Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/147

 you not perceive it in that special strength of coarse musical eloquence which saves from disaster the famous scene of the benediction of the daggers? One cannot say whether it is historically, morally or dramatically that this device is most absurd.

In this scene the musician has introduced nuns also praying over daggers, not, be it said, as a refinement of artistic outrage, but in order that the chorus should not lack soprano voices. And I admit I greatly enjoy a complete harmony of voices. But I esteem musical art too highly to endure that its beauty should be achieved at the price of incongruities committed in another sphere, beauty being, according to the immortal saying of Eugène Delacroix, "the union of all seemliness."

Combined with the dexterity of Scribe this personal feeling on the composer's part produced a book which (if we tolerate the form at all) is relatively happy. This art form is so mechanical that it is bound to exclude the real study of characters and sentiments, and when it attempts these it soon makes itself ridiculous. One cannot deny to the old Huguenot soldier Marcel some rudimentary moral personality. But doesn't this manner of displaying the religious depths of his soul (it consists of shouting, on any provocation or none, Luther's hymn) smack of the puppet show? With this reserve it must admitted be that in the Huguenots the spectacular part—the set pieces of the court and its pleasures, the feasts, scenes of crowds and processions—is cleverly connected with the action. One is grateful to the authors for having given it great importance, this accessory being the main part of grand opera of the Meyerbeer school. And for that reason I quite believe that the Huguenots will