g and eager brain was as yet untroubled by the ecstasy of his too
exuberant imagination he listened with religious awe and would not utter
a single word. The Count respected the internal travail of his soul.
Till half-past twelve Gambara sat so perfectly motionless that the
frequenters of the opera house took him, no doubt, for what he was--a
man drunk.

On their return, Andrea began to attack Meyerbeer's work, in order
to wake up Gambara, who sat sunk in the half-torpid state common in
drunkards.

"What is there in that incoherent score to reduce you to a condition of
somnambulism?" asked Andrea, when they got out at his house. "The story
of _Robert le Diable_, to be sure, is not devoid of interest, and Holtei
has worked it out with great skill in a drama that is very well written
and full of strong and pathetic situations; but the French librettist
has contrived to extract from it the most ridiculous farrago of
nonsense. The absurdities of the libretti of Vesari and Schikander are
not to compare with those of the words of Robert le Diable; it is a
dramatic nightmare, which oppresses the hearer without deeply moving
him.

"And Meyerbeer has given the devil a too prominent part. Bertram and
Alice represent the contest between right and wrong, the spirits of
good and evil. This antagonism offered a splendid opportunity to the
composer. The sweetest melodies, in juxtaposition with harsh and crude
strains, was the natural outcome of the form of the story; but in the
German composer's score the demons sing better than the saints. The
heavenly airs belie their origin, and when the composer abandons the
infernal motives he returns to them as soon as possible, fatigued with
the effort of keeping aloof from them. Melody, the golden thread that
ought never to be lost throughout so vast a plan, often vanishes from
Meyerbeer's work. Feeling counts for nothing, the heart has no part
in it. Hence we never come upon those happy inventions, those artless
scenes, which captivate all our sympathies and leave a blissful
impression on the soul.

"Harmony reigns supreme, instead of being the foundation from which
the melodic groups of the musical picture stand forth. These discordant
combinations, far from moving the listener, arouse in him a feeling
analogous to that which he would experience on seeing a rope-dancer
hanging to a thread and swaying between life and death. Never does a
soothing strain come in to mitigate the fatiguing