The Stretta ensued, and the music-tide flowed so high and full that the fashionable audience forgot all artificial conventionalities, and yielded themselves freely to the ennobling emotions of human sympathy. Above the whole sublime assemblage of sounds wailed out that fearful note of the fallen cherub; and the fainting of Lucia, at the close of the Sextette, I felt sure was not a feigned one.
As the curtain fell over the temporary stage, several gentlemen hurried out to make inquiries about Madame C——, for there seemed to be an opinion similar to mine pervading the room. The curtain rose, and it was announced that she was too ill to sing again; but the murmur of regret was silenced almost immediately by the appearance of the chorus with Signor D——, the tenor.
They began the Finale. Signor D——looked haggard and wan, but very stern, and there was more of wrath than repentance in his singing. Was it fancy or reality? The heart-rending
"O bell' alma innamorata!"
seemed to be accompanied by distant, half-veiled sobs. No one else appeared to notice them, and I half doubted their reality.
The Finale ended; and for a few moments the gay crowd buzzed, and some stood up and looked about at their neighbors. The interval was short, however,—for the Quintette performers came upon the stage, and took their places.
I leaned back and covered my face with my hand. My memory was still ringing with echoes of the forlorn cry of wrecked love, mingled with the imaginary sobs I had just heard; therefore I hardly listened to the majestic opening of full, harmonious chords, which lead grandly into a sort of cantabile movement.
The curious modulations which followed aroused me, and I soon busied myself in tracing the changes from major to minor, and from one minor key to another, as sorrows chase each other in life. Just at this part of the composition occurs the passage which sounds like a weird, ghostly call or summons: when I heard it, my fancy began working, and, like Heine, I saw spectres in the music sounds.
The air seemed to have grown suddenly "nipping and eager." I unconsciously drew my mantle around my shoulders, as a shiver ran over me, such as nurses tell us in childhood is caused by some one walking over our graves. I fancied I saw before me the ghost scene in "Hamlet." There was the castle platform,—the gloomy battlements,—the sound of distant wassail; and dimly defined by the vague light of my fancy, stood the sad young Danish prince, shivering in the "shrewd, biting" night-air, tortured with those apprehensions and sickening doubts
"That cloud the mind and fire the brain,"