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A friend followed him and detained him, as he was hurrying away, and spoke in the gentlest tones. But Gluck interrupted him with wild violence: "Oh, my friend!" cried he, falling on the neck of him who was expressing his kindly sympathy, "'Alcestes' has fallen!" But his friend pressed his hand, and said, "Fallen? Yes, 'Alcestes' has fallen! It has fallen from heaven!"
The distressed Alcestes at first thought themselves in paradise, but the vessel, built with no view, save to whales, and, with a considerable reminiscence of the blubber lately parted with, proved no wholesome abode, when overcrowded, and in the tropics! Mr.
"You are right; your majesty is a great musician," cried Lord Vaudreuil, in amazement, "the ideal pupil of the genial maestro. Yes, this music is Gluck's. It is the overture to his new opera of 'Alcestes, which he sent me from Venice to submit to your majesty. These tones shall speak for the master, and entreat for him the protection of the queen."
Art shall engage her thoughts in the music-room, and to Gluck and "Alcestes" the hour belongs! The queen struck the keys more firmly, and began to play the noble "Love's Complaint," of Gluck's opera. Unconsciously her lips opened, and with loud voice and intense passionate expression, she sang the words, "Oh, crudel, non posso in vere, tu lo sui, senza dite!"
The mantles hanging from their hooks seemed animated by a factitious life, and assumed a human aspect of vitality; and when Nyssia stripped of her last garment, approached the bed, all white and naked as a shade, he thought that Death herself had broken the diamond fetters wherewith Hercules of old enchained her at the gates of hell when he delivered Alcestes, and had come in person to take possession of Candaules.
"Nonsense! you inflexible man! you frowning Alcestes," said the Marquis Abbe, smiling slyly. "Your profits and your scruples will go together, believe me, by listening to me. In short, we shall manage to make it a BLANK COMMUNION for you; for after all, what is it that we ask? only the APPEARANCE!" Now, a BLANK COMMUNION means breaking an unconsecrated wafer!
Æneas, wearing for an outer garment, that of the lion, and Alcestes being formidably clad in that of the Libyan Bear. Herodotus speaks of those living near the Caspian Sea wearing seal skins, and Cæsar mentions that the skin of the reindeer formed in part the clothing of the Germans.
Agamemnon, Achilles, Alcestes, Orestes, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Oedipus, Hermione, Jocasta, Antigone, reappear on his pages, as in those of the masters of the Greek drama. But they reappear in a modern dress. They are very different from the inimitable simplicity of the originals.
"Nonsense! you inflexible man! you frowning Alcestes," said the Marquis Abbe, smiling slyly. "Your profits and your scruples will go together, believe me, by listening to me. In short, we shall manage to make it a BLANK COMMUNION for you; for after all, what is it that we ask? only the APPEARANCE!" Now, a BLANK COMMUNION means breaking an unconsecrated wafer!
"Well! you used to seem very much smitten, but so, to be sure, were some of the Alcestes with the young ladies at Valparaiso. How we used to roast Owen about that Spanish Donna, and he was as bad at Sydney about the young lady whose father, we told him, was a convict, though he kept such a swell carriage. He had no peace about his father-in-law, the house-breaker!
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