devil sent from the infernal regions to ruin a young man.  Instead of performing the part assigned her, Satanella falls in love with the hero, sacrifices herself, and is claimed at last by the powers of goodness. Quia multum amavit, her lost soul is saved.  If the opera left much to be desired, the Ballo was perfection.  That vast stage of the Scala Theatre had almost overwhelmed the actors of the play.  Now, thrown open to its inmost depths, crowded with glittering moving figures, it became a fairyland of fantastic loveliness.  Italians possess the art of interpreting a serious dramatic action by pantomime.  A Ballo with them is no mere affair of dancing—­fine dresses, evolutions performed by brigades of pink-legged women with a fixed smile on their faces.  It takes the rank of high expressive art.  And the motive of this Ballo was consistently worked out in an intelligible sequence of well-ordered scenes.  To moralise upon its meaning would be out of place.  It had a conflict of passions, a rhythmical progression of emotions, a tragic climax in the triumph of good over evil.

II

At the end of the performance there were five persons in our box—­the beautiful Miranda, and her husband, a celebrated English man of letters; a German professor of biology; a young Milanese gentleman, whom we called Edoardo; and myself.  Edoardo and the professor had joined us just before the ballet.  I had occupied a seat behind Miranda and my friend the critic from the commencement.  We had indeed dined together first at their hotel, the Rebecchino; and they now proposed that we should all adjourn together there on foot for supper.  From the Scala Theatre to the Rebecchino is a walk of some three minutes.

When we were seated at the supper-table and had talked some while upon indifferent topics, the enthusiasm roused in me by Pauline Lucca burst out.  I broke a moment’s silence by exclaiming, ’What a wonder-world music creates!  I have lived this evening in a sphere of intellectual enjoyment raised to rapture.  I never lived so fast before!’ ’Do you really think so?’ said Miranda.  She had just finished a beccafico, and seemed disposed for conversation.  ’Do you really think so?  For my part, music is in a wholly different region from experience, thought, or feeling.  What does it communicate to you?’ And she hummed to herself the motif of Cherubino’s ’Non so piu cosa son cosa faccio.’—­’What does it teach me?’ I broke in upon the melody.  ’Why, to-night, when I heard the music, and saw her there, and felt the movement of the play, it seemed to me that a new existence was revealed.  For the first time I understood what love might be in one most richly gifted for emotion.’  Miranda bent her eyes on the table-cloth and played with her wineglass.  ’I don’t follow you at all.  I enjoyed myself to-night.  The opera, indeed, might have been better rendered.  The ballet, I admit, was splendid.  But when I remember