The composer who sings for
singing's sake is an artisan, not an artist.

"This magnificent opera is the continuation of the great work I
projected. My first opera was called _The Martyrs_, and I intend to
write a third on Jerusalem delivered. You perceive the beauty of this
trilogy and what a variety of motives it offers,--the Martyrs, Mahomet,
the Deliverance of Jerusalem: the God of the West, the God of the East,
and the struggle of their worshipers over a tomb. But we will not dwell
on my fame, now for ever lost.

"This is the argument of my opera." He paused. "The first act," he went
on, "shows Mahomet as a porter to Kadijah, a rich widow with whom his
uncle placed him. He is in love and ambitious. Driven from Mecca, he
escapes to Medina, and dates his era from his flight, the _Hegira_. In
the second act he is a Prophet, founding a militant religion. In
the third, disgusted with all things, having exhausted life, Mahomet
conceals the manner of his death in the hope of being regarded as a
god,--last effort of human pride.

"Now you shall judge of my way of expressing in sound a great idea, for
which poetry could find no adequate expression in words."

Gambara sat down to the piano with an absorbed gaze, and his wife
brought him the mass of papers forming his score; but he did not open
them.

"The whole opera," said he, "is founded on a bass, as on a fruitful
soil. Mahomet was to have a majestic bass voice, and his wife
necessarily had a contralto. Kadijah was quite old--twenty! Attention!
This is the overture. It begins with an _andante_ in C major, triple
time. Do you hear the sadness of the ambitious man who is not satisfied
with love? Then, through his lamentation, by a transition to the key
of E flat, _allegro_, common time, we hear the cries of the epileptic
lover, his fury and certain warlike phrases, for the mighty charms of
the one and only woman give him the impulse to multiplied loves which
strikes us in _Don Giovanni_. Now, as you hear these themes, do you not
catch a glimpse of Mahomet's Paradise?

"And next we have a _cantabile_ (A flat major, six-eight time), that
might expand the soul that is least susceptible to music. Kadijah has
understood Mahomet! Then Kadijah announces to the populace the Prophet's
interviews with the Angel Gabriel (_maestoso sostenuto_ in F Major). The
magistrates and priests, power and religion, feeling themselves attacked
by the innovator, as Christ and Socrates also at