All Egypt is there.
+
+"I do not believe that there is in modern music a composition more
+perfectly noble. The solemn and majestic paternity of a king is fully
+expressed in that magnificent theme, in harmony with the grand style
+that stamps the opera throughout. The idea of a Pharaoh's son pouring
+out his sorrows on his father's bosom could surely not be more
+admirably represented than in this grand imagery. Do you not feel a
+sense of the splendor we are wont to attribute to that monarch of
+antiquity?"
+
+"It is indeed sublime music," said the Frenchman.
+
+"The air /Pace mia smarrita/, which the Queen will now sing, is one of
+those /bravura/ songs which every composer is compelled to introduce,
+though they mar the general scheme of the work; but an opera would as
+often as not never see the light, if the prima donna's vanity were not
+duly flattered. Still, this musical 'sop' is so fine in itself that it
+is performed as written, on every stage; it is so brilliant that the
+leading lady does not substitute her favorite show piece, as is very
+commonly done in operas.
+
+"And now comes the most striking movement in the score: the duet
+between Osiride and Elcia in the subterranean chamber where he has
+hidden her to keep her from the departing Israelites, and to fly with
+her himself from Egypt. The lovers are then intruded on by Aaron, who
+has been to warn Amalthea, and we get the grandest of all quartettes:
+/Mi manca la voce, mi sento morire/. This is one of those masterpieces
+that will survive in spite of time, that destroyer of fashion in
+music, for it speaks the language of the soul which can never change.
+Mozart holds his own by the famous /finale/ to /Don Giovanni/;
+Marcello, by his psalm, /Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei/; Cimarosa, by the
+air /Pria che spunti/; Beethoven by his C minor symphony; Pergolesi,
+by his /Stabat Mater/; Rossini will live by /Mi manca la voce/. What
+is most to be admired in Rossini is his command of variety to form; to
+produce the effect here required, he has had recourse to the old
+structure of the canon in unison, to bring the voices in, and merge
+them in the same melody. As the form of these sublime melodies was
+new, he set them in an old frame; and to give it the more relief he
+has silenced the orchestra, accompanying the voices with the harps
+alone. It is impossible to show greater ingenuity of detail, or to
+produce a grander general effect.--Dear me! again an outbreak!" said
+the Duchess.
+
+Genovese, who had sung his duet with Carthagenova so well, was
+caricaturing himself now that la Tinti was on the stage. From a great
+singer he sank to the level of the most worthless chorus singer.
+
+The most formidable uproar arose that had ever echoed to the roof of
+the /Fenice/. The commotion only yielded to Clarina, and she, furious
+at the difficulties raised by Genovese's obstinacy, sang /Mi manca la
+voce/ as it will never be sung again. The enthusiasm was tremendous;
+the audience forgot their indignation and rage in pleasure that was
+really acute.
+
+"She floods my soul with purple glow!" said Capraja, waving his hand
+in benediction at la /Diva/ Tinti.
+
+"Heaven send all its blessings on your head!" cried a gondolier.
+
+"Pharaoh will now revoke his commands," said the Duchess, while the
+commotion in the pit was calming down. "Moses will overwhelm him, even
+on his throne, by declaring the death of every first-born son in
+Egypt, singing that strain of vengeance which augurs thunders from
+heaven, while above it the Hebrew clarions ring out. But you must
+clearly understand that this air is by Pacini; Carthagenova introduces
+it instead of that by Rossini. This air, /Paventa/, will no doubt hold
+its place in the score; it gives a bass too good an opportunity for
+displaying the quality of his voice, and expression here will carry
+the day rather than science. However, the air is full of magnificent
+menace, and it is possible that we may not be long allowed to hear
+it."
+
+A thunder of clapping and /bravos/ hailed the song, followed by deep
+and cautious silence; nothing could be more significant or more
+thoroughly Venetian than the outbreak and its sudden suppression.
+
+"I need say nothing of the coronation march announcing the
+enthronement of Osiride, intended by the King as a challenge to Moses;
+to hear it is enough. Their famous Beethoven has written nothing
+grander. And this march, full of earthly pomp, contrasts finely with
+the march of the Israelites. Compare them, and you will see that the
+music is full of purpose.
+
+"Elcia declares her love in the presence of the two Hebrew leaders,
+and then renounces it in the fine /aria/, /Porge la destra amata/.
+(Place your beloved hand.) Ah! What anguish! Only look at the house!"
+
+The pit was shouting /bravo/, when Genovese left the stage.
