Here the ding-donging of a big bell seems to mingle with the score; ... and very slowly, and so impressively that the news will ring forever in the ears and hearts of those who hear it from la Svengali's lips:
"Le Sieur Malbrouck est mort—
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!
Le Sieur—Malbrouck—est—mort!
Est mort—et enterré!"
And thus it ends quite abruptly!
And this heart-rending tragedy, this great historical epic in two dozen lines, at which some five or six thousand gay French people are sniffling and mopping their eyes like so many Niobes, is just a common old French comic song—a mere nursery ditty, like "Little Bo-peep"—to the tune,
"We won't go home till morning,
Till daylight doth appear."
And after a second or two of silence (oppressive and impressive as that which occurs at a burial when the handful of earth is being dropped on the coffin-lid) the audience bursts once more into madness; and la Svengali, who accepts no encores, has to bow for nearly five minutes, standing amid a sea of flowers....
Then comes her great and final performance. The orchestra swiftly plays the first four bars of the bass in Chopin's Impromptu (A flat); and suddenly, without words, as a light nymph catching the whirl of a double skipping-rope, la Svengali breaks in, and vocalizes that astounding piece of music that so few pianists can even play; but no pianist has ever played it like this; no piano has ever given out such notes as these!
Every single phrase is a string of perfect gems, of purest ray serene, strung together on a loose golden thread! The higher and shriller she sings, the sweeter it is; higher and shriller than any woman had ever sung before.