So "_omelette a la confiture de groseilles_" was ordered; and just as we
had come to the end of it and our meal, some one began to play the piano
in the public drawing room next door. At the first touch, I recognized a
master hand. The air was from Puccini's "La Tosca"--third act, and a
moment later a man's voice caught it up--a voice of velvet, a voice of
the heart--an Italian voice.
We all stopped eating as if we'd been struck by a spell. We hardly
breathed. The music had in it the honey of a million flowers distilled
into a crystal cup. It was so sweet that it hurt--hurt horribly and
deliciously, as only Italian music can hurt. Other men sing with their
brains, with their souls, but Italians sing with their blood, their
veins, the core of their hearts. They _are_ their songs, as larks are.
The voice brought Jim to me, and snatched him away again. It set him far
off at a hopeless distance, across steep purple chasms of dreamland. It
dragged my heart out, and then poured it full, full of an unknown elixir
of life and love, which was mine, yet out of reach forever. It showed me
my past hopes and future sorrows floating on the current of my own blood
like ships of a secret argosy sailing through the night to some unknown
goal. So now, when I have told you what it did to me, you will know that
voice was like no voice I ever heard, except Caruso's. It _was_ like
his--astonishingly like; and hardly had the last note of "Mario's" song
of love and death dropped into silence when the singer began anew with
one of Caruso's own Neapolitan folk-songs, "Mama Mia.
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