+
+"Now, free from her deplorable lover, we shall hear Tinti sing, /O
+desolata Elcia/--the tremendous /cavatina/ expressive of love
+disapproved by God."
+
+"Where art thou, Rossini?" cried Cataneo. "If he could but hear the
+music created by his genius so magnificently performed," he went on.
+"Is not Clarina worthy of him?" he asked Capraja. "To give life to
+those notes by such gusts of flame, starting from the lungs and
+feeding in the air on some unknown matter which our ears inhale, and
+which bears us heavenwards in a rapture of love, she must be divine!"
+
+"She is like the gorgeous Indian plant, which deserting the earth
+absorbs invisible nourishment from the atmosphere, and sheds from its
+spiral white blossom such fragrant vapors as fill the brain with
+dreams," replied Capraja.
+
+On being recalled, la Tinti appeared alone. She was received with a
+storm of applause; a thousand kisses were blown to her from finger-
+tips; she was pelted with roses, and a wreath was made of the flowers
+snatched from the ladies' caps, almost all sent out from Paris.
+
+The /cavatina/ was encored.
+
+"How eagerly Capraja, with his passion for embellishments, must have
+looked forward to this air, which derives all its value from
+execution," remarked Massimilla. "Here Rossini has, so to speak, given
+the reins over to the singer's fancy. Her /cadenzas/ and her feeling
+are everything. With a poor voice or inferior execution, it would be
+nothing--the throat is responsible for the effects of this /aria/.
+
+"The singer has to express the most intense anguish,--that of a woman
+who sees her lover dying before her very eyes. La Tinti makes the
+house ring with her highest notes; and Rossini, to leave pure singing
+free to do its utmost, has written it in the simplest, clearest style.
+Then, as a crowning effort, he has composed those heartrending musical
+cries: /Tormenti! Affanni! Smanie!/ What grief, what anguish, in those
+runs. And la Tinti, you see, has quite carried the house off its
+feet."
+
+The Frenchman, bewildered by this adoring admiration throughout a vast
+theatre for the source of its delight, here had a glimpse of genuine
+Italian nature. But neither the Duchess nor the two young men paid any
+attention to the ovation. Clarina began again.
+
+The Duchess feared that she was seeing her Emilio for the last time.
+As to the Prince: in the presence of the Duchess, the sovereign
+divinity who lifted him to the skies, he had forgotten where he was,
+he no longer heard the voice of the woman who had initiated him into
+the mysteries of earthly pleasure, for deep dejection made his ears
+tingle with a chorus of plaintive voices, half-drowned in a rushing
+noise as of pouring rain.
+
+Vendramin saw himself in an ancient Venetian costume, looking on at
+the ceremony of the /Bucentaur/. The Frenchman, who plainly discerned
+that some strange and painful mystery stood between the Prince and the
+Duchess, was racking his brain with shrewd conjecture to discover what
+it could be.
+
+The scene had changed. In front of a fine picture, representing the
+Desert and the Red Sea, the Egyptians and Hebrews marched and
+countermarched without any effect on the feelings of the four persons
+in the Duchess' box. But when the first chords on the harps preluded
+the hymn of the delivered Israelites, the Prince and Vendramin rose
+and stood leaning against the opposite sides of the box, and the
+Duchess, resting her elbow on the velvet ledge, supported her head on
+her left hand.
+
+The Frenchman, understanding from this little stir, how important this
+justly famous chorus was in the opinion of the house, listened with
+devout attention.
+
+The audience, with one accord, shouted for its repetition.
+
+"I feel as if I were celebrating the liberation of Italy," thought a
+Milanese.
+
+"Such music lifts up bowed heads, and revives hope in the most
+torpid," said a man from the Romagna.
+
+"In this scene," said Massimilla, whose emotion was evident, "science
+is set aside. Inspiration, alone, dictated this masterpiece; it rose
+from the composer's soul like a cry of love! As to the accompaniment,
+it consists of the harps; the orchestra appears only at the last
+repetition of that heavenly strain. Rossini can never rise higher than
+in this prayer; he will do as good work, no doubt, but never better:
+the sublime is always equal to itself; but this hymn is one of the
+things that will always be sublime. The only match for such a
+conception might be found in the psalms of the great Marcello, a noble
+Venetian, who was to music what Giotto was to painting. The majesty of
+the phrase, unfolding itself with episodes of inexhaustible melody, is
+comparable with the finest things ever invented by religious writers.
+
+"How simple is the structure! Moses opens the attack in G minor,
+ending in a cadenza in B flat which allows the chorus to come in,
+/pianissimo/ at first, in B flat, returning by modulations to G minor.
