In that same moment my pangs were all renewed; my repose of mind

departed; once more my heart was on fire, my spirit filled with

vague doubts, grief, and commotion. The soft, sweet, preluding note

of the player had touched a chord in my soul as utterly different

from that which it expressed, as could by any possibility be

conceived. Heart and hope were instantly paralyzed. Fear and its

train, its haunting spectres of suspicion, took possession of the

undefended citadel, and established guard upon its deserted outposts.

I tottered to the window which I had left--I shrouded myself in the

folds of the curtain, and as the strains rose, renewed and regular,

I struggled to keep in my breath, listening eagerly, as if the

complaining instrument could actually give utterance to the cruel

mystery which I equally dreaded and desired to hear.

The air which was played was such as I had never heard before.

Indeed, it could scarcely be called an air. It was the most

capricious burden of mournfulness that had ever had its utterance

from wo. Fancy a mute--one bereft of the divine faculty of speech,

by human, not divine ministration. Fancy such a being endowed with

the loftiest desires, moved by the acutest sensibilities, having

already felt the pleasures of life, yet doomed to a denial of

utterance, denied the language of complaint, and striving, struggling

through the imperfect organs of his voice to give a name to the

agony which works within him. That flute seemed to me to moan, and

sob, and shiver, with some such painful mode of expression as would

be permitted to the "half made-up" mortal of whom I have spoken. Its

broken tones, striving and struggling, almost rising at times into

a shriek, seemed of all things to complain of its own voicelessness.

And yet it had its melody--melody, to me, of the most vexing power.

I should have called the strain a soliloquizing one. It certainly

did not seem addressed to any ears. It wanted the continuance

of apostrophe. It was capricious. Sometimes the burden fell off

suddenly--broken--wholly interrupted--as if the vents had been all

simultaneously and suddenly stopped. Anon, it rose again--soul-piercing

if not loud--so abruptly, and with an utterance so utterly gone

with wo, that you felt sure the poor heart must break with the next

breath that came from the laboring and inefficient lungs. A "dying

fall" succeeding, seemed to afford temporary relief. It seemed as

if tears must have fallen upon the instrument, Its language grew

more methodical, more subdued, but not less touching. I fancied,

I felt, that, entering into the soul of the musician, I could give

the very words to the sentiment which his instrument vainly strove

to speak. What else but despair and utter self-abandonment was

in that broken language? The full heart over-burdened, breaking,

to find a vent for the feelings which it had no longer power to

contain. And yet; content to break, breaking with a melancholy sort

of triumph which seemed to say-"Such a death has its own sweetness; love sanctifies the pang to

its victim. It is a sort of martyrdom. He who loves truly, though

he loves hopelessly, has not utterly loved in vain. The devoted

heart finds a joy in the offering, though the Deity withholds his

acceptance--though a sudden gust from heaven scatters abroad the

rich fruits which the devotee has placed upon the despised and

dishonored altar."




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