Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/144

 horrifying stories of the middle ages, in which a lady is mishandled by the devil. In the theatre, there are difficulties about taking the devil tragically; he can hardly appear except either as a particularly outrageous practical joker or as a master of fireworks. Meyerbeer's Bertram has kept some features of this primitive character, and displays them in the celebrated humorous duet of Raimbaud, "The worthy man," which is an excellent piece, far the best in the whole score. But to turn the theme into grand opera, it was necessary to invent a tragic and moving devil, and give him a psychology, a double psychology as devil and father, which any pen but Scribe's would have been afraid to portray. It was necessary moreover to link up the motives of the ballet with the bases of the tragedy, in which however the ballet continued to stick out in all directions. We know the result. This devil displays to his son at once the tender protection of a father and the wickedness of a tempter; he passionately desires the happiness of his son and from sheer love strives desperately to damn his soul, so as not to be separated from him but enjoy (no doubt) in hell the sweets of paternity; one fine day, or rather one foul night, he learns, having gone to Satan's caverns for information, that he has only till the morrow at midnight to achieve the perdition of this soul (Satan regards the whole business with a strange aloofness), because that is the hour when "his leave expires." Does not this style of invention show the most delightfully reckless ineptitude? These words would in fact be rather stronger than the subject is worth if there had not been whole generations who imagined (and there still are people who do so) that Meyerbeer had achieved in