And now a third scene opened. It was Athene. Athene represented Wisdom or Human Understanding, by which the God of Vengeance is dethroned, and gives place to the eternal rule of the God of Love. To but few of those present could this idea of Langhetti’s be intelligible. The most of them merely regarded the fable and its music, without looking for any meaning beneath the surface.
To these, and to all, the appearance of Beatrice was like a new revelation. She came forward and stood in the costume which the Greek has given to Athene, but in her hand she held the olive—her emblem—instead of the spear. From beneath her helmet her dark locks flowed down and were wreathed in thick waves that clustered heavily about her head.
Here, as Athene, the pure classical contour of Beatrice’s features appeared in marvelous beauty—faultless in their perfect Grecian mould. Her large, dark eyes looked with a certain solemn meaning out upon the vast audience. Her whole face was refined and sublimed by the thought that was within her. In her artistic nature she had appropriated this character to herself so thoroughly, that, as she stood there, she felt herself to be in reality all that she represented. The spectators caught the same feeling from her. Yet so marvelous was her beauty, so astonishing was the perfection of her form and feature, so accurate was the living representation of the ideal goddess that the whole vast audience after one glance burst forth into pealing thunders of spontaneous and irresistible applause.
Beatrice had opened her mouth to begin, but as that thunder of admiration arose she fell back a pace. Was it the applause that had overawed her?
Her eyes were fixed on one spot at the extreme right of the pit. A face was there which enchained her. A face, pale, sad, mournful, with dark eyes fixed on hers in steadfast despair.
Beatrice faltered and fell back, but it was not at the roar of applause. It was that face—the one face among three thousand before her, the one, the only one that she saw. Ah, how in that moment all the past came rushing before her—the Indian Ocean, the Malay pirate, where that face first appeared, the Atlantic, the shipwreck, the long sail over the seas in the boat, the African isle!
She stood so long in silence that the spectators wondered.
Suddenly the face which had so transfixed her sank down. He was gone, or he had hid himself. Was it because he knew that he was the cause of her silence?
The face disappeared, and the spell was broken. Langhetti stood at the side-scenes, watching with deep agitation the silence of Beatrice. He was on the point of taking the desperate step of going forward when he saw that she had regained her composure.
She regained it, and moved a step forward with such calm serenity that no one could have suspected her of having lost it. She began to sing. In an opera words are nothing—music is all in all. It is sufficient if the words express, even in a feeble and general way, the ideas which breathe and burn in the music. Thus it was with the words in the opening song of Beatrice.