perfection the greater, I grant; _Robert le Diable_ expresses ideas,
_Don Giovanni_ arouses sensations. _Don Giovanni_ is as yet the only
musical work in which harmony and melody are combined in exactly the
right proportions. In this lies its only superiority, for _Robert_ is
the richer work. But how vain are such comparisons since each is so
beautiful in its own way!

"To me, suffering as I do from the demon's repeated shocks, Robert spoke
with greater power than to you; it struck me as being at the same time
vast and concentrated.

"Thanks to you, I have been transported to the glorious land of dreams
where our senses expand, and the world works on a scale which is
gigantic as compared with man."

He was silent for a space.

"I am trembling still," said the ill-starred artist, "from the four bars
of cymbals which pierced to my marrow as they opened that short,
abrupt introduction with its solo for trombone, its flutes, oboes,
and clarionet, all suggesting the most fantastic effects of color. The
_andante_ in C minor is a foretaste of the subject of the evocation of
the ghosts in the abbey, and gives grandeur to the scene by anticipating
the spiritual struggle. I shivered."

Gambara pressed the keys with a firm hand and expanded Meyerbeer's theme
in a masterly _fantasia_, a sort of outpouring of his soul after the
manner of Liszt. It was no longer the piano, it was a whole orchestra
that they heard; the very genius of music rose before them.

"That was worthy of Mozart!" he exclaimed. "See how that German can
handle his chords, and through what masterly modulations he raises the
image of terror to come to the dominant C. I can hear all hell in it!

"The curtain rises. What do I see? The only scene to which we gave the
epithet infernal: an orgy of knights in Sicily. In that chorus in F
every human passion is unchained in a bacchanalian _allegro_. Every
thread by which the devil holds us is pulled. Yes, that is the sort of
glee that comes over men when they dance on the edge of a precipice;
they make themselves giddy. What _go_ there is in that chorus!

"Against that chorus--the reality of life--the simple life of every-day
virtue stands out in the air, in G minor, sung by Raimbaut. For a moment
it refreshed my spirit to hear the simple fellow, representative of
verdurous and fruitful Normandy, which he brings to Robert's mind in the
midst of his drunkenness. The sweet influence of his beloved native land
lends