Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/167

 total of his creations. But the three have enough in common to make us content with a few remarks on the last of the three.

We find in Lohengrin that part of the theme is truly poetic, stamped with real humanity and lacking in its developments neither simplicity nor grace. Take for example all the part dealing with the feelings of Elsa towards Ortrude, her deadly enemy. Ortrude has contrived a diabolical plot for the ruin and dishonour of Elsa. Unmasked and defeated she appeals to the girl's pity and begs her to restore her in the eyes of the world by reconciliation: but this is only in order to find opportunity for the hideous vengeance she is meditating. Elsa is far more sorry for her wickedness than for her misfortune (wickedness being indeed the greater misfortune), and grants her not only pity but friendship; rendered happy by love she thinks she would be ungrateful for her own good fortune if she hardened her heart even against this wicked woman. Everyone knows well the charm of the setting devised by the poet's scenic inventiveness for the expression of these feelings. The ingenuous raptures of Elsa's love for her knight have a charm no less natural and pure. And the triumph of this love in the splendour and glory of nuptial pomp provides not merely a scene and a spectacular effect; there is wafted by the pageant of these celebrations a breath of youth and untroubled enthusiasm.

Though the knights of the Grail, of whom Lohengrin is one, belong to the world of miracle, yet the terrestrial mission that they allot themselves, which often summons them far from their sacred abode to the region of ordinary mortals, has an object and a motive that appeal to the mind and heart, namely the defence