though his master is in little mood for sportiveness, steal away as they see lights and hear a commotion in the palace.  Donna Anna comes back to the garden, bringing her affianced lover, Don Ottavio, whom she had called to the help of her father.  She finds the Commandant dead, and breaks into agonizing cries and tears.  Only an accompanied recitative, but every ejaculation a cry of nature!  Gounod is wrought up to an ecstasy by Mozart’s declamation and harmonies.  He suspends his analysis to make this comment:—­

But that which one cannot too often remark nor too often endeavor to make understood, that which renders Mozart an absolutely unique genius, is the constant and indissoluble union of beauty of form with truth of expression.  By this truth he is human, by this beauty he is divine.  By truth he teaches us, he moves us; we recognize each other in him, and we proclaim thereby that he indeed knows human nature thoroughly, not only in its different passions, but also in the varieties of form and character that those passions may assume.  By beauty the real is transfigured, although at the same time it is left entirely recognizable; he elevates it by the magic of a superior language and transports it to that region of serenity and light which constitutes Art, wherein Intelligence repeats with a tranquillity of vision what the heart has experienced in the trouble of passion.  Now the union of truth with beauty is Art itself.

Don Ottavio attempts to console his love, but she is insane with grief and at first repulses him, then pours out her grief and calls upon him to avenge the death of her father.  Together they register a vow and call on heaven for retribution.

It is morning.  Don Giovanni and Leporello are in the highway near Seville.  As usual, Leporello is dissatisfied with his service and accuses the Don with being a rascal.  Threats of punishment bring back his servile manner, and Don Giovanni is about to acquaint him of a new conquest, when a lady, Donna Elvira, comes upon the scene.  She utters woful complaints of unhappiness and resentment against one who had won her love, then deceived and deserted her. (Air:  “Ah! chi mi dice mai.”) Don Giovanni ("aflame already,” as Leporello remarks) steps forward to console her.  He salutes her with soft blandishment in his voice, but to his dismay discovers that she is a noble lady of Burgos and one of the “thousand and three” Spanish victims recorded in the list which Leporello mockingly reads to her after Don Giovanni, having turned her over to his servant, for an explanation of his conduct in leaving Burgos, has departed unperceived.  Leporello is worthy of his master in some things.  In danger he is the veriest coward, and his teeth chatter like castanets; but confronted by a mere woman in distress he becomes voluble and spares her nothing in a description of the number of his master’s amours, their place, the quality and station of his victims, and his methods of beguilement.  The curious