action, but it can at least be said for him that he did not profane
the Book as Herr Ewers, Mr. d'Albert's latest collaborator, did
when he turned a story of Christ's miraculous healing of a blind
woman into a sensational melodrama. In the precious opera, "Tote
Augen" ("Dead Eyes"), brought out in March, 1916, in Dresden,
Myrocle, the blind woman, is the wife of Arcesius, a Roman
ambassador in Jerusalem. Never having seen him, Myrocle believes
her husband to be a paragon of beauty, but he is, in fact, hideous
of features, crook-backed, and lame; deformed in mind and heart,
too, for he has concealed the truth from her. Christ is entering
Jerusalem, and Mary of Magdala leads Myrocle to him, having heard
of the miracles which he performs, and he opens the woman's eyes at
the moment that the multitude is shouting its hosannahs. The first
man who fills the vision of Myrocle is Galba, handsome, noble,
chivalrous, who had renounced the love he bore her because she was
the wife of his friend. In Galba the woman believes she sees the
husband whom in her fond imagination she had fitted out with the
charms of mind and person which his friend possesses. She throws
herself into his arms, and he does not repel her mistaken embraces;
but the misshapen villain throws himself upon the pair and
strangles his friend to death. A slave enlightens the mystified
woman; the murderer, not the dead hero at his feet, is her husband.
Singularly enough, she does not turn from him with hatred and
loathing, but looks upon him with a great pity. Then she turns her
eyes upon the sun, which Christ had said should not set until she
had cursed him, and gazes into its searing glow until her sight is
again dead. Moral: it is sinful to love the loveliness of outward
things; from the soul must come salvation. As if she had never
learned the truth, she returns to her wifely love for Arcesius. The
story is as false to nature as it is sacrilegious; its trumpery