La Traviata

“ The sudden disappearance of that Italianized Westphalian, the fiery Cruvelli, was a nine days' wonder in the operatic world in 1854 and is duly chronicled in Punch. Towards the end of this period Piccolomini, a singer of small calibre but attractive personality, achieved great popularity in the rôle of the consumptive heroine of La Traviata, and Punch celebrated the craze of "Piccolomania," as he called it, in the following travesty:—
Art is long and time is fleeting,
But of genius the soul,
Ordinary talent beating,
Reaches at one stride the goal. ”

“ The first performance at the great Festival was La Traviata, followed by L'Africaine, magnificently placed upon the stage. On the Wednesday afternoon Mdme. Albani appeared as "Amina" in La Sonnambula, and in the evening William Tell was given, with Mierzwinski, Galassi, and Dotti. This drew the largest number of people of any night during the week, the great choruses of the Gathering of the Cantons eliciting the loudest expressions of admiration. On the Thursday evening we performed Rossini's Semiramide, Patti and Scalchi surpassing themselves. ”

“ In Madame Sans-Gêne she is often comic, but she does not suggest a bourgeoise Frenchwoman; in the court scenes she is more like a graceful woman trying to be awkward than an awkward woman trying to be graceful. Her Tosca is lacking in dignity; it is too petulant a performance, too small in conception. In failing to find adequate pleasure in her Carmen I am not echoing popular opinion.
I do not think Mme. Farrar has appeared in La Traviata more than two or three times at the Metropolitan Opera House, although she has probably sung Violetta often in Berlin. ”

“ There were several ladies boarding at the Burnet House, who vowed and declared they would not go to see Camille, and by their remarks gave great offense to other ladies. Yet one of those very ladies was so anxious to see the play, she actually went to the theater disguised. Some of those self same ladies who would not go to see Camille, now go to the opera to see the play of Traviata; they ease their conscience by saying the music is so elegant. If it was such a sin to look on Camille, I do not think the music sufficient atonement. ”

“ La Dame aux Camélias is a book for youth. We have most of us lived not wisely and not well in our youth, and middle-age is not the time to judge that early behaviour. Let it be remembered that the follies of our youth are usually repeated when we are old—not always actually, but certainly in imagination. An old man should be the best judge of La Dame aux Camélias. Well, if that is a vital book, and just because of its amazing vitality, a great book, Traviata is a great opera, because, unlike that much inferior opera Aïda, it is impossible to imagine any other music for it. ”

“ Nancy laughed. “But I’m afraid I don’t in the least understand what it means.”
“Aristotle found an æsthetic value in the purging of the emotions. Well, at the end of Traviata we are left with the feeling that music could not express more completely the particular set of emotions that are stirred by the story of Alfredo, Violetta, and Germont. No critic has ever done justice to the younger Dumas’s Dame aux Camélias either as a novel or as a play. Yet both they and the opera founded upon them have a perennial vitality so marked as almost to tempt me to claim for them an eternal vitality. ”

“ Travilla sat beside her, holding one little hand in hers, and gazing with tearful eyes upon the little wan face she had learned to love so well.
Presently those beautiful eyes unclosed, and turned upon her with an expression of anguish that touched her to the very heart.
"What is it, darling—are you in pain?" she asked, leaning over her, and speaking in tones of the tenderest solicitude.
"Oh! Mrs. Travilla," moaned the little girl, "my sins—my sins—they are so many—so black. 'Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.' God says it; and I—I am not holy—I am vile—oh, so vile, so sinful! ”

“ Think of a plan, and I will do my part as far as my strength will go."
"I have thought much of it already," answered Travers; "but your years were so tender, that I mistrusted your prudence, though not your courage. If we attempt it, we must proceed by art, rather than by force. We must take the opportunity of mastering the French, when one part of the crew are asleep and the other off their guard."
"In the night, I suppose?" said Arthur.
"Yes," said Travers. "It will be a sanguinary business; but the provocation was theirs. Surely a man may strive even unto death for his liberty." ”

