The theme was as follows:—­Camilla has dreamed overnight that her lost mother came to her bedside to bless her nuptials.  Her mother was folded in a black shroud, looking formless as death, like very death, save that death sheds no tears.  She wept, without change of voice, or mortal shuddering, like one whose nature weeps:  ’And with the forth-flowing of her tears the knowledge of her features was revealed to me.’  Behold the Adige, the Mincio, Tiber, and the Po!—­such great rivers were the tears pouring from her eyes.  She threw apart the shroud:  her breasts and her limbs were smooth and firm as those of an immortal Goddess:  but breasts and limbs showed the cruel handwriting of base men upon the body of a martyred saint.  The blood from those deep gashes sprang out at intervals, mingling with her tears.  She said: 

’My child! were I a Goddess, my wounds would heal.  Were I a Saint, I should be in Paradise.  I am no Goddess, and no Saint:  yet I cannot die.  My wounds flow and my tears.  My tears flow because of no fleshly anguish:  I pardon my enemies.  My blood flows from my body, my tears from my soul.  They flow to wash out my shame.  I have to expiate my soul’s shame by my body’s shame.  Oh! how shall I tell you what it is to walk among my children unknown of them, though each day I bear the sun abroad like my beating heart; each night the moon, like a heart with no blood in it.  Sun and moon they see, but not me!  They know not their mother.  I cry to God.  The answer of our God is this:—­“Give to thy children one by one to drink of thy mingled tears and blood:—­then, if there is virtue in them, they shall revive, thou shaft revive.  If virtue is not in them, they and thou shall continue prostrate, and the ox shall walk over you.”  From heaven’s high altar, O Camilla, my child, this silver sacramental cup was reached to me.  Gather my tears in it, fill it with my blood, and drink.’

The song had been massive in monotones, almost Gregorian in its severity up to this point.

’I took the cup.  I looked my mother in the face.  I filled the cup from the flowing of her tears, the flowing of her blood; and I drank!’

Vittoria sent this last phrase ringing out forcefully.  From the inveterate contralto of the interview, she rose to pure soprano in describing her own action.  ‘And I drank,’ was given on a descent of the voice:  the last note was in the minor key—­it held the ear as if more must follow:  like a wail after a triumph of resolve.  It was a masterpiece of audacious dramatic musical genius addressed with sagacious cunning and courage to the sympathizing audience present.  The supposed incompleteness kept them listening; the intentness sent that last falling (as it were, broken) note travelling awakeningly through their minds.  It is the effect of the minor key to stir the hearts of men with this particular suggestiveness.  The house rose, Italians—­and Germans together.  Genius, music, and enthusiasm