“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?”