momentous question,"Is marriage a failure?"

Next we have the "_Bruder_Hoch_zu_Ross_Motiv_" (Brothers on a High Horse
Motive), announced by sparkling Tetrazzini chromatics, always at sixes and
sevens, darting and dashing, centaur-like, in semi-demi-quavers, like
horses' manes and tails mounting skyward, whinnyingly. Fatima's brothers
have come to make a wedding visit to their beloved sister, whom they
believe happily united to a nobleman of high degree. They have also come
because in a music-drama action is demanded and choruses are desirable;
being noisy, impressive, popular, comparatively cheap, and the participants
less temperamental in character than soloists, therefore more easily
managed.

[Bruder Hoch zu Ross Motiv] (with devil-may-care speed.)

If you miss some of the wonderful sinuosity, some of the musical curvatures
of the similar "Horses in a Hurry Motive" in "Die Walku're," I can only
suggest that the Brothers' mounts were not as the fleet steeds of the gods.
Fatima's people were living in genteel poverty, and the family horses were
doubtless some-what emaciated; therefore the musical realist could not in
honesty depict them other than in an angular rather than curved movement.

The overture next takes up the arrival of the Brothers, who, as the music
plainly assures us, dismount, feed their steeds, perform a simple toilette
at the stable-yard pump, and then come suddenly upon Bluebeard, whose
frenzy for disposing of fresh wives is as sudden and as all-absorbing as
his desire to annex them. At the moment of the Brothers' opportune arrival
Bluebeard is on the point of severing Fatima's relations with the world.
The Brothers advance. A cloud of dust envelops them; they rush forward,
dealing telling blows, and the frantic bleating of fleeing sheep is heard