+This splendid treatment of the voices, recurring three times, ends in
+the last strophe with a /stretto/ in G major of absolutely
+overpowering effect. We feel as though this hymn of a nation released
+from slavery, as it mounts to heaven, were met by kindred strains
+falling from the higher spheres. The stars respond with joy to the
+ecstasy of liberated mortals. The rounded fulness of the rhythm, the
+deliberate dignity of the graduations leading up to the outbursts of
+thanksgiving, and its slow return raise heavenly images in the soul.
+Could you not fancy that you saw heaven open, angels holding sistrums
+of gold, prostrate seraphs swinging their fragrant censers, and the
+archangels leaning on the flaming swords with which they have
+vanquished the heathen?
+
+"The secret of this music and its refreshing effect on the soul is, I
+believe, that of a very few works of human genius: it carries us for
+the moment into the infinite; we feel it within us; we see it, in
+those melodies as boundless as the hymns sung round the throne of God.
+Rossini's genius carries us up to prodigious heights, whence we look
+down on a promised land, and our eyes, charmed by heavenly light, gaze
+into limitless space. Elcia's last strain, having almost recovered
+from her grief, brings a feeling of earth-born passions into this hymn
+of thanksgiving. This, again, is a touch of genius.
+
+"Ay, sing!" exclaimed the Duchess, as she listened to the last stanza
+with the same gloomy enthusiasm as the singers threw into it. "Sing!
+You are free!"
+
+The words were spoken in a voice that startled the physician. To
+divert Massimilla from her bitter reflections, while the excitement of
+recalling la Tinti was at its height, he engaged her in one of the
+arguments in which the French excel.
+
+"Madame," said he, "in explaining this grand work--which I shall come
+to hear again to-morrow with a fuller comprehension, thanks to you, of
+its structure and its effect--you have frequently spoken of the color
+of the music, and of the ideas it depicts; now I, as an analyst, a
+materialist, must confess that I have always rebelled against the
+affectation of certain enthusiasts, who try to make us believe that
+music paints with tones. Would it not be the same thing if Raphael's
+admirers spoke of his singing with colors?"
+
+"In the language of musicians," replied the Duchess, "/painting/ is
+arousing certain associations in our souls, or certain images in our
+brain; and these memories and images have a color of their own; they
+are sad or cheerful. You are battling for a word, that is all.
+According to Capraja, each instrument has its task, its mission, and
+appeals to certain feelings in our souls. Does a pattern in gold on a
+blue ground produce the same sensations in you as a red pattern on
+black or green? In these, as in music, there are no figures, no
+expression of feeling; they are purely artistic, and yet no one looks
+at them with indifference. Has not the oboe the peculiar tone that we
+associate with the open country, in common with most wind instruments?
+The brass suggests martial ideas, and rouses us to vehement or even
+somewhat furious feelings. The strings, for which the material is
+derived from the organic world, seem to appeal to the subtlest fibres
+of our nature; they go to the very depths of the heart. When I spoke
+of the gloomy hue, and the coldness of the tones in the introduction
+to /Mose/, was I not fully as much justified as your critics are when
+they speak of the 'color' in a writer's language? Do you not
+acknowledge that there is a nervous style, a pallid style, a lively,
+and a highly-colored style? Art can paint with words, sounds, colors,
+lines, form; the means are many; the result is one.
+
+"An Italian architect might give us the same sensation that is
+produced in us by the introduction to /Mose/, by constructing a walk
+through dark, damp avenues of tall, thick trees, and bringing us out
+suddenly in a valley full of streams, flowers, and mills, and basking
+in the sunshine. In their greatest moments the arts are but the
+expression of the grand scenes of nature.
+
+"I am not learned enough to enlarge on the philosophy of music; go and
+talk to Capraja; you will be amazed at what he can tell you. He will
+say that every instrument that depends on the touch or breath of man
+for its expression and length of note, is superior as a vehicle of
+expression to color, which remains fixed, or speech, which has its
+limits. The language of music is infinite; it includes everything; it
+can express all things.
+
+"Now do you see wherein lies the pre-eminence of the work you have
+just heard? I can explain it in a few words. There are two kinds of
+music: one, petty, poor, second-rate, always the same, based on a
+hundred or so of phrases which every musician has at his command, a
+more or less agreeable form of babble which most composers live in. We
+listen to their strains, their would-be melodies, with more or less
+satisfaction, but absolutely nothing is left in our mind; by the end
+of the century they are forgotten. But the nations, from the beginning
+of time till our own day, have cherished as a precious treasure
+certain strains which epitomize their instincts and habits; I might
+almost say their history. Listen to one of these primitive tones,--the
+Gregorian chant, for instance, is, in sacred song, the inheritance of
+the earliest peoples,--and you will lose yourself in deep dreaming.
