imes because, like all other composers, at times he found his
invention flagging. In the second scene of this act of _Tristan_ it
plays a conspicuous part, and is indeed one of the most pregnant love
motives of the drama--perhaps the most prolific of subsidiary themes
and passages.

The big duet beats description, and its structure must only be
discussed briefly. A figure which forms part of the music played while
Isolda impatiently awaits Tristan is turned into the whirling
accompaniment to impassioned and incoherent exclamations as they first
embrace; then to the seething mass of tone is added (_l_), and
gradually out of chaos and confusion emerges one clean-cut melody
after another. The daylight-theme which begins the introduction is
Protean in the shapes it assumes, and the emotions, now hot passion,
now the gentlest tenderness, it is made to express. The ferment
settles down, and we get the hymn to night and a series of melodies
which are love's own voice speaking. The dreamy voluptuousness that
pervades these duets comes from songs written by Wagner as studies.
They were not over highly esteemed by his friends, but he had his
revenge. This night in the garden--with the black night above and the
black trees around, the flowers, the musical brooklet, and the voice
of the caller heard at times from the roof--is the greatest thing of
the kind in all music: in all the arts, I know only the balcony scene
in _Romeo and Juliet_ which may be said to approach it. Melody upon
melody, delicate and sweet to the ear as the perfume of night flowers
and grasses to the nostrils, floats past; until at last the sheer
delight of the thing seems to work up the lovers to a state of
heavenly rapture, and in the final verse of the hymn to night they
pray only to be removed from the dangers of returning day; and here
the strains swell to an intensity of yearning for peace quite
unprecedented in music. And, as we know, their prayer is immediately
answered in a fashion they were hardly prepared for.

Mark's address is deeply touching; and it is odd that when attacked by
Melot Tristan's accents are almost his. The sublime is again touched
when Tristan asks Isolda to follow him and in her answer. Melot then
stabs him, and the curtain drops to one of Mark's reproachful phrases
thundering from the orchestra. This, then, is Tristan's answer to
Mark's questioning--told in the music, not in the words.

VI

Who first uttered that immortal pi