“ Grundy—that is,'the World'—without injury to any one. We must suppose that that footman of Trevanion's was out of his mind,—it is but a charitable, and your good father would say a philosophical, supposition. All great knavery is madness! The world could not get on if truth and goodness were not the natural tendencies of sane minds. Do you understand?"
"Not quite."
"Why, the footman, being out of his mind, invented this mad story of Trevanion's illness, frightened Lady Ellinor and Miss Trevanion out of their wits with his own chimera, and hurried them both off, one after the other. ”

“ Well, Travers, if you are in your right wits, and know what you are talking of, this is the news that will presently make me well again."
"Did I say that we had fallen in with any of our ships?" answered Travers. "But I tell you now, in plain English, that by the prudence and courage of your brave boy, your ship is your own again: we are all free; the Frenchmen are in irons; and we have tacked about for Old England, instead of being carried into Dunkirk."
"And Arthur, you say, has done all this; but how?—You are not given to tell lies, Jack Travers,—and yet I can hardly believe it." ”

“ Anger of God, Don Raposo, if it were any other but you who asked me that question, you should soon pay a visit to your friend Señor Lucifer. Do you not see, confound you, the blood which I have on my hands and garments, and the wounds on my face. This blood does not come from slaughtering cattle, nor those scratches from a jealous sweetheart. Go to the place I shall mention to you, and you will find the body of the cavalier whose life I have taken, in order to provide myself with these arms and this steed, and when you are coming back fetch me the dagger which I forgot to draw from his breast. ”

“ For there on the rug, as naturally as if asleep, lay the only thing he now loved in the world, the old setter, whose life had passed out in slumber.
All animals have the dying instinct. Man, the highest, has it the clearest. And Travis remembered that the old dog had come to his bed, in the middle of the night, and laid his large beautiful head on his master's breast, and in the dim light of the smouldering fire had said good-bye to Richard Travis as plainly as ever human being said it. ”

“ A servant in her eyes must be a drudge ever working, never speaking, smiling, taking a hand off the duster, without a mind above flue and tea-leaves, and unable to soar above a cobweb; with a temper perfect in endurance of daily, hourly fault-finding, nagging, grumbling, a mind unambitious also of commendation. Miss Trevisa held that every servant that a malign Providence had sent her was clumsy, insolent, slatternly, unmethodical, idle, wasteful, a gossip, a gad-about, a liar, a thief, was dainty, greedy, one of a cursed generation ”

“ To no one but to me, Traverse, to me whose anxiety for your happiness makes me watchful; and now, dear boy, you must listen to me. I know it is very sweet to you, to sit in a dark corner and gaze on Clara, when no one, not even herself, witnesses your joy, and to lie awake and think and dream of her when no eye but that of God looks down upon your heart; and to build castles in the air for her and for you; all this I know is very sweet, but, Traverse, it is a sweet poison—fatal if indulged in—fatal to your peace and integrity. ”

“ With these words, the old beau skips with a waltz step to the bottom of the incline. Then they ascend, the rope aiding their steps, and the pitch not being very steep, to the outer air, and the time has come to say farewell.
Pointing to a white-topped wagon at the bottom of the hill, Travenion says: "Quick! Give your father a kiss, and pray for his safety."
The girl answers: "One hundred!" and throws herself into his arms, and murmuring: "You are the only man who ever loved me—the only one! Mormon that you have been—polygamist that you are—you are the only one who's left to me!" ”

“ Maybe then he could sleep soundly, to dream of riding across the Arizona range at dawn under a blue sky with a wind in his face, a wind carrying the scent of piñon pine and sage, a wind which would never caress or hearten him again, a wind his sons and sons' sons would never know. To dream troubled dreams, and hope in time those dreams would fade and thin—that a new world would blanket out the old. Better so, Travis told himself with defiance and determination—better so! ”

