A perfect silence fell upon the audience. The girl looked so pretty and modest that she won all hearts, and everybody was in the mood to listen to her with appreciative attention.
She began with a curiously rhythmical prelude, about which there was at the same time something sweet, sad, and strange that gripped the hearts of her hearers. Then in a superb contralto voice, and with exquisite taste, she broke forth into song.
As Madame Pradère had expected, Nadine's singing was out of the usual order. She was telling in song the pitiful story of a mother who had lost her reason after the death of her only child.
The poor woman, wandering among the mountains of Bohemia, confides her grief to the passing winds, to the echoes murmuring unintelligible things, to the flowers nodding and smiling in response to the caresses of the evening breeze.
In her madness she imagines that the soul of her child has taken refuge in one of the flowers which bestrew her pathway, and she goes from one to the other of them repeating her touching refrain:
"Tell me, O flower! is it you that hides the soul of my child which was taken away from me by death?" Then realizing the futility of her inquiries she breaks out into sudden and terrible imprecations: "O death, you merciless monster! Why did you take my child from me? You are a foul fiend!" and more after the same fashion.
But presently her mood changes, and, forgetting her sorrow, she begins to sing to the same flowers that she had been cursing, in words of infinite tenderness, such as mothers use to their darling babes.
When Nadine ceased singing instead of a burst of applause there was absolute silence. So completely had she taken possession of her audience by the pathos and beauty of her song that they were unwilling to break the spell, and not until she bowed, and withdrew, did the applause break forth.
Then it was simply thunderous. From every side came cries of: