Obey That Impulse

All that the lovely Floria Tosca asked was a safe-conduct pass for herself and her lover to leave the country. Her wiles and her entreaties had failed. At last she had promised her body. Baron Scarpia, Chief of Police in Rome, smiled. He gave an order that the girl's lover be saved by a mock execution, then signed a safe-conduct pass for the two.

But when the Baron rose from his desk to take the girl in his arms her eyes were menacing. Suddenly she clawed a sharp knife from her clothes, struck it deep into the Baron's breast. He crumpled, begging for mercy, but the girl did not heed. Calmly she washed her hands, tidied her hair, plucked the pass from the Baron's stiffening fingers, swept offstage.

Last week Parisians wildly applauded this scene in a performance of Puccini's opera La Tosca. They found in it an emotional release from their own pent-up bitterness and frustration under police tyranny. And never, they said, had the role been acted so realistically. It never had. The curtain did not rise again. Neither did the Baron. Petit Parisien reported that in the excitement of the performance the villain had actually been stabbed.

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