"Ah! but once more! once more only
Let me hear thee, voice of beauty,
Voice of rapture, voice of sweetness,
Voice from out the deep abysses,
Voice from out the heights of Heaven!
Hark! oh, listen----"
Here the thunder which had been rumbling so long broke out into a peal: "Hell and damnation!" roared the Consistorial President's voice, re-echoing through the room, so that the people jumped up from their chairs, alarmed. But it was pretty that the poet, not suffering himself to be disturbed in the slightest, went on reading--
"Yea! it is the breath beloved,
Music of those lips of nectar."
But a destiny higher than that which ruled in the poet's tragedy did not permit him to finish his reading. Just as he was going to raise his voice to the highest pitch of tragic power, to enunciate a terrible execration which his hero was going to utter, something, heaven knows what, got into his throat, so that he broke out into a frightful fit of coughing, by no means to be assuaged, and had to be assisted out of the room, more dead than alive.