United States or Mexico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
By plying Gambara, meanwhile, with fresh libations, Andrea thus strove, by his contradictoriness, to bring the musician back to a true sense of music, by proving to him that his so-called mission was not to try to regenerate an art beyond his powers, but to seek to express himself in another form; namely, that of poetry.
My Lord Gambara took an odd interest in me. He was something of a philosopher in his trivial way; something of a student of his fellow-man; and he looked upon me as an odd human growth that was being subjected to an unusual experiment.
"Who can have taught you such strains?" cried the Count. "The Spirit," said Gambara. "When he appears, all is fire. I see the melodies there before me; lovely, fresh in vivid hues like flowers. They beam on me, they ring out, and I listen. But it takes a long, long time to reproduce them." "Some more!" said Marianna. Gambara, who could not tire, played on without effort or antics.
"This man rides upon the business of the State. Why this delay to open for him?" "My orders," said the lieutenant, civilly but firmly, "are that none passes out to-night." "Do you know me?" demanded Gambara. "Yes, my lord." "And you dare talk to me of your orders? There are no orders here in Piacenza but my orders. Set me wide the wicket of that gate. I myself must pass." "My lord, I dare not."
I awakened to find a man standing beside me. He was muffled in a black cloak and carried a lanthorn. Behind him the door gaped as he had left it. Instantly I sat up, conscious of my circumstance and surroundings, and at my movement this visitor spoke. "You sleep very soundly for a man in your case." said he, and the voice was that of my Lord Gambara, its tone quite coldly critical.
There followed a long and baffling silence, during which the doctor grew first red, then pale, then red again, and Messer Gambara stood with his scarlet cloak sweeping about his shapely limbs, sniffing his pomander and smiling almost insolently into the other's face; and some of the insolence of his look, I thought, was reflected upon the pale, placid countenance of Giuliana.
"But how should the boy know...?" I began, when she interrupted me almost impatiently. "The boy saw Messer Gambara ride up. He waited for no more, but went at once to warn Astorre. He has been long in coming," she added in the tone of one who is still searching for the exact explanation of the thing that is happening. And then, suddenly and very urgently, "Go, go go quickly!" she bade me.
"The new school has left Beethoven far behind," said the ballad-writer, scornfully. "Beethoven is not yet understood," said the Count. "How can he be excelled?" Gambara drank a large glass of champagne, accompanying the draught by a covert smile of approval. "Beethoven," the Count went on, "extended the limits of instrumental music, and no one followed in his track." Gambara assented with a nod.
The andante in C minor is a foretaste of the subject of the evocation of the ghosts in the abbey, and gives grandeur to the scene by anticipating the spiritual struggle. I shivered." Gambara pressed the keys with a firm hand and expanded Meyerbeer's theme in a masterly fantasia, a sort of outpouring of his soul after the manner of Liszt.
"You are insubordinate," said the Legate, of a sudden very cold. He had no need to ask whose orders were these. At once he saw the trammel spread for him. But if Messer Cosimo was subtle, so, too, was Messer Gambara. By not so much as a word did he set his authority in question with the officer.
Word Of The Day