a moment's consideration, which is hardly surprising when we consider
his own multitudinous love affairs. He was not writing a Sunday-school
tract, but a drama of passion so intense that purity, prudence and all
such considerations were thrown to the winds.

The act opens with a very Proteus of a theme. Its entrance is like a
thunder-clap in a cloudless sky. The conductor lifts his stick, and
then--

[Illustration: Some bars of music]

--an unprepared discord which must have pained the ears and grieved the
hearts of the ordinary opera-goers and pedants when the opera was first
given. This subject is used in connection with the notion of daylight as
a nuisance to lovers in the subsequent conversation of Tristan and
Isolda--a notion which we shall examine presently. Presently another
subject is heard, one of which extensive use is made in the first
scene--

[Illustration: Some bars of music]

The curtain rises. It is a sultry summer night; the black woods stand
round a garden; on the left is the castle of Mark, with a torch blazing
at the doorway, making the surrounding night blacker. Sounds of
hunting-horns are dying away in the distance. Brangaena and Isolda are
there listening, and Brangaena, to music of enchanting beauty, is
warning Isolda that the hunters can be no great way off. "Listen to the
brook," says Isolda. "How could I hear that if the horns were near?"
Then comes one of Wagner's matchless bits of painting--the brook
rippling through the silent night. Isolda is now going to extinguish the