There stood Norma, the vervain's jagged leaves and red shimmering flowers in her hair, the sickle in her hand, the symbol of the changeful moon. There she foretold the decline of Rome, and with elevated sickle she cut the mistletoe off the oak tree; then her arms extended, her countenance turned to the full moon, she greeted that silvery chaste goddess in melting fervent notes, which were followed by tempestuous applause.
Blanden took no part in these expressions of approbation. Since the appearance of the priestess he stood motionless, the incredible robbed him of his self-possession; only yesterday he had seen that harmonious profile when the beautiful woman in the boat looked up at the stars, as Norma did now at the chaste goddess; he had seen it last in the shades of the cedars of the Isola Bella. Signora Bollini was the fairy of those Italian days, the mysterious beauty of the enchanted lake.
He had found that which he had sought, and yet his first sensation was one of disappointment. His principessa was a singer, only a singer! How he had flattered himself in his dreams that a Signora from the upper circles of the Italian nobility had loved him, even though with evanescent, carefully concealed love, and had she been a Lucrezia Borgia, a Bianca Capelli, it was an adventure such as Boccaccio loved to describe. It was a fairy-tale out of the thousand and one nights, into which now the sober illumination of the footlights fell.
A singer who is practised in the art of deception, perhaps accustomed to get up an adventure! All the down seemed to be suddenly swept from the richly coloured wings of these recollections, which had so often fluttered through his dreams! With the charm and enchantment of the mystery the silent food for his vanity had also vanished away. He felt himself to be like Sancho Panza, who, after having been Governor of the island for a long time, found himself transformed into the sentry once more.
"Life," said he, "consists of one course of delusions, but as each delusion is unfolded, life becomes poorer in happiness. But was it only a deplorable deception?"
Blanden did not require much time before he condemned his first feeling to be a hasty emotion. Whether principessa or cantatrice, this Italian woman still remained the splendid creature of his dreams. And she had not deceived him, only he himself!
What feeling, what passion in her singing! What grandiose tragic style in that Norma! How his inmost soul vibrated at that imploring entreaty of love which he believed to be directed to himself--
"Behold my tears, behold mine anguish,
Oh twine once more love's wreath for me."
How he was moved by the few bars with which Norma interrupts Adalgisa's confessions, bars devoted to recollections of other days, to the magic which had once enthralled her also! And to what passion was she urged by the Roman's discovered faithlessness! With grandeur of mind she walked to the self-sacrifice!
An actress who could personate a life so full of soul must possess it herself. If the composer's music nowhere gives the dramatic power of the story with equally overwhelming force, if it soon, as if alarmed at such daring, only wreathed the power with arabesques in which the self-conceited play of notes rocks itself to and fro, the vivacity of the representation in this case perfected the want of creative power on the composer's part, and held all intellects bound in the spell of the tragic grandeur!