the orchestra? the learned progressions that prepare us for the festal allegro?  Did you not get a glimpse, as it were, of dancing groups, the dizzy round of a whole nation escaped from danger?  And when the clarionet gives the signal for the stretto,—­’Voci di giubilo,’—­so brilliant and gay, was not your soul filled with the sacred pyrrhic joy of which David speaks in the Psalms, ascribing it to the hills?”

“Yes, it would make a delightful dance tune,” said the doctor.

“French!  French! always French!” exclaimed the Duchess, checked in her exultant mood by this sharp thrust.  “Yes; you would be capable of taking that wonderful burst of noble and dainty rejoicing and turning it into a rigadoon.  Sublime poetry finds no mercy in your eyes.  The highest genius,—­saints, kings, disasters,—­all that is most sacred must pass under the rods of caricature.  And the vulgarizing of great music by turning it into a dance tune is to caricature it.  With you, wit kills soul, as argument kills reason.”

They all sat in silence through the recitative of Osiride and Membrea, who plot to annul the order given by Pharaoh for the departure of the Hebrews.

“Have I vexed you?” asked the physician to the Duchess.  “I should be in despair.  Your words are like a magic wand.  They unlock the pigeon-holes of my brain, and let out new ideas, vivified by this sublime music.”

“No,” replied she, “you have praised our great composer after your own fashion.  Rossini will be a success with you, for the sake of his witty and sensual gifts.  Let us hope that he may find some noble souls, in love with the ideal—­which must exist in your fruitful land,—­to appreciate the sublimity, the loftiness, of such music.  Ah, now we have the famous duet, between Elcia and Osiride!” she exclaimed, and she went on, taking advantage of the triple salvo of applause which hailed la Tinti, as she made her first appearance on the stage.

“If la Tinti has fully understood the part of Elcia, you will hear the frenzied song of a woman torn by her love for her people, and her passion for one of their oppressors, while Osiride, full of mad adoration for his beautiful vassal, tries to detain her.  The opera is built up as much on that grand idea as on that of Pharaoh’s resistance to the power of God and of liberty; you must enter into it thoroughly or you will not understand this stupendous work.

“Notwithstanding the disfavor you show to the dramas invented by our libretto writers, you must allow me to point out the skill with which this one is constructed.  The antithesis required in every fine work, and eminently favorable to music, is well worked out.  What can be finer than a whole nation demanding liberty, held in bondage by bad faith, upheld by God, and piling marvel on marvel to gain freedom?  What more dramatic than the Prince’s love for a Hebrew woman, almost justifying treason to the oppressor’s power?