Betsy, on the other hand, went to the opera with the object only of seeing and being seen; Eline’s intense enjoyment she would have voted childish in the extreme, but Eline enjoyed in secret, for she suspected Betsy’s opinion, and so left her sister in the belief that she, like herself, found no pleasure in the theatre but to see and to be seen by friends and acquaintances.
The ballet was at an end. Ben-Saïd and Xaïma descended from their throne, and he sang the recitative—
“Je m’efforce en vain de te plaire!”
and then the air:
“O Xaïma, daigne m’entendre!
Mon âme est à toi sans retour!”
The new baritone’s voice was full and sonorous, more like that of a basso cantante, and in his song he enveloped it as with a veil of melancholy.
But in his rich Moorish dress he had a heavy appearance; and neither in his attitude nor in his acting did he succeed in imparting even the merest semblance of amorous homage, and he looked at the prima donna, in her dress of cloth of silver, and her long pearl-clad fair hair, with more of threatening rage in his glance than with the humility of a tender devotion.
Eline was not insensible to the shortcomings in his acting; but still, the very contrast between the expression of haughty superiority in his demeanour and the tone of humility in his voice pleased her. She followed every note of the song, and when at the sudden fortissimo of Ben-Saïd’s metallic organ, the actress appeared to tremble with terror, Eline asked herself the question—
“Why is she so frightened, I wonder?—what is the matter? He does not look so bad.” [[42]]