woman loved to frenzy; a woman so carefully hidden from the
world's eyes, so deeply buried in the bosom of the Church, that

hitherto the most ingenious and persistent efforts made by men
who brought great influence and unusual powers to bear upon the

search had failed to find her. The suspicion aroused in the
General's heart became all but a certainty with the vague

reminiscence of a sad, deliciousmelody, the air of Fleuve du
Tage. The woman he loved had played the prelude to the ballad in

a boudoir in Paris, how often! and now this nun had chosen the
song to express an exile's longing, amid the joy of those that

triumphed. Terrible sensation! To hope for the resurrection of
a lost love, to find her only to know that she was lost, to catch

a mysteriousglimpse of her after five years--five years, in
which the pent-up passion, chafing in an empty life, had grown

the mightier for every fruitless effort to satisfy it!
Who has not known, at least once in his life, what it is to lose

some precious thing; and after hunting through his papers,
ransacking his memory, and turning his house upside down; after

one or two days spent in vain search, and hope, and despair;
after a prodigiousexpenditure of the liveliest irritation of

soul, who has not known the ineffable pleasure of finding that
all-important nothing which had come to be a king of monomania?

Very good. Now, spread that fury of search over five years; put
a woman, put a heart, put love in the place of the trifle;

transpose the monomania into the key of high passion; and,
furthermore, let the seeker be a man of ardenttemper, with a

lion's heart and a leonine head and mane, a man to inspire awe
and fear in those who come in contact with him--realise this, and

you may, perhaps, understand why the General walked abruptly out
of the church when the first notes of a ballad, which he used to

hear with a rapture of delight in a gilt-panelled boudoir, began
to vibrate along the aisles of the church in the sea.

The General walked away down the steep street which led to the
port, and only stopped when he could not hear the deep notes of

the organ. Unable to think of anything but the love which broke
out in volcaniceruption, filling his heart with fire, he only

knew that the Te Deum was over when the Spanish congregation came
pouring out of the church. Feeling that his behaviour and

attitude might seem ridiculous, he went back to head the
procession, telling the alcalde and the governor that, feeling

suddenly faint, he had gone out into the air. Casting about for
a plea for prolonging his stay, it at once occurred to him to

make the most of this excuse, framed on the spur of the moment.
He declined, on a plea of increasing indisposition, to preside at

the banquet given by the town to the French officers, betook
himself to his bed, and sent a message to the Major-General, to

the effect that temporaryillness obliged him to leave the
Colonel in command of the troops for the time being. This

commonplace but very plausible stratagem relieved him of all
responsibility for the time necessary to carry out his plans.

The General, nothing if not "catholic and monarchical," took
occasion to inform himself of the hours of the services, and

manifested the greatest zeal for the performance of his religious
duties, piety which caused no remark in Spain.

The very next day, while the division was marching out of the
town, the General went to the convent to be present at vespers.

He found an empty church. The townsfolk, devout though they
were, had all gone down to the quay to watch the embarkation of

the troops. He felt glad to be the only man there. He tramped
noisily up the nave, clanking his spurs till the vaulted roof

rang with the sound; he coughed, he talked aloud to himself to
let the nuns know, and more particularly to let the organist know

that if the troops were gone, one Frenchman was left behind. Was
this singularwarning heard and understood? He thought so. It

seemed to him that in the Magnificat the organ made response
which was borne to him on the vibrating air. The nun's spirit

found wings in music and fled towards him, throbbing with the
rhythmical pulse of the sounds. Then, in all its might, the

music burst forth and filled the church with warmth. The Song of
Joy set apart in the sublime liturgy of Latin Christianity to

express the exaltation of the soul in the presence of the glory
of the ever-living God, became the utterance of a heart almost

terrified by its gladness in the presence of the glory of a
mortal love; a love that yet lived, a love that had risen to

trouble her even beyond the grave in which the nun is laid, that
she may rise again as the bride of Christ.

The organ is in truth the grandest, the most daring, the most
magnificent of all instruments invented by human genius. It is a

whole orchestra in itself. It can express anything in response
to a skilled touch. Surely it is in some sort a pedestal on

which the soul poises for a flight forth into space, essaying on
her course to draw picture after picture in an endless series, to

paint human life, to cross the Infinite that separates heaven
from earth? And the longer a dreamer listens to those giant

harmonies, the better he realises that nothing save this
hundred-voiced choir on earth can fill all the space between

kneeling men, and a God hidden by the blinding light of the
Sanctuary. The music is the one interpreter strong enough to

bear up the prayers of humanity to heaven, prayer in its
omnipotent moods, prayer tinged by the melancholy of many

different natures, coloured by meditative ecstasy, upspringing
with the impulse of repentance--blended with the myriad fancies

of every creed. Yes. In those long vaulted aisles the melodies
inspired by the sense of things divine are blent with a grandeur

unknown before, are decked with new glory and might. Out of the
dim daylight, and the deep silence broken by the chanting of the

choir in response to the thunder of the organ, a veil is woven
for God, and the brightness of His attributes shines through it.

And this wealth of holy things seemed to be flung down like a
grain of incense upon the fragile altar raised to Love beneath

the eternalthrone of a jealous and avenging God. Indeed, in the
joy of the nun there was little of that awe and gravity which

should harmonise with the solemnities of the Magnificat. She had
enriched the music with graceful variations, earthlygladness

throbbing through the rhythm of each. In such brilliant
quivering notes some great singer might strive to find a voice

for her love, her melodies fluttered as a bird flutters about her
mate. There were moments when she seemed to leap back into the

past, to dally there now with laughter, now with tears. Her
changing moods, as it were, ran riot. She was like a woman

excited and happy over her lover's return.
But at length, after the swaying fugues of delirium, after the

marvellous rendering of a vision of the past, a revulsion swept
over the soul that thus found utterance for itself. With a swift

transition from the major to the minor, the organist told her
hearer of her present lot. She gave the story of long melancholy

broodings, of the slow course of her moral malady. How day by
day she deadened the senses, how every night cut off one more

thought, how her heart was slowly reduced to ashes. The sadness
deepened shade after shade through languid modulations, and in a

little while the echoes were pouring out a torrent of grief.
Then on a sudden, high notes rang out like the voices of angels

singing together, as if to tell the lost but not forgotten lover
that their spirits now could only meet in heaven. Pathetic hope!

Then followed the Amen. No more Joy, no more tears in the air,
no sadness, no regrets. The Amen was the return to God. The

final chord was deep, solemn, even terrible; for the last
rumblings of the bass sent a shiver through the audience that

raised the hair on their heads; the nun shook out her veiling of
crepe, and seemed to sink again into the grave from which she had

risen for a moment. Slowly the reverberations died away; it
seemed as if the church, but now so full of light, had returned

to thick darkness.
The General had been caught up and borne swiftly away by this

strong-winged spirit; he had followed the course of its flight
from beginning to end. He understood to the fullest extent the

imagery of that burning symphony; for him the chords reached deep
and far. For him, as for the sister, the poem meant future,

present, and past. Is not music, and even opera music, a sort of
text, which a susceptible or poetictemper, or a sore and

stricken heart, may expand as memories shall determine? If a
musician must needs have the heart of a poet, must not the

listener too be in a manner a poet and a lover to hear all that
lies in great music? Religion, love, and music--what are they