+Strange and immense conceptions will unfold within you, in spite of
+the extreme simplicity of these rudimentary relics. And once or twice
+in a century--not oftener, there arises a Homer of music, to whom God
+grants the gift of being ahead of his age; men who can compact
+melodies full of accomplished facts, pregnant with mighty poetry.
+Think of this; remember it. The thought, repeated by you, will prove
+fruitful; it is melody, not harmony, that can survive the shocks of
+time.
+
+"The music of this oratorio contains a whole world of great and sacred
+things. A work which begins with that introduction and ends with that
+prayer is immortal--as immortal as the Easter hymn, /O filii et
+filioe/, as the /Dies iroe/ of the dead, as all the songs which in
+every land have outlived its splendor, its happiness, and its ruined
+prosperity."
+
+The tears the Duchess wiped away as she quitted her box showed plainly
+that she was thinking of the Venice that is no more; and Vendramin
+kissed her hand.
+
+The performance ended with the most extraordinary chaos of noises:
+abuse and hisses hurled at Genovese and a fit of frenzy in praise of
+la Tinti. It was a long time since the Venetians had had so lively an
+evening. They were warmed and revived by that antagonism which is
+never lacking in Italy, where the smallest towns always throve on the
+antagonistic interests of two factions: the Geulphs and Ghibellines
+everywhere; the Capulets and the Montagues at Verona; the Geremei and
+the Lomelli at Bologna; the Fieschi and the Doria at Genoa; the
+patricians and the populace, the Senate and tribunes of the Roman
+republic; the Pazzi and the Medici at Florence; the Sforza and the
+Visconti at Milan; the Orsini and the Colonna at Rome,--in short,
+everywhere and on every occasion there has been the same impulse
+
+Out in the streets there were already /Genovists/ and /Tintists/.
+
+The Prince escorted the Duchess, more depressed than ever by the loves
+of Osiride; she feared some similar disaster to her own, and could
+only cling to Emilio, as if to keep him next her heart.
+
+"Remember your promise," said Vendramin. "I will wait for you in the
+square."
+
+
+
+Vendramin took the Frenchman's arm, proposing that they should walk
+together on the Piazza San Marco while awaiting the Prince.
+
+"I shall be only too glad if he should not come," he added.
+
+This was the text for a conversation between the two, Vendramin
+regarding it as a favorable opportunity for consulting the physician,
+and telling him the singular position Emilio had placed himself in.
+
+The Frenchman did as every Frenchman does on all occasions: he
+laughed. Vendramin, who took the matter very seriously, was angry; but
+he was mollified when the disciple of Majendie, of Cuvier, of
+Dupuytren, and of Brossais assured him that he believed he could cure
+the Prince of his high-flown raptures, and dispel the heavenly poetry
+in which he shrouded Massimilla as in a cloud.
+
+"A happy form of misfortune!" said he. "The ancients, who were not
+such fools as might be inferred from their crystal heaven and their
+ideas on physics, symbolized in the fable of Ixion the power which
+nullifies the body and makes the spirit lord of all."
+
+Vendramin and the doctor presently met Genovese, and with him the
+fantastic Capraja. The melomaniac was anxious to learn the real cause
+of the tenor's /fiasco/. Genovese, the question being put to him,
+talked fast, like all men who can intoxicate themselves by the
+ebullition of ideas suggested to them by a passion.
+
+"Yes, signori, I love her, I worship her with a frenzy of which I
+never believed myself capable, now that I am tired of women. Women
+play the mischief with art. Pleasure and work cannot be carried on
+together. Clara fancies that I was jealous of her success, that I
+wanted to hinder her triumph at Venice; but I was clapping in the
+side-scenes, and shouted /Diva/ louder than any one in the house."
+
+"But even that," said Cataneo, joining them, "does not explain why,
+from being a divine singer, you should have become one of the most
+execrable performers who ever piped air through his larynx, giving
+none of the charm even which enchants and bewitches us."
+
+"I!" said the singer. "I a bad singer! I who am the equal of the
+greatest performers!"
