s?'

They went their separate ways, laughing.

CHAPTER XXI

THE THIRD ACT

The libretto of the Third Act was steeped in the sentiment of Young
Italy. I wish that I could pipe to your mind's hearing any notion of the
fine music of Rocco Ricci, and touch you to feel the revelations which
were in this new voice. Rocco and Vittoria gave the verses a life that
cannot belong to them now; yet, as they contain much of the vital spirit
of the revolt, they may assist you to some idea of the faith animating
its heads, and may serve to justify this history.

Rocco's music in the opera of Camilla had been sprung from a fresh
Italian well; neither the elegiac-melodious, nor the sensuous-lyrical,
nor the joyous buffo; it was severe as an old masterpiece, with veins of
buoyant liveliness threading it, and with sufficient distinctness of
melody to enrapture those who like to suck the sugarplums of sound. He
would indeed have favoured the public with more sweet things, but
Vittoria, for whom the opera was composed, and who had been at his elbow,
was young, and stern in her devotion to an ideal of classical music that
should elevate and never stoop to seduce or to flatter thoughtless
hearers. Her taste had directed as her voice had inspired the opera. Her
voice belonged to the order of the simply great voices, and was a royal
voice among them. Pure without attenuation, passionate without
contortion, when once heard it exacted absolute confidence. On this night
her theme and her impersonation were adventitious introductions, but
there were passages when her artistic pre-eminence and the sovereign
fulness and fire of her singing struck a note of grateful remembered
delight. This is what the great voice does for us. It rarely astonishes
our ears. It illumines our souls, as you see the lightning make the
unintelligible craving darkness leap into long mountain ridges, and
twisting vales, and spires of cities, and inner recesses of light within
light, rose-like, toward a central core of violet heat.

At the rising of the curtain the knights of the plains, Rudolfo,
Romualdo, Arnoldo, and others, who were conspiring to overthrow Count
Orso at the time when Camillo's folly ruined all, assemble to deplore
Camilla's banishment, and show, bereft of her, their helplessness and
indecision. They utter contempt of Camillo, who is this day to be
Pontifically divorced from his wife to espouse the detested Michiella.
His taste is not admired.