"I have heard it is so in England,—and really, after all, I don't so much wonder; and perhaps it is better for those good people you spoke of to keep away. It is not so necessary for them to go as for us. And this is it, as I have heard, and you will know how, when I have said it to you. Music is the soul of the drama, for the highest drama is the opera,—the highest possible is the soul, of course; and so the music should be above the other forms, and they the ministers. But most people put the music at the bottom, and think of it last in this drama. If the music be high, all rise to it; and the higher it is, the higher will all rise. So, the dramatic personification passes naturally into that spiritual height, as the forms of those we love, and their fleeting actions fraught with grace, dissolve into our strong perception of the soul we in them love and long for. The lights and shades of scenery cease to have any meaning in themselves, but again are drawn upwards into the concentrated performing souls, and so again pass upwards into the compass of that tonal paradise. But let the music be degraded or weak, and down it will pull performers, performance, and intention, crush the ideal, as persons without music crush our ideal,—have you not felt? All dramatic music is not thus weak and bad, but much that they use most is vague as well as void. I am repeating to you, Carlino, the very words of the Chevalier: do not think they were my own."
"I did, then, think them very like his words, but I see your thoughts too, for you would say the same. Is there no music to which you would act, then?"
"Oh, yes! I would act to any music, not because I am vain, but because I think I could help it upwards a little. Then there is a great deal for us: we cannot quarrel over Mozart and Cimarosa, neither Gluck nor Spohr; and there is one, but I need hardly name him, who wrote 'Fidelio.' And the Chevalier says if there needed a proof that the highest acting is worthy of the highest music, the highest music of the highest form or outward guise of love in its utmost loveliness, that opera stands as such. And, further, that all the worst operas, and ill-repute of them in the world, will not weigh against the majesty and purity of Beethoven's own character in the opposing scale."
"Oh! thank you for having such a memory."
"I have a memory in my memory for those things."
"Yes, I know. Does the Chevalier know you are to marry Anastase?"
"No."
I was surprised at this, though she said it so very simply; she looked serene as that noonday sky, and very soon she went on to say: "Florimond, my friend, is very young, though I look up to him as no one else could believe. I am but fifteen, you know, and have yet been nearly three years betrothed."
"Gracious! you were only a little girl."
"Not much less than now. I don't think you would ever have called me a little girl, and Florimond says I shall never be a woman. I wished to tell the Chevalier, thinking he would be so good as to congratulate me, and hoping for such a blessing; but I have never found myself able to bring it out of my lips. I always felt it withdraw, as if I had no reason, and certainly I had no right, to confide my personal affairs to him. Our intercourse is so different."