It had been an error; yet there had been, within him, no choice, no
intimation of a different, more desirable, consummation. Bundy had gone
one way and himself another in obedience to forces beyond their
understanding or control. They had done, briefly, what they were. There
was no individual blame to attach, no applause; spare moralizing to
append. He returned to the pages before him, to the memories of the
radiant Ambre and Marimon, the sylvan echoes of Campanini singing
Elvino.
Now his recovered glass was intent on a programme of the rapidly
successful Metropolitan forces, of the new German Opera, with
Seidl-Krauss singing Elizabeth, and Brandt in _Fidelio_. Even here,
after so long, he vibrated again to the exquisite beauty of Lenore's
constancy and love. Then Dr. Damrosch dead, the sonorous funeral in the
Opera House ... That had been changed with the rest; the baignoires were
gone, the tiers of boxes newly curved; gone the chandeliers and Turkey
red carpet and gold threaded brocade that had seemed the final
expression of luxury. Lehmann in the premier of _Tristan und Isolde_,
with the vast restrained enthusiasm and tensity when, at the end of the
third act, Niemann bared his wounded breast. Eames' rise; but that, and
what followed, were in successive books.
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