The Verdict
In the days of the Doges there was a Gold Book in which the First Families of Venice shone. In New York there is also a Gold Book, unprinted but otherwise familiar. The names that appear there have earned the cataloguing not from medieval prowess, but from money’s more modish might.
At the Metropolitan Opera House, two years and a fraction after the trial, the Gold Bookers were on view—men who could have married the Adriatic, dowered her too, whose signatures were potenter than kings. There also were women fairer than the young empresses of old Rome, maidens in thousand-dollar frocks, matrons coroneted and tiaraed. On the grand tier they sat, a family-party air about them, nodding to each other, exhaling orris, talking animatedly about nothing at all. Into their boxes young men strolled, lolled awhile, sauntered away.
In one of these boxes was Sylvia, looking like an angel, only, of course, much better dressed. Behind her was Annandale. They were quite an old couple. They had been married fully a year. In the box with them was Orr.
On the stage a festival was in progress, a festival for ear and eye, the apogee of Italian art, a production of Aïda . A quarter of a century and more ago when that opera was first given in Cairo, there was an accompanying splendor more lavish than it, or any other opera, has had since. But it was difficult to fancy that even then there was a better cast. Before the tenor had completed the opening romanza he had enthralled the house. Good-looking, as tenors should be, stout as tenors are, he suggested Mario resurrected and returned.