t on the musical palette!
What creepy darkness! what a mist! Is not your very spirit in mourning?
Are you not convinced of the reality of the blackness that lies over
the land? Do you not feel that Nature is wrapped in the deepest shades?
There are no palm-trees, no Egyptian palaces, no landscape. And what
a healing to your soul will the deeply religious strain be of the
heaven-sent Healer who will stay this cruel plague! How skilfully is
everything wrought up to end in that glorious invocation of Moses to
God.

"By a learned elaboration, which Capraja could explain to you, this
appeal to heaven is accompanied by brass instruments only; it is that
which gives it such a solemn, religious cast. And not merely is the
artifice fine in its place; note how fertile in resource is genius.
Rossini has derived fresh beauty from the difficulty he himself created.
He has the strings in reserve to express daylight when it succeeds
to the darkness, and thus produces one of the greatest effects ever
achieved in music.

"Till this inimitable genius showed the way never was such a result
obtained with mere _recitative_. We have not, so far, had an air or a
duet. The poet has relied on the strength of the idea, on the vividness
of his imagery, and the realism of the declamatory passages. This scene
of despair, this darkness that may be felt, these cries of anguish,--the
whole musical picture is as fine as your great Poussin's _Deluge_."

Moses waved his staff, and it was light.

"Here, monsieur, does not the music vie with the sun, whose splendor
it has borrowed, with nature, whose phenomena it expresses in every
detail?" the Duchess went on, in an undertone. "Art here reaches its
climax; no musician can get beyond this. Do not you hear Egypt waking up
after its long torpor? Joy comes in with the day. In what composition,
ancient or modern, will you find so grand a passage? The greatest
gladness in contrast to the deepest woe! What exclamations! What
gleeful notes! The oppressed spirit breathes again. What delirium in the
_tremolo_ of the orchestra! What a noble _tutti_! This is the rejoicing
of a delivered nation. Are you not thrilled with joy?"

The physician, startled by the contrast, was, in fact, clapping his
hands, carried away by admiration for one of the finest compositions of
modern music.

"_Brava la Doni!_" said Vendramin, who had heard the Duchess.

"Now the introduction is ended," said she. "You have gone through a