"That pretty child is Italian," he whispered to Alwyn. "Patriotism sparkled in those bright eyes of hers--love for the land of lilies, from which she is at present one transplanted!"
Alwyn smiled also, assentingly, and thought how gracious, kindly, and gentle were the look and voice of the speaker. He found it difficult to realize that this man, who now sat beside him in the stalls of a fashionable London concert-room, was precisely the same one who, clad in the long flowing white robes of his Order, had stood before the Altar in the chapel at Dariel, a stately embodiment of evangelical authority, intoning the Seven Glorias! It seemed strange, and yet not strange, for Heliobas was a personage who might be imagined anywhere,--by the bedside of a dying child, among the parliaments of the learned, in the most brilliant social assemblies, at the head of a church,--anything he chose to do would equally become him, inasmuch as it was utterly impossible to depict him engaged in otherwise than good and noble deeds. At that moment a tumultuous clamor of applause broke out on all sides,--applause that was joined in by the members of the orchestra as well as the audience,--a figure emerged from a side door on the left and ascended the platform--a slight, agile creature, with rough, dark hair and eager, passionate eyes--no other than the hero of the occasion, Sarasate himself. Sarasate e il suo Violino!--there they were, the two companions; master and servant--king and subject. The one, a lithe, active looking man of handsome, somewhat serious countenance and absorbed expression,-- the other, a mere frame of wood with four strings deftly knotted across it, in which cunningly contrived little bit of mechanism was imprisoned the intangible, yet living Spirit of Sound. A miracle in its way!--that out of such common and even vile materials as wood, catgut, and horsehair, the divinest music can be drawn forth by the hand of the master who knows how to use these rough implements! Suggestive, too, is it not, my friends?-- for if man can by his own poor skill and limited intelligence so invoke spiritual melody by material means,--shall not God contrive some wondrous tunefulness for Himself even out of our common earthly discord? . ... Hush!--A sound sweet and far as the chime of angelic bells in some vast sky-tower, rang clearly through the hall over the heads of the now hushed and attentive audience--and Alwyn, hearing the penetrating silveriness of those first notes that fell from Sarasate's bow, gave a quick sigh of amazement and ecstasy,--such marvellous purity of tone was intoxicating to his senses, and set his nerves quivering for sheer delight in sympathetic tune. He glanced at the programme,--"Concerto-- Beethoven"--and swift as a flash there came to his mind some lines he had lately read and learned to love: "It was the Kaiser of the Land of Song, The giant singer who did storm the gates Of Heaven and Hell--a man to whom the Fates Were fierce as furies,--and who suffered wrong, And ached and bore it, and was brave and strong And grand as ocean when its rage abates."