+
+By this time, the doctor and Vendramin, Capraja, Cataneo, and Genovese
+had made their way to the piazzetta. It was midnight. The glittering
+bay, outlined by the churches of San Giorgio and San Paulo at the end
+of the Giudecca, and the beginning of the Grand Canal, that opens so
+mysteriously under the /Dogana/ and the church of Santa Maria della
+Salute, lay glorious and still. The moon shone on the barques along
+the Riva de' Schiavoni. The waters of Venice, where there is no tide,
+looked as if they were alive, dancing with a myriad spangles. Never
+had a singer a more splendid stage.
+
+Genovese, with an emphatic flourish, seemed to call Heaven and Earth
+to witness; and then, with no accompaniment but the lapping waves, he
+sang /Ombra adorata/, Crescentini's great air. The song, rising up
+between the statues of San Teodoro and San Giorgio, in the heart of
+sleeping Venice lighted by the moon, the words, in such strange
+harmony with the scene, and the melancholy passion of the singer, held
+the Italians and the Frenchman spellbound.
+
+At the very first notes, Vendramin's face was wet with tears. Capraja
+stood as motionless as one of the statues in the ducal palace. Cataneo
+seemed moved to some feeling. The Frenchman, taken by surprise, was
+meditative, like a man of science in the presence of a phenomenon that
+upsets all his fundamental axioms. These four minds, all so different,
+whose hopes were so small, who believed in nothing for themselves or
+after themselves, who regarded their own existence as that of a
+transient and a fortuitous being,--like the little life of a plant or
+a beetle,--had a glimpse of Heaven. Never did music more truly merit
+the epithet divine. The consoling notes, as they were poured out,
+enveloped their souls in soft and soothing airs. On these vapors,
+almost visible, as it seemed to the listeners, like the marble shapes
+about them in the silver moonlight, angels sat whose wings, devoutly
+waving, expressed adoration and love. The simple, artless melody
+penetrated to the soul as with a beam of light. It was a holy passion!
+
+But the singer's vanity roused them from their emotion with a terrible
+shock.
+
+"Now, am I a bad singer?" he exclaimed, as he ended.
+
+His audience only regretted that the instrument was not a thing of
+Heaven. This angelic song was then no more than the outcome of a man's
+offended vanity! The singer felt nothing, thought nothing, of the
+pious sentiments and divine images he could create in others,--no
+more, in fact, than Paganini's violin knows what the player makes it
+utter. What they had seen in fancy was Venice lifting its shroud and
+singing--and it was merely the result of a tenor's /fiasco/!
+
+"Can you guess the meaning of such a phenomenon?" the Frenchman asked
+of Capraja, wishing to make him talk, as the Duchess had spoken of him
+as a profound thinker.
+
+"What phenomenon?" said Capraja.
+
+"Genovese--who is admirable in the absence of la Tinti, and when he
+sings with her is a braying ass."
+
+"He obeys an occult law of which one of your chemists might perhaps
+give you the mathematical formula, and which the next century will no
+doubt express in a statement full of /x/, /a/, and /b/, mixed up with
+little algebraic signs, bars, and quirks that give me the colic; for
+the finest conceptions of mathematics do not add much to the sum total
+of our enjoyment.
+
+"When an artist is so unfortunate as to be full of the passion he
+wishes to express, he cannot depict it because he is the thing itself
+instead of its image. Art is the work of the brain, not of the heart.
+When you are possessed by a subject you are a slave, not a master; you
+are like a king besieged by his people. Too keen a feeling, at the
+moment when you want to represent that feeling, causes an insurrection
+of the senses against the governing faculty."
+
+"Might we not convince ourselves of this by some further experiment?"
+said the doctor.
+
+"Cataneo, you might bring your tenor and the prima donna together
+again," said Capraja to his friend.
+
+"Well, gentlemen," said the Duke, "come to sup with me. We ought to
+reconcile the tenor and la Clarina; otherwise the season will be
+ruined in Venice."
+
+The invitation was accepted.
+
+"Gondoliers!" called Cataneo.
+
+"One minute," said Vendramin. "Memmi is waiting for me at Florian's; I
+cannot leave him to himself. We must make him tipsy to-night, or he
+will kill himself to-morrow."
+
+"/Corpo santo!/" exclaimed the Duke. "I must keep that young fellow
+alive, for the happiness and future prospects of my race. I will
+invite him, too."
+
+They all went back to Florian's, where the assembled crowd were
+holding an eager and stormy discussion to which the tenor's arrival
+put an end. In one corner, near a window looking out on the colonnade,
+gloomy, with a fixed gaze and rigid attitude, Emilio was a dismal
+image of despair.
