the overture and the commencing scenas. An ominous buzz circulated round the house; — the singers, the orchestra — electrically sensitive to the impression of the audience — grew, themselves, agitated and dismayed, and failed in the energy and precision which could alone carry off the grotesqueness of the music.
There are always in every theatre many rivals to a new author and a new performer — a party impotent while all goes well, but a dangerous ambush the instant some accident throws into confusion the march of success. A hiss arose; it was partial, it is true, but the significant silence of all applause seemed to forebode the coming moment when the displeasure would grow contagious. It was the breath that stirred the impending avalanche. At that critical moment, Viola, the Siren queen, emerged for the first time from her ocean cave. As she came forward to the lamps, the novelty of her situation, the chilling apathy of the audience — which even the sight of so singular a beauty did not at the first arouse — the whispers of the malignant singers on the stage, the glare of the lights, and more — far more than the rest — that recent hiss, which had reached her in her concealment, all froze up her faculties and suspended her voice. And, instead of the grand invocation into which she ought rapidly to have burst, the regal Siren, retransformed into the trembling girl, stood pale and mute before the stern, cold array of those countless eyes.
At that instant, and when consciousness itself seemed about to fail her — as she turned a timid beseeching
