Tales of the Cloister
who could see the prophet and his great train when this music flowed from the lips of his old mother on the left? Madame Holstein looked at the nun's face as she sang, and was satisfied with what she saw there. She was responding to a unique inspiration, and in this bare convent room, with a black-veiled nun held in absolute possession by her voice, she gave herself to her singing with no husbanding of force. It was a new and thrilling triumph. Little Ernestine was placidly sleeping in her corner, but her one listener was affording the famous singer such appreciation as she never had from audience before. She could feel the soul of the woman set apart from the world quiver under the tones with which she charged it.
"There are but two more," she said, "and the best is the last, I think. For here is Fidès, singing alone as she awaits her fate in the gloomy crypt where they have cast her under the cathedral of Miinster."
"O toi qui m'abandonnes, mon coeur est désarmé …
Ta mère te pardonne. Adieu."
"When she sees him, she forgives him, of course," murmured the singer, playing softly Jean's part in the duet that followed. "She
98