+
+"That crazy fellow," said the physician, in French, to Vendramin,
+"does not know what he wants. Here is a man who can make of a
+Massimilla Doni a being apart from the rest of creation, possessing
+her in heaven, amid ideal splendor such as no power on earth can make
+real. He can behold his mistress for ever sublime and pure, can always
+hear within him what we have just heard on the seashore; can always
+live in the light of a pair of eyes which create for him the warm and
+golden glow that surrounds the Virgin in Titian's Assumption,--after
+Raphael had invented it or had it revealed to him for the
+Transfiguration,--and this man only longs to smirch the poem.
+
+"By my advice he must needs combine his sensual joys and his heavenly
+adoration in one woman. In short, like all the rest of us, he will
+have a mistress. He had a divinity, and the wretched creature insists
+on her being a female! I assure you, monsieur, he is resigning heaven.
+I will not answer for it that he may not ultimately die of despair.
+
+"O ye women's faces, delicately outlined in a pure and radiant oval,
+reminding us of those creations of art where it has most successfully
+competed with nature! Divine feet that cannot walk, slender forms that
+an earthly breeze would break, shapes too frail ever to conceive,
+virgins that we dreamed of as we grew out of childhood, admired in
+secret, and adored without hope, veiled in the beams of some
+unwearying desire,--maids whom we may never see again, but whose smile
+remains supreme in our life, what hog of Epicurus could insist on
+dragging you down to the mire of this earth!
+
+"The sun, monsieur, gives light and heat to the world, only because it
+is at a distance of thirty-three millions of leagues. Get nearer to
+it, and science warns you that it is not really hot or luminous,--for
+science is of some use," he added, looking at Capraja.
+
+"Not so bad for a Frenchman and a doctor," said Capraja, patting the
+foreigner on the shoulder. "You have in those words explained the
+thing which Europeans least understand in all Dante: his Beatrice.
+Yes, Beatrice, that ideal figure, the queen of the poet's fancies,
+chosen above all the elect, consecrated with tears, deified by memory,
+and for ever young in the presence of ineffectual desire!"
+
+"Prince," said the Duke to Emilio, "come and sup with me. You cannot
+refuse the poor Neapolitan whom you have robbed both of his wife and
+of his mistress."
+
+This broad Neapolitan jest, spoken with an aristocratic good manner,
+made Emilio smile; he allowed the Duke to take his arm and lead him
+away.
+
+Cataneo had already sent a messenger to his house from the cafe.
+
+As the Palazzo Memmi was on the Grand Canal, not far from Santa Maria
+della Salute, the way thither on foot was round by the Rialto, or it
+could be reached in a gondola. The four guests would not separate and
+preferred to walk; the Duke's infirmities obliged him to get into his
+gondola.
+
+At about two in the morning anybody passing the Memmi palace would
+have seen light pouring out of every window across the Grand Canal,
+and have heard the delightful overture to /Semiramide/ performed at
+the foot of the steps by the orchestra of the /Fenice/, as a serenade
+to la Tinti.
+
+The company were at supper in the second floor gallery. From the
+balcony la Tinti in return sang Almavida's /Buona sera/ from /Il
+Barbiere/, while the Duke's steward distributed payment from his
+master to the poor artists and bid them to dinner the next day, such
+civilities as are expected of grand signors who protect singers, and
+of fine ladies who protect tenors and basses. In these cases there is
+nothing for it but to marry all the /corps de theatre/.
+
+Cataneo did things handsomely; he was the manager's banker, and this
+season was costing him two thousand crowns.
+
+He had had all the palace furnished, had imported a French cook, and
+wines of all lands. So the supper was a regal entertainment.
+
+The Prince, seated next la Tinti, was keenly alive, all through the
+meal, to what poets in every language call the darts of love. The
+transcendental vision of Massimilla was eclipsed, just as the idea of
+God is sometimes hidden by clouds of doubt in the consciousness of
+solitary thinkers. Clarina thought herself the happiest woman in the
+world as she perceived Emilio was in love with her. Confident of
+retaining him, her joy was reflected in her features, her beauty was
+so dazzling that the men, as they lifted their glasses, could not
+resist bowing to her with instinctive admiration.
+
+"The Duchess is not to compare with la Tinti," said the Frenchman,
+forgetting his theory under the fire of the Sicilian's eyes.
+
+The tenor ate and drank languidly; he seemed to care only to identify
+himself with the prima donna's life, and had lost the hearty sense of
+enjoyment which is characteristic of Italian men singers.
