XXXV.
In one of those festivals which are the noble pleasure and the glory of Germany, an oratorio was to be given for the first time, the expectation of which excited a passionate impatience.
This composition, called The Angels' Fall, is due to a musician whose name will descend to the latest posterity, carried onward by the tempests his genius has evoked.
The part of the archangel Lucifer was awarded to Paganina. These phlegmatic Germans, when they give themselves to enthusiasm, lose all bounds; and Paganina might have been satisfied could she have known her success; but her soul was elsewhere.
This oratorio was divided into three parts. The first expressed heaven. If there is any thing in this world that can make man see what his eyes cannot, and understand what his ears have never heard, it is music; for the true musician knows that such harmony, quitting earth, mounts to the vaults of paradise, where it wakens the echoes that have nothing of earth, and falls again on us—the messenger of hope and consolation.
Paganina's rôle, in this part, was less important than in that which followed. Her voice was rarely detached from the whole; but now and then two or three dazzling notes rose through the harmony, and the transported auditors believed they saw the fluttering wings of the archangel already hovering on the eternal heights.
I will say nothing of the second part, although several found it superior to the two others, on account of the sombre energy, the terrible power with which is rendered the insurrection of the rebel angels.
Paganina should have been perfectly at her ease, to display here the richness of her voice—this voice which, in other parts, rang as a trumpet of gold and brass. But these accents of revolt choked her, and here she was unequal. She would soon surpass herself in the last air.
The composer, by one of those happy mistakes from which the best works grow, forgot the tradition. His angels were not thunder-struck in their pride, and shrieking in blasphemy; but vanquished. They were condemned, and wept. They weep for the heaven they have lost. Admiration believed there was nothing more to expect; but here the master recalls his power, reanimates his genius, and finds an inspiration supreme to chant the farewell to infinite happiness of the guilty phalanx.
The sobs of the orchestra and chorus are heard alternately, and the voice of the archangel rises once again. At this moment, Paganina sang her last air on earth with an intensity of love and grief that cannot be described.
No, Paganina! one who can so weep has not lost heaven.
Those who saw her then will never forget her. In this high-vaulted room, lofty as a church, she stood above the others, in a long black robe covered with stars. Her beauty was that of an archangel.
As she finished, a ray of sunlight, streaming through the red glass, and sparkling as the flaming sword that forbade the entrance into Eden, rested a moment at her feet and expired.