motifs_ he selected from his
memory for Cherubino? How can you be certain that the part itself did
not stimulate his musical faculty to fresh and still more appropriate
creativeness? And if we must fall back on documents, do you remember
what he said himself about the love-music in _Die Entfuehrung?_ I
think he tells us that he meant it to express his own feeling for the
woman who had just become his wife.' Miranda looked up as though she
were almost half-persuaded. Yet she hummed again 'Non so piu,' then
said to herself, 'Yes, it is wiser to believe with the professor that
these are sequences of sounds, and nothing more.' Then she sighed. In
the pause which followed, her husband, the famous critic, filled his
glass, stretched his legs out, and began: 'You have embarked, I see,
upon the ocean of aesthetics. For my part, to-night I was thinking
how much better fitted for the stage Beaumarchais' play was than this
musical mongrel--this operatic adaptation. The wit, observe, is lost.
And Cherubino--that sparkling little _enfant terrible_--becomes a
sentimental fellow--a something I don't know what--between a girl and
a boy--a medley of romance and impudence--anyhow a being quite unlike
the sharply outlined playwright's page. I confess I am not a musician;
the drama is my business, and I judge things by their fitness for
the stage. My wife agrees with me to differ. She likes music, I like
plays. To-night she was better pleased than I was; for she got good
music tolerably well rendered, while I got nothing but a mangled
comedy.'

We bore the critic's monologue with patience. But once again the
spirit, seeking after something which neither Miranda, nor her
husband, nor the professor could be got to recognise, moved within me.
I cried out at a venture, 'People who go to an opera must forget
music pure and simple, must forget the drama pure and simple. You
must welcome a third species of art, in which the play, the music, the
singers with their voices, the orchestra with its instruments--Pauline
Lucca, if you like, with her fascination' (and here I shot a
side-glance at Miranda), 'are so blent as to create a world beyond the
scope of poetry or music or acting taken by themselves. I give Mozart
credit for having had insight into this new world, for having brought
it near to us. And I hold that every fresh representation of his work
is a fresh revelation of its possibilities.'

To this the critic answered, 'You now seem to me t