+
+"Come, signorina," said the Duke, with an imploring glance at Clarina,
+"and you, /caro prima uomo/," he added to Genovese, "unite your voices
+in one perfect sound. Let us have the C of /Qual portento/, when light
+appears in the oratorio we have just heard, to convince my old friend
+Capraja of the superiority of unison to any embellishment."
+
+"I will carry her off from that Prince she is in love with; for she
+adores him--it stares me in the face!" said Genovese to himself.
+
+What was the amazement of the guests who had heard Genovese out of
+doors, when he began to bray, to coo, mew, squeal, gargle, bellow,
+thunder, bark, shriek, even produce sounds which could only be
+described as a hoarse rattle,--in short, go through an
+incomprehensible farce, while his face was transfigured with rapturous
+expression like that of a martyr, as painted by Zurbaran or Murillo,
+Titian or Raphael. The general shout of laughter changed to almost
+tragical gravity when they saw that Genovese was in utter earnest. La
+Tinti understood that her companion was in love with her, and had
+spoken the truth on the stage, the land of falsehood.
+
+"/Poverino!/" she murmured, stroking the Prince's hand under the
+table.
+
+"By all that is holy!" cried Capraja, "will you tell me what score you
+are reading at this moment--murdering Rossini? Pray inform us what you
+are thinking about, what demon is struggling in your throat."
+
+"A demon!" cried Genovese, "say rather the god of music. My eyes, like
+those of Saint-Cecilia, can see angels, who, pointing with their
+fingers, guide me along the lines of the score which is written in
+notes of fire, and I am trying to keep up with them. PER DIO! do you
+not understand? The feeling that inspires me has passed into my being;
+it fills my heart and my lungs; my soul and throat have but one life.
+
+"Have you never, in a dream, listened to the most glorious strains,
+the ideas of unknown composers who have made use of pure sound as
+nature has hidden it in all things,--sound which we call forth, more
+or less perfectly, by the instruments we employ to produce masses of
+various color; but which in those dream-concerts are heard free from
+the imperfections of the performers who cannot be all feeling, all
+soul? And I, I give you that perfection, and you abuse me!
+
+"You are as mad at the pit of the /Fenice/, who hissed me! I scorned
+the vulgar crowd for not being able to mount with me to the heights
+whence we reign over art, and I appeal to men of mark, to a Frenchman
+--Why, he is gone!"
+
+"Half an hour ago," said Vendramin.
+
+"That is a pity. He, perhaps, would have understood me, since
+Italians, lovers of art, do not--"
+
+"On you go!" said Capraja, with a smile, and tapping lightly on the
+tenor's head. "Ride off on the divine Ariosto's hippogriff; hunt down
+your radiant chimera, musical visionary as you are!"
+
+In point of fact, all the others, believing that Genovese was drunk,
+let him talk without listening to him. Capraja alone had understood
+the case put by the French physician.
+
+
+
+While the wine of Cyprus was loosening every tongue, and each one was
+prancing on his favorite hobby, the doctor, in a gondola, was waiting
+for the Duchess, having sent her a note written by Vendramin.
+Massimilla appeared in her night wrapper, so much had she been alarmed
+by the tone of the Prince's farewell, and so startled by the hopes
+held out by the letter.
+
+"Madame," said the Frenchman, as he placed her in a seat and desired
+the gondoliers to start, "at this moment Prince Emilio's life is in
+danger, and you alone can save him."
+
+"What is to be done?" she asked.
+
+"Ah! Can you resign yourself to play a degrading part--in spite of the
+noblest face to be seen in Italy? Can you drop from the blue sky where
+you dwell, into the bed of a courtesan? In short, can you, an angel of
+refinement, of pure and spotless beauty, condescend to imagine what
+the love must be of a Tinti--in her room, and so effectually as to
+deceive the ardor of Emilio, who is indeed too drunk to be very clear-
+sighted?"
+
+"Is that all?" said she, with a smile that betrayed to the Frenchman a
+side he had not as yet perceived of the delightful nature of an
+Italian woman in love. "I will out-do la Tinti, if need be, to save my
+friend's life."
+
+"And you will thus fuse into one two kinds of love, which he sees as
+distinct--divided by a mountain of poetic fancy, that will melt away
+like the snow on a glacier under the beams of the midsummer sun."
+
+"I shall be eternally your debtor," said the Duchess, gravely.
