at, oh tell us did she see?

[Music:

Ferrando.

Swarthy and threatening, a gipsy woman,
Bearing of fiendish art, symbols inhuman
Upon the infant fiercely she gazes,
As if to seize him her arm she raises!
Spellbound the nurse watch'd at first the beldame hoary
But soon her shrieking was answer'd in the distance,
And quicker than now I can tell you the story,
The servants of the [Transcriber's Note: music ends here]]

The frightful story was sung in a deep bass voice, by Ferrando. He
sang of how the cry of the nurse on that morning years before had
brought the servants running and they had put the gipsy out; but
almost at once the baby grew ill, and the Count and his people
believed the old hag had put a spell upon it, so that it would die.
They sought wildly for her, and, when they finally found her, they
burned her alive.

While that frightful scene was being enacted, the baby was stolen,
outright, and the di Luna family saw it thrown upon the fire which had
consumed the gipsy.

This deed was done by the daughter of the gipsy whom they had burned
alive. There were those who believed that the child burned had not
been the Count's, but a young gipsy baby--which was quite as horrible.
The name of the young woman who had done this fiendish thing was
Azucena, and the di Lunas searched for her year after year without
success.

It was believed that the spirit of the hag they had burned had entered
into the younger woman's body. The gossiping soldiers and servants
sang:

Anon on the eaves of the house-tops you'll see her,
In form of a vampire; 'tis then you must flee her;
A crow of ill-omen she often is roaming,
Or else as an owl that flits by in the gloaming.

While they were talking of this tragedy for the hundredth time, it
approached the hour of midnight. The servants, through fear, drew
closer together, and the soldiers formed a rank across the plaza at
the back.

Each recalled some frightful happening in relation to witches; how one
man who had given a witch a blow, had died, shrieking and in awful
agony. He had been haunted. It was at the midnight hour that he had
died! As they spoke of this, the castle bell tolled the midnight hour.
The men, wrought up with fright, yelled sharply, and the face of the
moon was hidden for a moment.

_Scene II_

When the cloud which had hidden the moon's rays cleared away, a
beautiful garden belonging to th