“Here, monsieur, does not the music vie with the sun, whose splendor it has borrowed, with nature, whose phenomena it expresses in every detail?” the Duchess went on, in an undertone.  “Art here reaches its climax; no musician can get beyond this.  Do not you hear Egypt waking up after its long torpor?  Joy comes in with the day.  In what composition, ancient or modern, will you find so grand a passage?  The greatest gladness in contrast to the deepest woe!  What exclamations!  What gleeful notes!  The oppressed spirit breathes again.  What delirium in the tremolo of the orchestra!  What a noble tutti!  This is the rejoicing of a delivered nation.  Are you not thrilled with joy?”

The physician, startled by the contrast, was, in fact, clapping his hands, carried away by admiration for one of the finest compositions of modern music.

“Brava la Doni!” said Vendramin, who had heard the Duchess.

“Now the introduction is ended,” said she.  “You have gone through a great sensation,” she added, turning to the Frenchman.  “Your heart is beating; in the depths of your imagination you have a splendid sunrise, flooding with light a whole country that before was cold and dark.  Now, would you know the means by which the musician has worked, so as to admire him to-morrow for the secrets of his craft after enjoying the results to-night?  What do you suppose produces this effect of daylight—­so sudden, so complicated, and so complete?  It consists of a simple chord of C, constantly reiterated, varied only by the chord of 4-6.  This reveals the magic of his touch.  To show you the glory of light he has worked by the same means that he used to represent darkness and sorrow.

“This dawn in imagery is, in fact, absolutely the same as the natural dawn; for light is one and the same thing everywhere, always alike in itself, the effects varying only with the objects it falls on.  Is it not so?  Well, the musician has taken for the fundamental basis of his music, for its sole motif, a simple chord in C. The sun first sheds its light on the mountain-tops and then in the valleys.  In the same way the chord is first heard on the treble string of the violins with boreal mildness; it spreads through the orchestra, it awakes the instruments one by one, and flows among them.  Just as light glides from one thing to the next, giving them color, the music moves on, calling out each rill of harmony till all flow together in the tutti.

“The violins, silent until now, give the signal with their tender tremolo, softly agitato like the first rays of morning.  That light, cheerful movement, which caresses the soul, is cleverly supported by chords in the bass, and by a vague fanfare on the trumpets, restricted to their lowest notes, so as to give a vivid idea of the last cool shadows that linger in the valleys while the first warm rays touch the heights.  Then all the wind is gradually