Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 07.djvu/148

128 is to say, to the ancien régime. These two natures battle in his being; he swims between the two opposing principles, he is the juste milieu. In vain do the infernal voices from the gulf of hell endeavour to draw him into "the movement;" in vain is he called by the spirits of the Convention who rise like Revolutionary nuns from their tombs; in vain does Robespierre, under the figure of Madame Taglioni, give him the accolade or stroke of knighthood—he resists all attacks, all temptations; he is led by the love of a princess of the Two Sicilies who is very pious, to becoming the same, so that at last we behold him in the bosom of the Church, amid the buzzing and droning of priests, and in clouds of incense. I cannot refrain from remarking by the way, that during the first representation of this opera, it happened, by a mistake of the machinist, that the trap-door on which the old father-devil had sunk into hell was not bolted, and that the devil-son soon after, by inadvertently stepping on it, went down into the depths after his parent.

Since so much has been said in the Chamber of Deputies of this opera, or of Robert the Devil, mention of it is not out of place in these pages. The incidents of society are here by no means of