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The libretto, which recounts the intrigues of the Empress Messalina with two brothers, Hares and Helion, a singer and a gladiator, is in the highest degree repellent, and it would need far better music than Mr. de Lara's to reconcile a London audience to so outrageous a subject.
He suggested that the traveller should come inside and wait until his friend should overtake him; and as there was plenty of time Peter resolved to rest his horse, and then to push on to La Dorada if Purvis should not turn up. Lara's wife came to beg him to enter. She was an old woman before her time, and had reared a large family in the tiny confines of this little hut.
The pony's unshod hoofs had made hardly any sound on the turf as he cantered off, and Lara's boy, in his loose shirt and shabby clothes, and his bare feet hanging stirrupless on each side of the pony, disappeared like a wraith. There was a week to wait before he would come with any more letters.
Once or twice the breeze carried the intoxicating smell of flowers from the river-bank. It was difficult for Toffy, although he had been down the river many times, to know exactly his bearings. They passed a little settlement on their starboard hand, and saw a few lights burning in the houses. 'That must be Lara's house, said Peter.
Franz could not, we will not say see him, but even think of him without imagining his stern head upon Manfred's shoulders, or beneath Lara's helmet.
We are told, for example, in many lines of great force and spirit, that the speech of Lara was bitterly sarcastic, that he talked little of his travels, that if he was much questioned about them, his answers became short, and his brow gloomy. But we have none of Lara's sarcastic speeches or short answers. It is not thus that the great masters of human nature have portrayed human beings.
Lara's boy, who had come with the letters, had waited to ride back with the bag to the far distant post office; and the Englishmen at the estancia stood and watched him a tiny figure on his tireless little Argentine pony riding away eastward until once more a cloud of dust swallowed him up.
He closed the lids on their dead eyes, all with his fingers frail, And handled all their bloody curls, and kissed their lips so pale. "'Oh had ye died all by my side upon some famous day, My fair young men, no weak tears then had washed your blood away; The trumpet of Castile had drowned the misbelievers' horn, And the last of all the Lara's line a Gothic spear had borne.
Mr. de Lara's earlier works, 'The Light of Asia, 'Amy Robsart, and 'Moina' failed completely. There is better work in 'Messaline' . The musical ideas are poor in quality, but the score is put together in a workmanlike manner, and the orchestration is often clever.
He said good night, and, hearing no news of the traveller at the quay, he rode on until he reached the small unfenced railway station at Taco, set down apparently promiscuously on the grey arid plain. There Lara's boy was waiting with his mail-bag, and after a time the sleepy station-master began to bestir himself, and a cart came in with five horses harnessed abreast carrying some freight.
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