"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.
