They were giving an opera of Verdi's, which though, honestly speaking, rather vulgar, has already succeeded in making the round of all the European theatres, an opera, well-known among Russians, La Traviata. The season in Venice was over, and none of the singers rose above the level of mediocrity; every one shouted to the best of their abilities. The part of Violetta was performed by an artist, of no renown, and judging by the cool reception given her by the public, not a favourite, but she was not destitute of talent. She was a young, and not very pretty, black-eyed girl with an unequal and already overstrained voice. Her dress was ill-chosen and naively gaudy; her hair was hidden in a red net, her dress of faded blue satin was too tight for her, and thick Swedish gloves reached up to her sharp elbows. Indeed, how could she, the daughter of some Bergamese shepherd, know how Parisian dames aux camelias dress! And she did not understand how to move on the stage; but there was much truth and artless simplicity in her acting, and she sang with that passion of expression and rhythm which is only vouchsafed to Italians. Elena and Insarov were sitting alone together in a dark box close to the stage; the mirthful mood which had come upon them in the academy delle Belle Arti had not yet passed off. When the father of the unhappy young man who had fallen into the snares of the enchantress came on to the stage in a yellow frock-coat and a dishevelled white wig, opened his mouth awry, and losing his presence of mind before he had begun, only brought out a faint bass tremolo, they almost burst into laughter. ... But Violetta's acting impressed them.
'They hardly clap that poor girl at all,' said Elena, 'but I like her a thousand times better than some conceited second-rate celebrity who would grimace and attitudinise all the while for effect. This girl seems as though it were all in earnest; look, she pays no attention to the public.'
Insarov bent over the edge of the box, and looked attentively at Violetta.
'Yes,' he commented, 'she is in earnest; she's on the brink of the grave herself.'
Elena was mute.
The third act began. The curtain rose—Elena shuddered at the sight of the bed, the drawn curtains, the glass of medicine, the shaded lamps. She recalled the near past. 'What of the future? What of the present?' flashed across her mind. As though in response to her thought, the artist's mimic cough on the stage was answered in the box by the hoarse, terribly real cough of Insarov. Elena stole a glance at him, and at once gave her features a calm and untroubled expression; Insarov understood her, and he began himself to smile, and softly to hum the tune of the song.
But he was soon quiet. Violetta's acting became steadily better, and freer. She had thrown aside everything subsidiary, everything superfluous, and found herself; a rare, a lofty delight for an artist! She had suddenly crossed the limit, which it is impossible to define, beyond which is the abiding place of beauty. The audience was thrilled and astonished. The plain girl with the broken voice began to get a hold on it, to master it. And the singer's voice even did not sound broken now; it had gained mellowness and strength. Alfredo made his entrance; Violetta's cry of happiness almost raised that storm in the audience known as fanatisme, beside which all the applause of our northern audiences is nothing. A brief interval passed—and again the audience were in transports. The duet began, the best thing in the opera, in which the composer has succeeded in expressing all the pathos of the senseless waste of youth, the final struggle of despairing, helpless love. Caught up and carried along by the general sympathy, with tears of artistic delight and real suffering in her eyes, the singer let herself be borne along on the wave of passion within her; her face was transfigured, and in the presence of the threatening signs of fast approaching death, the words: 'Lascia mi vivero—morir si giovane' (let me live—to die so young!) burst from her in such a tempest of prayer rising to heaven, that the whole theatre shook with frenzied applause and shouts of delight.
Elena felt cold all over. Softly her hand sought Insarov's, found it, and clasped it tightly. He responded to its pressure; but she did not look at him, nor he at her. Very different was the clasp of hands with which they had greeted each other in the gondola a few hours before.
Again they glided along the Canal Grande towards their hotel. Night had set in now, a clear, soft night. The same palaces met them, but they seemed different. Those that were lighted up by the moon shone with pale gold, and in this pale light all details of ornaments and lines of windows and balconies seemed lost; they stood out more clearly in the buildings that were wrapped in a light veil of unbroken shadow. The gondolas, with their little red lamps, seemed to flit past more noiselessly and swiftly than ever; their steel beaks flashed mysteriously, mysteriously their oars rose and fell over the ripples stirred by little silvery fish; here and there was heard the brief, subdued call of a gondolier (they never sing now); scarcely another sound was to be heard. The hotel where Insarov and Elena were staying was on the Riva dei Schiavoni; before they reached it they left the gondola, and walked several times round the Square of St. Mark, under the arches, where numbers of holiday makers were gathered before the tiny cafes. There is a special sweetness in wandering alone with one you love, in a strange city among strangers; everything seems beautiful and full of meaning, you feel peace and goodwill to all men, you wish all the same happiness that fills your heart. But Elena could not now give herself up without a care to the sense of her happiness; her heart could not regain its calm after the emotions that had so lately shaken it; and Insarov, as he walked by the palace of the Doges, pointed without speaking to the mouths of the Austrian cannons, peeping out from the lower arches, and pulled his hat down over his eyes. By now he felt tired, and, with a last glance at the church of St. Mark, at its cupola, where on the bluish lead bright patches of phosphorescent light shone in the rays of the moon, they turned slowly homewards.