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 theatricalism is as great a hindrance to a possible return of Biblical opera as the disgusting celebration of necrophilism in Richard Strauss's "Salome." In our historical excursion we are still among the patriarchs, and the whole earth is of one language and of one speech.

Noah, the ark, and the deluge seem now too prodigious to be essayed by opera makers, but, apparently, they did not awe the Englishman Edward Eccleston (or Eggleston), who is said to have produced an opera, "Noah's Flood, or the Destruction of the World," in London in 1679, nor Seyfried, whose "Libera me" was sung at Beethoven's funeral, and who, besides Biblical operas entitled "Saul," "Abraham," "The Maccabees," and "The Israelites in the Desert," brought out a "Noah" in Vienna in 1818.

Halevy left an unfinished opera, "Noe," which Bizet, who was his son-in-law, completed.