in Die Entfuehrung? I think he tells us that he meant it to express his own feeling for the woman who had just become his wife.’  Miranda looked up as though she were almost half-persuaded.  Yet she hummed again ‘Non so piu,’ then said to herself, ’Yes, it is wiser to believe with the professor that these are sequences of sounds, and nothing more.’  Then she sighed.  In the pause which followed, her husband, the famous critic, filled his glass, stretched his legs out, and began:  ’You have embarked, I see, upon the ocean of aesthetics.  For my part, to-night I was thinking how much better fitted for the stage Beaumarchais’ play was than this musical mongrel—­this operatic adaptation.  The wit, observe, is lost.  And Cherubino—­that sparkling little enfant terrible—­becomes a sentimental fellow—­a something I don’t know what—­between a girl and a boy—­a medley of romance and impudence—­anyhow a being quite unlike the sharply outlined playwright’s page.  I confess I am not a musician; the drama is my business, and I judge things by their fitness for the stage.  My wife agrees with me to differ.  She likes music, I like plays.  To-night she was better pleased than I was; for she got good music tolerably well rendered, while I got nothing but a mangled comedy.’

We bore the critic’s monologue with patience.  But once again the spirit, seeking after something which neither Miranda, nor her husband, nor the professor could be got to recognise, moved within me.  I cried out at a venture, ’People who go to an opera must forget music pure and simple, must forget the drama pure and simple.  You must welcome a third species of art, in which the play, the music, the singers with their voices, the orchestra with its instruments—­Pauline Lucca, if you like, with her fascination’ (and here I shot a side-glance at Miranda), ’are so blent as to create a world beyond the scope of poetry or music or acting taken by themselves.  I give Mozart credit for having had insight into this new world, for having brought it near to us.  And I hold that every fresh representation of his work is a fresh revelation of its possibilities.’

To this the critic answered, ’You now seem to me to be confounding the limits of the several arts.’  ‘What!’ I continued, ’is the drama but emotion presented in its most external forms as action?  And what is music but emotion, in its most genuine essence, expressed by sound?  Where then can a more complete artistic harmony be found than in the opera?’

‘The opera,’ replied our host, ’is a hybrid.  You will probably learn to dislike artistic hybrids, if you have the taste and sense I give you credit for.  My own opinion has been already expressed.  In the Nozze, Beaumarchais’ Mariage de Figaro is simply spoiled.  My friend the professor declares Mozart’s music to be sufficient by itself, and the libretto to be a sort of machinery for its display.  Miranda, I think, agrees with him.  You plead eloquently for the hybrid.  You have a right to your own view.  These things are matters, in the final resort, of individual taste rather than of demonstrable principles.  But I repeat that you are very young.’  The critic drained his Lambrusco, and smiled at me.