It consisted in that very uncontrollable something that tyrants cannot kill, that circumstances do not touch, that surmounts every stroke of fate, and is the residuum which faces death. There was a little more of it in Chaliapine than there is in most people.
She tried to follow the score of "Boris Goudonoff"; it was not easy music, and the story hardly seemed to matter.
Chaliapine was the leader of the religious sect that the Czar was going to stamp out. Everything was against him; was he going to conquer? The English audience expected him to conquer. It understood conquests. First, you started all wrong, because you hadn't taken the trouble not to, because you hadn't measured your antagonist, and because you did not think that preparation was necessary.
The audience allowed for things going wrong to begin with, and sat cheerfully expecting the miracle.
The opera went on, and it became apparent to Stella that Chaliapine was not going to get his people out of their difficulties.
They sank deeper and deeper into them. Tyranny was behind and in front of them; they were being steadily hemmed in and beaten down. What they held on to did them no apparent good; it didn't comfort them or relieve their necessities or hold out a helping hand to them. It did nothing against their enemies. It simply burned in them like a flame. It didn't even consume them; it left them to be consumed by the Czar.
The English audience listened breathlessly and a little surprised, but not troubled, because they felt quite sure that everything would come out all right in the last act.
Religion would triumph, it always did, even when you took no notice of it.
You didn't, as a rule, notice the police either, and yet when burglars broke in to steal your plate, they were caught climbing over the back fence by a policeman. Religion was there, like the police, to catch your troubles and restore your spiritual silver plate.
The melancholy minor Russian music couldn't mean that you weren't going to get anything out of it. It would wake up soon and be triumphant.