Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/168

 of justice and oppressed innocence. That is what gives a noble and clear meaning, a moving grandeur to the magical arrival of Lohengrin; touched by the last appeal of Elsa, to whom he has already presented himself in a dream, he comes and places her under the protection of his sword and his honour. Are we to be astonished that he falls in love with her? The knights of the Grail may well have, side by side with their mystic super-human vocation, a share in human sensibility, seeing that they are grievously moved by human injustice.

But at this point arises a situation which it is difficult to treat humanly. Elsa becomes the wife of a demi-god, and it so happens that this demi-god can only prolong his sojourn on earth incognito. If his personality and origin are discovered the charm which keeps him there is broken and he must go. Accordingly he makes Elsa swear never to ask him about himself, or she will see him vanish into the air from which he came. It seems to me that at this point the theme loses dignity, savours of the childish, of the fairy story, and that it becomes impossible to develop it in a natural manner while adhering to the poetic and lofty tone of other portions of the work. Imagine not knowing to whom one is married! Might it not be perhaps with the devil, who is so clever at taking all sorts of shapes? Such a condition imposed in the name of love engenders of itself a sort of entirely physical anguish that must paralyse the sentiment. How could a young bride fail to feel the obsession of it? How should she not lend ear to all that her women neighbours would whisper to her? Elsa is not a wife whose conscience is struggling against a temptation of moral infidelity, but a little girl who has