The opera-house was crowded that night. There were the German enthusiasts occupying all the cheap places, their scores under their arms, their faces beaming with anticipation; there was the fashionable English crowd in the most costly places, there because they supposed they ought to say they had heard "Lohengrin," but consoling themselves with the thought that they could leave if they were very much bored, and mildly astonished at the eccentricity of those who could persuade themselves that they really liked Wagner. And lastly, there were the excessively cultured English clique, the apostles of the music of the future, looking with gentle tolerance on the youthful crudities of "Lohengrin," and sitting through it only because they could not have "Siegfried" or the "Götterdämmerung."
A very languid clapping greeted the conductor of the orchestra as he took his seat. Percivale, watching Elsa, saw her eyes dilated, her whole being poised in anticipation of the first note, as the bâton was slowly raised. There was a soft shudder of violins—a delicate agony of sound vibrated along the nerves. Can any operatic writer ever hope to surpass that first slow sweep of suggestive harmony? From the moment when the overture began, Percivale's beloved sat rapt.
The curtain rose on the barbaric crowd—the dramatic action of the opera began. At the appearance of her namesake, the falsely accused Elsa of Brabant, a storm of feeling agitated the modern Elsa as she gazed.
At last she could keep silence no longer. Turning up her face to Percivale's, who sat next her:
"Oh," she whispered, "it is like me—and you came, like Lohengrin, to save me."
He smiled into her eyes.
"Nay," he said, "I am no immortal or miraculous champion; you will not induce me to depart as easily as he did. Besides, I do not think he was right—he demanded too much of his Elsa—more than any woman was capable of. You will see what I mean, when the next act begins."
To these two, as they sat together—so near—almost hand-in-hand, the music was fraught with an exquisite depth of meaning which it could not bear to other ears.
As the notes of the distant organ broke through the orchestra, and rolled sonorous from the cathedral doors, it was like a foreshadowing to Percivale of his own future happiness.
And when, in the twilight of their chamber, Lohengrin and Elsa were left alone, and the mysterious thrilling melody of the wonderful love-duet was flooding the air, unconsciously the hand of the listening girl fell into that of her lover, and so they sat, recking nothing of the significance of the action, until the curtain fell.