"Have the goodness to keep quiet, gentlemen, so that we can hear!" cried a very angry voice.
"Let that man hold his tongue!"
"Out with him!"
"Silence!"
"Sh—sh—sh—shhh!"
"I have always insisted that there are no people more ill-bred than those of this place!" again cried the angry voice.
"Hold your tongue!"
"Don't be a fool, man!"
"Sh—sh—sh—shhh!"
Finally all became silent, and Verdi's passionate melody could be heard, interpreted with remarkable delicacy. The lovely, limpid voice, issuing from the open balconies, rent the saturated atmosphere out of doors, and vibrating with force, went the rounds of the plaza, and died away in the mazes of the town. The loneliness and gloom of the night increased the power and range of that lovely voice, lovely beyond all praise. I do not say that, for any one of those clever people who feel themselves wrapped up in the vocalism of the paradise of the Royal Theatre, the singer was a prodigy in her mastery of attacking, sustaining, and trilling the notes; but I affirm that for those whom we do not see tortured by musical scruples, she sang very well, and she possessed, above all, a bewitching voice, of a passionate timbre, which penetrated to the very depths of the soul.