“ Travers. But what about the Man of Fate?"
"Oh, yes," breathed out Mrs. Travers.
"I see! Immensely!" said d'Alcacer in a tone of mysterious understanding. "Was his stupidity so colossal?"
"It was indistinguishable from great visions that were in no sense mean and made up for him a world of his own."
"I guessed that much," muttered d'Alcacer to himself. "But that, you know, Mrs. Travers, that isn't good news at all to me. World of dreams, eh? That's very bad, very dangerous. It's almost fatal, Mrs. Travers."
"Why all this dismay? Why do you object to a world of dreams?" ”

“ He saw how with every stitch she was fighting stubbornly for calm—fighting with all the dogged desperation of a high-minded woman who sees herself trembling at the edge of a bottomless abyss. He knew now for certain that her apparent happiness was a sham and an heroic lie—that she knew what he knew of Travers' outside life, and suffered with the intensity which honor must suffer when linked with dishonor. ”

“ To her surprise, Travers made no mention of the subject she dreaded. He took her hand in his, and led her into the shady drawing-room. She made no attempt to protest, nor did she offer him any formal greeting. She was oppressed and hypnotized by the conviction that a crisis was about to break over her head which no power of hers could avert. He did not let her hand go. He still held it between his own as they stood opposite each other, and she felt that he was trembling.
"Lois," he said, "Lois, don't think me mad. There are limits to a man's endurance. ”

“ Travers, who answered him without looking up, without a modulation of tone or a play of feature, as if she had spoken from behind the veil of an immense indifference stretched between her and all men, between her heart and the meaning of events, between her eyes and the shallow sea which, like her gaze, appeared profound, forever stilled, and seemed, far off in the distance of a faint horizon, beyond the reach of eye, beyond the power of hand or voice, to lose itself in the sky. ”

“ For the first time Travers was overpowered by the charm of woman, and all the pent passion and love of his life broke bonds like a wild, primeval thing that education and conventions had never touched. ”

“ Travers was conscious of nothing worse than a great fatigue. Mr. Travers' restfulness had something faintly triumphant in it. To find himself again on board his yacht had soothed his vanity and had revived his sense of his own importance. He contemplated it in a distant perspective, restored to its proper surroundings and unaffected by an adventure too extraordinary to trouble a superior mind or even to remain in one's memory for any length of time. He was not responsible. Like many men ambitious of directing the affairs of a nation, Mr. Travers disliked the sense of responsibility. ”

“ And he was in haste to set off for La Trappe, that he too might receive the Sacred Body from the hands of a monk.
That mass gave him new strength like a tonic, he came out of the chapel joyful and firmer, and when the impression grew somewhat feebler in the course of hours, he remained perhaps less affected, but still resolute, joking in the evening with a gentle melancholy about his condition: "There are many people who go to Barèges or Vichy to cure their bodies, and why should not I go and cure my soul in a Trappist monastery?" ”

“ Travers.
"A man without any ideas of duty or usefulness," said Mr. Travers, acidly. "What are you pitying him for?"
"Why! For finding himself in this position out of mere good-nature. He had nothing to expect from joining our voyage, no advantage for his political ambitions or anything of the kind. I suppose you asked him on board to break our tete-a-tete which must have grown wearisome to you."
"I am never bored," declared Mr. Travers. "D'Alcacer seemed glad to come. And, being a Spaniard, the horrible waste of time cannot matter to him in the least." ”

“ Not a soul was breathing nearer to me than the poor old monks, who, hours ago, had crept to their dormitory in the farthest cloister of the Abbey.
The order among whom I was, was that of La Trappe, which is by far the most austere sect in Christendom. They allow themselves but five hours' sleep, and that on a bare board, without putting off their clothes. They perform masses each morning, from half-past two until six o'clock; they deny themselves any meat whatever, their meal invariably consisting of some oaten bread, with a little poor wine of their own growing, disguised in water ”

“ Why not ferocious? She could know the truth of terror—and of affection, absolutely, without artificial trammels, without the pain of restraint.
Thinking of what such life could be Mrs. Travers felt invaded by that inexplicable exaltation which the consciousness of their physical capacities so often gives to intellectual beings. She glowed with a sudden persuasion that she also could be equal to such an existence; and her heart was dilated with a momentary longing to know the naked truth of things; the naked truth of life and passion buried under the growth of centuries. ”