‘Yes, he is young,’ added Miranda.  ’He must learn to distinguish between music, his own imagination, and a pretty woman.  At present he mixes them all up together.  It is a sort of transcendental omelette.  But I think the pretty woman has more to do with it than metaphysics!’

All this while Edoardo had bestowed devout attention on his supper.  But it appeared that the drift of our discourse had not been lost by him.  ‘Well,’ he said, ’you finely fibred people dissect and analyse.  I am content with the spettacolo.  That pleases.  What does a man want more?  The Nozze is a comedy of life and manners.  The music is adorable.  To-night the women were not bad to look at—­the Lucca was divine; the scenes—­ingenious.  I thought but little.  I came away delighted.  You could have a better play, Caro Signore!’ (with a bow to our host).  ’That is granted.  You might have better music, Cara Signora!’ (with a bow to Miranda).  ’That too is granted.  But when the play and the music come together—­how shall I say?—­the music helps the play, and the play helps the music; and we—­well we, I suppose, must help both!’

Edoardo’s little speech was so ingenuous, and, what is more, so true to his Italian temperament, that it made us all laugh and leave the argument just where we found it.  The bottles of Lambrusco supplied us each with one more glass; and while we were drinking them, Miranda, woman-like, taking the last word, but contradicting herself, softly hummed ‘Non so piu cosa son,’ and ‘Ah!’ she said, ’I shall dream of love to-night!’

We rose and said good-night.  But when I had reached my bedroom in the Hotel de la Ville, I sat down, obstinate and unconvinced, and penned this rhapsody, which I have lately found among papers of nearly twenty years ago.  I give it as it stands.

III

Mozart has written the two melodramas of love—­the one a melo-tragedy, the other a melo-comedy.  But in really noble art, Comedy and Tragedy have faces of equal serenity and beauty.  In the Vatican there are marble busts of the two Muses, differing chiefly in their head-dresses:  that of Tragedy is an elaborately built-up structure of fillets and flowing hair, piled high above the forehead and descending in long curls upon the shoulders; while Comedy wears a similar adornment, with the addition of a wreath of vine-leaves and grape-bunches.  The expression of the sister goddesses is no less finely discriminated.  Over the mouth of Comedy plays a subtle smile, and her eyes are relaxed in a half-merriment.  A shadow rests upon the slightly heavier brows of Tragedy, and her lips, though not compressed, are graver.  So delicately did the Greek artist indicate the division between two branches of one dramatic art.  And since all great art is classical, Mozart’s two melodramas, Don Giovanni and the Nozze di Figaro, though the one is tragic and the other comic, are twin-sisters, similar in form and feature.