“The hopes of the gambler cured by love, the love of a most beautiful woman,—­did you observe that magnificent Sicilian, with her hawk’s eye secure of her prey? (What interpreters that composer has found!) the hopes of the man are mocked at by the hopes of hell in the tremendous cry:  ‘A toi, Robert de Normandie!’

“And are not you struck by the gloom and horror of those long-held notes, to which the words are set:  ‘Dans la foret prochaine’?  We find here all the sinister spells of Jerusalem Delivered, just as we find all chivalry in the chorus with the Spanish lilt, and in the march tune.  How original is the alegro with the modulations of the four cymbals (tuned to C, D, C, G)!  How elegant is the call to the lists!  The whole movement of the heroic life of the period is there:  the mind enters into it; I read in it a romance, a poem of chivalry.  The exposition is now finished; the resources of music would seem to be exhausted; you have never heard anything like it before; and yet it is homogeneous.  You have had life set before you, and its one and only crux:  ‘Shall I be happy or unhappy?’ is the philosopher’s query.  ‘Shall I be saved or damned?’ asks the Christian.”

With these words Gambara struck the last chord of the chorus, dwelt on it with a melancholy modulation, and then rose to drink another large glass of Giro.  This half-African vintage gave his face a deeper flush, for his passionate and wonderful sketch of Meyerbeer’s opera had made him turn a little pale.

“That nothing may be lacking to this composition,” he went on, “the great artist has generously added the only buffo duet permissible for a devil:  that in which he tempts the unhappy troubadour.  The composer has set jocosity side by side with horror—­a jocosity in which he mocks at the only realism he had allowed himself amid the sublime imaginings of his work—­the pure calm love of Alice and Raimbaut; and their life is overshadowed by the forecast of evil.

“None but a lofty soul can feel the noble style of these buffo airs; they have neither the superabundant frivolity of Italian music nor the vulgar accent of French commonplace; rather have they the majesty of Olympus.  There is the bitter laughter of a divine being mocking the surprise of a troubadour Don-Juanizing himself.  But for this dignity we should be too suddenly brought down to the general tone of the opera, here stamped on that terrible fury of diminished sevenths which resolves itself into an infernal waltz, and finally brings us face to face with the demons.

“How emphatically Bertram’s couplet stands out in B minor against that diabolical chorus, depicting his paternity, but mingling in fearful despair with these demoniacal strains.

“Then comes the delightful transition of Alice’s reappearance, with the ritornel in B flat.  I can still hear that air of angelical simplicity—­the nightingale after a storm.  Thus the grand leading idea of the whole is worked out in the details; for what could be more perfectly in contrast with the tumult of devils tossing in the pit than that wonderful air given to Alice? ’Quand j’ai quitte la Normandie.’