that is a mistake which may be too severely punished. Yet
there are exceptions, and, in short, the scene near the statue of the
governor, the warning which, coming suddenly from the grave of the
murdered man, interrupts so horribly the laughter of the revelers--that
scene was already in my head. I struck a chord, and felt that I had
knocked at the right door, behind which lay all the legion of horrors to
be let loose in the _finale_. First came out an adagio--D-minor, only
four measures; then a second, with five. 'There will be an extraordinary
effect in the theatre,' thought I, 'when the strongest wind instruments
accompany the voice.' Now you shall hear it, as well as it can be done
without the orchestra."

He snuffed out the candles beside him, and that fearful choral, "Your
laughter shall be ended ere the dawn," rang through the death-like
stillness of the room. The notes of the silver trumpet fell through the
blue night as if from another sphere--ice-cold, cutting through nerve
and marrow. "Who is here? Answer!" they heard Don Juan ask. Then the
choral, monotonous as before, bade the ruthless youth leave the dead in
peace.

After this warning had rung out its last notes, Mozart went on: "Now, as
you can think, there was no stopping. When the ice begins to break at
the edge, the whole lake cracks and snaps from end to end.
Involuntarily, I took up the thread at Don Juan's midnight feast, when
Donna Elvira has just departed and the ghost enters in response to the
invitation. Listen!"

And then the whole, long, horrible dialogue followed. When the human
voices have become silent, the voice of the dead speaks again. After
that first fearful greeting, in which the half-transformed being refuses
the earthly nourishment offered him, how strangely and horribly moves
the unsteady voice up and down in that singular scale! He demands speedy
repentance; the spirit's time is short, the way it must travel, long.
And Don Juan, in monstrous obstinacy withstanding the eternal commands,
beneath the growing influence of the dark spirits, struggles and writhes
and finally perishes, keeping to the last, nevertheless, that wonderful
expression of majesty in every gesture. How heart and flesh tremble with
delight and terror! It is a feeling like that with which one watches the
mighty spectacle of an unrestrained force of nature, or the burning of a
splendid ship. In spite of ourselves, we sympathize with the blind
majesty, and, shudde