g the last word, but contradicting herself, softly
hummed 'Non so piu cosa son,' and 'Ah!' she said, 'I shall dream of
love to-night!'

We rose and said good-night. But when I had reached my bedroom in the
Hotel de la Ville, I sat down, obstinate and unconvinced, and penned
this rhapsody, which I have lately found among papers of nearly twenty
years ago. I give it as it stands.

III

Mozart has written the two melodramas of love--the one a melo-tragedy,
the other a melo-comedy. But in really noble art, Comedy and Tragedy
have faces of equal serenity and beauty. In the Vatican there
are marble busts of the two Muses, differing chiefly in their
head-dresses: that of Tragedy is an elaborately built-up structure of
fillets and flowing hair, piled high above the forehead and descending
in long curls upon the shoulders; while Comedy wears a similar
adornment, with the addition of a wreath of vine-leaves and
grape-bunches. The expression of the sister goddesses is no less
finely discriminated. Over the mouth of Comedy plays a subtle smile,
and her eyes are relaxed in a half-merriment. A shadow rests upon
the slightly heavier brows of Tragedy, and her lips, though not
compressed, are graver. So delicately did the Greek artist indicate
the division between two branches of one dramatic art. And since all
great art is classical, Mozart's two melodramas, _Don Giovanni_
and the _Nozze di Figaro_, though the one is tragic and the other
comic, are twin-sisters, similar in form and feature.

The central figure of the melo-tragedy is Don Juan, the hero
of unlimited desire, pursuing the unattainable through tortuous
interminable labyrinths, eager in appetite yet never satisfied, 'for
ever following and for ever foiled.' He is the incarnation of lust
that has become a habit of the soul--rebellious, licentious, selfish,
even cruel. His nature, originally noble and brave, has assumed the
qualities peculiar to lust--rebellion, license, cruelty, defiant
egotism. Yet, such as he is, doomed to punishment and execration,
Don Juan remains a fit subject for poetry and music, because he is
complete, because he is impelled by some demonic influence, spurred on
by yearnings after an unsearchable delight. In his death, the spirit
of chivalry survives, metamorphosed, it is true, into the spirit of
revolt, yet still tragic, such as might animate the desperate sinner
of a haughty breed.

The central figure of the melo-comedy is Cherubino, the geni