“So novel an art demands study in the public, study of a kind that may develop the feelings to which music appeals.  That sentiment hardly exists as yet among you—­a nation given up to philosophical theories, to analysis and discussion, and always torn by civil disturbances.  Modern music demands perfect peace; it is the language of loving and sentimental souls, inclined to lofty emotional aspiration.

“That language, a thousand times fuller than the language of words, is to speech and ideas what the thought is to its utterance; it arouses sensations and ideas in their primitive form, in that part of us where sensations and ideas have their birth, but leaves them as they are in each of us.  That power over our inmost being is one of the grandest facts in music.  All other arts present to the mind a definite creation; those of music are indefinite—­infinite.  We are compelled to accept the ideas of the poet, the painter’s picture, the sculptor’s statue; but music each one can interpret at the will of his sorrow or his gladness, his hope or his despair.  While other arts restrict our mind by fixing it on a predestined object, music frees it to roam over all nature which it alone has the power of expressing.  You shall hear how I interpret Rossini’s Mose.”

She leaned across to the Frenchman to speak to him, without being overheard.

“Moses is the liberator of an enslaved race!” said she.  “Remember that, and you will see with what religious hope the whole house will listen to the prayer of the rescued Hebrews, with what a thunder of applause it will respond!”

As the leader raised his bow, Emilio flung himself into a back seat.  The Duchess pointed out the place he had left, for the physician to take it.  But the Frenchman was far more curious to know what had gone wrong between the lovers than to enter the halls of music built up by the man whom all Italy was applauding—­for it was the day of Rossini’s triumph in his own country.  He was watching the Duchess, and she was talking with a feverish excitement.  She reminded him of the Niobe he had admired at Florence:  the same dignity in woe, the same physical control; and yet her soul shone though, in the warm flush of her cheeks; and her eyes, where anxiety was disguised under a flash of pride, seemed to scorch the tears away by their fire.  Her suppressed grief seemed calmer when she looked at Emilio, who never took his eyes off her; it was easy to see that she was trying to mollify some fierce despair.  The state of her feelings gave a certain loftiness to her mind.

Like most women when under the stress of some unusual agitation, she overstepped her ordinary limitations and assumed something of the Pythoness, though still remaining calm and beautiful; for it was the form of her thoughts that was wrung with desperation, not the features of her face.  And perhaps she wanted to shine with all her wit to lend some charm to life and detain her lover from death.