+
+When the French doctor returned to the gallery, where the orgy had by
+this time assumed the stamp of Venetian frenzy, he had a look of
+satisfaction which the Prince, absorbed by la Tinti, failed to
+observe; he was promising himself a repetition of the intoxicating
+delights he had known. La Tinti, a true Sicilian, was floating on the
+tide of a fantastic passion on the point of being gratified.
+
+The doctor whispered a few words to Vendramin, and la Tinti was
+uneasy.
+
+"What are you plotting?" she inquired of the Prince's friend.
+
+"Are you kind-hearted?" said the doctor in her ear, with the sternness
+of an operator.
+
+The words pierced to her comprehension like a dagger-thrust to her
+heart.
+
+"It is to save Emilio's life," added Vendramin.
+
+"Come here," said the doctor to Clarina.
+
+The hapless singer rose and went to the other end of the table where,
+between Vendramin and the Frenchman, she looked like a criminal
+between the confessor and the executioner.
+
+She struggled for a long time, but yielded at last for love of Emilio.
+
+The doctor's last words were:
+
+"And you must cure Genovese!"
+
+She spoke a word to the tenor as she went round the table. She
+returned to the Prince, put her arm round his neck and kissed his hair
+with an expression of despair which struck Vendramin and the
+Frenchman, the only two who had their wits about them, then she
+vanished into her room. Emilio, seeing Genovese leave the table, while
+Cataneo and Capraja were absorbed in a long musical discussion, stole
+to the door of the bedroom, lifted the curtain, and slipped in, like
+an eel into the mud.
+
+"But you see, Cataneo," said Capraja, "you have exacted the last drop
+of physical enjoyment, and there you are, hanging on a wire like a
+cardboard harlequin, patterned with scars, and never moving unless the
+string is pulled of a perfect unison."
+
+"And you, Capraja, who have squeezed ideas dry, are not you in the
+same predicament? Do you not live riding the hobby of a /cadenza/?"
+
+"I? I possess the whole world!" cried Capraja, with a sovereign
+gesture of his hand.
+
+"And I have devoured it!" replied the Duke.
+
+They observed that the physician and Vendramin were gone, and that
+they were alone.
+
+
+
+Next morning, after a night of perfect happiness, the Prince's sleep
+was disturbed by a dream. He felt on his heart the trickle of pearls,
+dropped there by an angel; he woke, and found himself bathed in the
+tears of Massimilla Doni. He was lying in her arms, and she gazed at
+him as he slept.
+
+That evening, at the /Fenice/,--though la Tinti had not allowed him to
+rise till two in the afternoon, which is said to be very bad for a
+tenor voice,--Genovese sang divinely in his part in /Semiramide/. He
+was recalled with la Tinti, fresh crowns were given, the pit was wild
+with delight; the tenor no longer attempted to charm the prima donna
+by angelic methods.
+
+Vendramin was the only person whom the doctor could not cure. Love for
+a country that has ceased to be is a love beyond curing. The young
+Venetian, by dint of living in his thirteenth century republic, and in
+the arms of that pernicious courtesan called opium, when he found
+himself in the work-a-day world to which reaction brought him,
+succumbed, pitied and regretted by his friends.
+
+No, how shall the end of this adventure be told--for it is too
+disastrously domestic. A word will be enough for the worshipers of the
+ideal.
+
+The Duchess was expecting an infant.
+
+The Peris, the naiads, the fairies, the sylphs of ancient legend, the
+Muses of Greece, the Marble Virgins of the Certosa at Pavia, the Day
+and Night of Michael Angelo, the little Angels which Bellini was the
+first to put at the foot of his Church pictures, and which Raphael
+painted so divinely in his Virgin with the Donor, and the Madonna who
+shivers at Dresden, the lovely Maidens by Orcagna in the Church of
+San-Michele, at Florence, the celestial choir round the tomb in Saint-
+Sebaldus, at Nuremberg, the Virgins of the Duomo, at Milan, the whole
+population of a hundred Gothic Cathedrals, all the race of beings who
+burst their mould to visit you, great imaginative artists--all these
+angelic and disembodied maidens gathered round Massimilla's bed, and
+wept!
+
+
+
+PARIS, May 25th, 1839.
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Cane, Marco-Facino
+  Facino Cane
+
+Tinti, Clarina
+  Albert Savarus
+
+Varese, Emilio Memmi, Prince of
+  Gambara
+
+Varese, Princess of
+  Gambara
+
+Vendramini, Marco
+  Facino Cane
+
+Victorine
+  Lost Illusions
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Gaudissart II
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Massimilla Doni, by Honore de Balzac
+
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