"I am here to die with thee," she answered, and Radames clasped her in his arms. He had thought her safe, unacquainted with his fate, but she was there to share it.
"My heart foreboded thy fearful sentence," she said. "I hid here till the stone shut down upon thee, and now I am beside thee till the end."
Radames beat wildly upon the stone above. He called for help. He tried with his great strength to raise the deadly stone with his shoulders, only to sink down, exhausted and horrified. He could not save her. The chorus sung by priests began above; Aïda was already dying. At least she would not live slowly to starve. And while Amneris appeared above in black garments, dying of grief for Radames, and threw herself upon the stone, Radames held the dying Aïda in his arms and waited for death.
"Peace," Amneris moaned while lying prostrate above on the altar stone.
"Peace," and while the women were dying and Radames losing his senses below, the priests of Isis chanted, "Peace," the light faded out, and the tragedy ended.
Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, on the 22d of May, 1813. His father was Chief of Police and his mother was Johanna Rosina Bertz.
His brothers and sisters were distinguished singers or actors; thus love of dramatic art was common to all the family. His father died and his mother married an actor, Ludwig Geyer. The stepfather became very fond of young Richard and intended to make a painter of him, but upon hearing him play some of his sister's piano pieces Geyer wondered if it were possible that he had the gift of music!
Wagner was a poor scholar during his school days, the only thing he especially enjoyed being literature, mainly Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Æschylus; and about the time the dramatic philosophies of these men filled his attention, he wrote a great drama in which there were forty-two characters, every one of whom was killed or died in the course of the play, so that he was compelled to finish his performance with the spectres of his original characters. Later he wished to put music to that remarkable drama, and he did so, much to the distraction of his family. It was actually performed. He thus described his composition:
This was the culmination of my absurdities. What I did, above all things wrong, was a roll _fortissimo_ upon the kettle-drums, which returned regularly every four bars throughout the composition. The surprise which the public experienced changed first to unconcealed ill-humour, and then into laughter, which greatly mortified me.