minious route,' And then here: 'He who has seen her as the
spotless spouse of the son of Parsifal, standing by the window, has
assisted at the mystery of the chaste soul awaiting the coming of
her predestined lover,' And 'He who has seen her as Elizabeth,
ascending the hillside, has felt the nostalgia of the skies awaken
in his heart,' Then he goes on to say that her special genius and
her antecedents led her to 'Fidelio,' and designed her as the
perfect embodiment of Leonore's soul--that pure, beautiful soul made
wholly of sacrifice and love,' But you never saw her as Leonore so
you can form no idea of what she really was,"

"I will read you what she wrote when she was studying 'Fidelio':
'Beethoven's music has nothing in common with the passion of the
flesh; it lives in the realms of noble affections, pity, tenderness,
love, spiritual yearnings for the life beyond the world, and its joy
in the external world is as innocent as a happy child's. It is in
this sense classical--it lives and loves and breathes in spheres of
feeling and thought removed from the ordinary life of men. Wagner's
later work, if we except some scenes from "The Ring"--notably the
scenes between Wotan and Brunnhilde--is nearer to the life of the
senses; its humanity is fresh in us, deep as Brunnhilde's; but
essential man lives in the spirit. The desire of the flesh is more
necessary to the life of the world than the aspirations of the soul,
yet the aspirations of the soul are more human. The root is more
necessary to the plant than its flower, but it is by the flower and
not by the root that we know it."

"Is it not amazing that a woman who could think like that should be
capable of flinging up her art--the art which I gave her--on account
of the preaching of that wooden-headed Mostyn?" Sitting down
suddenly he opened a drawer, and, taking out her photograph, he
said: "Here she is as Leonore, but you should have seen her in the
part. The photograph gives no idea whatever; you haven't seen her
picture. Come, let me show you her picture: one of the most beautiful
pictures that ---- ever painted; the most beautiful in the room, and
there are many beautiful things in this room. Isn't it extraordinary
that a woman so beautiful, so gifted, so enchanting, so intended by
life for life should be taken with the religious idea suddenly? She
has gone mad without doubt. A woman who could do the things that she
could do to pass over to religion, to scapulars, r