Scene XIII
Anzeka, the dead Dr. Svoboda
Anezka—Father! Listen, listen, father! They are calling you! They are doing this in your honor! (Looking around) Where is father? Has he gone away? Is he in the room? (Sees her father lying on the ground) Merciful Heavens! Father! (Runs and kneels beside him, raising his head. A piercing scream.) Father! He is dead!
(Curtain)
There is an air for which I would exchange
Rossini, Mozart, Weber, one and all—
An ancient tune, drowsy, funeral,
That stirs me with a charm remote and strange.
For every time I hear it played it seems
Two hundred years slip from my world-worn soul:
Louis XIII still reigns—the yellow beams
Of sunset kiss a little grassy knoll.
Then a brick castle with stone corners shows
Its windows pageanted with rosy hue,
Girdled with spreading parks; a river flows
Bathing its feet, the flowering meadows through.
Then to its topmost window comes a lady
Blond, with dark eyes, apparelled as of yore,
Whom in some long-forgotten life, it may be,
I saw!—and I remember evermore!
