Angélique is a young girl, the adopted child of a respectable old couple, embroiderers by trade. She is subject to hallucinations, and through constantly reading a book entitled "The Golden Legend," dealing with the lives of saints and martyrs, fancies she hears voices in the air, and dreams of the arrival of a prince who will come and carry her off. As the first scene closes, she imagines she sees the one she has been dreaming of, who turns out to be the son of the Bishop Jean d'Hautecœur, still sorrowing for the wife he lost many years ago. It stands to reason that the two young people fall in love with one another, and that the course of their love, according to the usual precedent, does not run smooth. The bishop intends his son to become a priest and refuses to consent to his marriage, remaining deaf to his entreaties. Angélique thereupon pines away and is on the point of death, when her lover finally induces his father to give in, and save her by performing a miracle such as was accomplished by his ancestor, who cured the sufferers of a plague by kissing them on the forehead and using the words, "Si Dieu veut, je veux," which have since become the motto of his family. The Bishop yields and performs the miracle. The lovers are about to be united, but at the very porch of the church where they are to be married, Angélique hears voices in the air calling to her, she staggers, and dies. This last scene was omitted at Covent Garden. As I have previously remarked, "Le Rêve" is constructed entirely upon a number of representative themes. There is a practically complete absence of set pieces, the work running its course uninterruptedly without a break. Bruneau has in fact treated his setting of Zola's book in a form that might be best described as "speech in song" accompanied by an orchestral commentary. It is doubtful though whether the word "accompany" can be used at all in connection with his music, seeing that the most important part is allotted to the orchestra. The themes employed are most impressive, thoroughly characteristic, and well adapted for polyphonic treatment. There are certain scenes in which the melodic interest lies mainly in the voice parts, although the instrumental portion is invariably pregnant with suggestion, fragments of motives being blended together and worked in with consummate skill. Angélique's appeal to the Bishop is one of these, and is marked by genuine dramatic feeling. One of the most strikingly original scenes is the one comprising the Bishop's monologue. The poignant accents are admirably fitted to describe the emotions of one whose life has been blighted through the loss of the woman he loved, and whose determination to force his son into the priesthood is shaken by the affection he bears him. Pages such as these are sufficient in themselves to stamp their author as an artist of the first rank and a musician of genius.