We reach the last act of the drama. Radames is to be tried for treason in having betrayed a secret of war to his country's enemy. Amneris fain would save him were he to renounce Aïda and accept her love. She offers on such terms to intercede for him with her father, the king. From her Radames learns that Aïda escaped the guards who slew her father. He is resolute to die rather than prove faithless to her, and is led away to the subterranean trial chamber. Amneris, crouched without, hears the accusing voices of the priests and the awful silence which follows each accusation; for Radames refuses to answer the charges. The priests pronounce sentence:--Burial alive! Amneris hurls curses after them, but they depart, muttering, "Death to the traitor!" Radames is immured in a vault beneath the temple of Vulcan, whose sacred priestesses move in solemn steps above, while he gropes in the darkness below. Never again shall light greet his eyes, nor sight of Aïda. A groan. A phantom rises before him, and Aïda is at his side. She had foreseen the doom of her lover, and entered the tomb before him to die in his arms. Together they say their farewell to the vale of tears, and their streaming eyes have a prevision of heaven. Above in the temple a figure, shrouded in black, kneels upon the stone which seals the vault and implores Isis to cease her resentment and give her adored one peace. It is Amneris. CHAPTER XI "DER FREISCHUTZ" A description of Carl Maria von Weber's opera, "Der Freischütz," ought to begin with a study of the overture, since that marvellous composition has lived on and on in the concert-rooms of the world without loss of popularity for nearly a century, while the opera which it introduces has periodically come and gone according to popular whim or the artistic convictions or caprices of managers in all the countries which cultivate opera, except Germany. Why Germany forms an exception to the rule will find an explanation when the character of the opera and its history come under investigation. The overture, notwithstanding its extraordinary charm, is only an exalted example of the pot-pourri class of introductions (though in the classic sonata form), which composers were in the habit of writing when this opera came into existence, and which is still imitated in an ignoble way by composers of ephemeral operettas. It is constructed on a conventional model, and its thematic material is drawn from the music of the opera; but, like the prelude to Wagner's lyric comedy, "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg," it presents the contents of the play in the form of what many years after its composition came to be called a symphonic poem, and illustrates the ideal which was in Gluck's mind when, in the preface to "Alceste," he said, "I imagined that the overture ought to prepare the audience for the action of the piece, and serve as a kind of argument to it." The atmosphere of the opera is that which pervades the sylvan life