The central figure of the melo-tragedy is Don Juan, the hero of unlimited desire, pursuing the unattainable through tortuous interminable labyrinths, eager in appetite yet never satisfied, ’for ever following and for ever foiled.’  He is the incarnation of lust that has become a habit of the soul—­rebellious, licentious, selfish, even cruel.  His nature, originally noble and brave, has assumed the qualities peculiar to lust—­rebellion, license, cruelty, defiant egotism.  Yet, such as he is, doomed to punishment and execration, Don Juan remains a fit subject for poetry and music, because he is complete, because he is impelled by some demonic influence, spurred on by yearnings after an unsearchable delight.  In his death, the spirit of chivalry survives, metamorphosed, it is true, into the spirit of revolt, yet still tragic, such as might animate the desperate sinner of a haughty breed.

The central figure of the melo-comedy is Cherubino, the genius of love, no less insatiable, but undetermined to virtue or to vice.  This is the point of Cherubino, that the ethical capacities in him are still potential.  His passion still hovers on the borderland of good and bad.  And this undetermined passion is beautiful because of extreme freshness; of infinite, immeasurable expansibility.  Cherubino is the epitome of all that belongs to the amorous temperament in a state of still ascendant adolescence.  He is about sixteen years of age—­a boy yesterday, a man to-morrow—­to-day both and neither—­something beyond boyhood, but not yet limited by man’s responsibility and man’s absorbing passions.  He partakes of both ages in the primal awakening to self-consciousness.  Desire, which in Don Juan has become a fiend, hovers before him like a fairy.  His are the sixteen years, not of a Northern climate, but of Spain or Italy, where manhood appears in a flash, and overtakes the child with sudden sunrise of new faculties. Nondum amabam, sed amare amabam, quaerebam quod amarem, amans amare—­’I loved not yet, but was in love with loving; I sought what I should love, being in love with loving.’  That sentence, penned by S. Augustine and consecrated by Shelley, describes the mood of Cherubino.  He loves at every moment of his life, with every pulse of his being.  His object is not a beloved being, but love itself—­the satisfaction of an irresistible desire, the paradise of bliss which merely loving has become for him.  What love means he hardly knows.  He only knows that he must love.  And women love him—­half as a plaything to be trifled with, half as a young god to be wounded by.  This rising of the star of love as it ascends into the heaven of youthful fancy, is revealed in the melodies Mozart has written for him.  How shall we describe their potency?  Who shall translate those curiously perfect words to which tone and rhythm have been indissolubly wedded? E pur mi piace languir cosi....  E se non ho chi m’ oda, parlo d’amor con me.

But if this be so, it may be asked, Who shall be found worthy to act Cherubino on the stage?  You cannot have seen and heard Pauline Lucca, or you would not ask this question.