es
re-echoing over the heather. Then her remembrance of the novel helping
her to understand the libretto, she followed the story phrase by phrase,
while vague thoughts that came back to her dispersed at once again with
the bursts of music. She gave herself up to the lullaby of the melodies,
and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her
nerves. She had not eyes enough to look at the costumes, the scenery,
the actors, the painted trees that shook when anyone walked, and the
velvet caps, cloaks, swords--all those imaginary things that floated
amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another world. But a young
woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire in green. She was
left alone, and the flute was heard like the murmur of a fountain or the
warbling of birds. Lucie attacked her cavatina in G major bravely. She
plained of love; she longed for wings. Emma, too, fleeing from life,
would have liked to fly away in an embrace. Suddenly Edgar-Lagardy
appeared.

He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty of
marble to the ardent races of the South. His vigorous form was tightly
clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled poniard hung against
his left thigh, and he cast round laughing looks showing his white
teeth. They said that a Polish princess having heard him sing one night
on the beach at Biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen in love
with him. She had ruined herself for him. He had deserted her for
other women, and this sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his
artistic reputation. The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into
his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his
person and the susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ, imperturbable
coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis
than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable charlatan
nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the
toreador.

From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He pressed Lucy in his arms,
he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had outbursts of
rage, then elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness, and the notes
escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses. Emma leant forward
to see him, clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. She was
filling her heart with these melodious lamentations that were drawn
out to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like the cries of the