f the Throne of God.

"See here, listen, my good Schmucke, you must do as dying people tell
you--"

"I am lisdening."

"The little door in the recess in your bedroom opens into that closet."

"Yes, but it is blocked up mit bictures."

"Clear them away at once, without making too much noise."

"Yes."

"Clear a passage on both sides, so that you can pass from your room into
mine.--Now, leave the door ajar.--When La Cibot comes to take your place
(and she is capable of coming an hour earlier than usual), you can go
away to bed as if nothing had happened, and look very tired. Try to
look sleepy. As soon as she settles down into the armchair, go into the
closet, draw aside the muslin curtains over the glass door, and watch
her.... Do you understand?"

"I oondershtand; you belief dat die pad voman is going to purn der
vill."

"I do not know what she will do; but I am sure of this--that you will
not take her for an angel afterwards.--And now play for me; improvise
and make me happy. It will divert your thoughts; your gloomy ideas will
vanish, and for me the dark hours will be filled with your dreams...."

Schmucke sat down at the piano. Here he was in his element; and in a few
moments, musical inspiration, quickened by the pain with which he was
quivering and the consequent irritation that followed came upon the
kindly German, and, after his wont, he was caught up and borne above
the world. On one sublime theme after another he executed variations,
putting into them sometimes Chopin's sorrow, Chopin's Raphael-like
perfection; sometimes the stormy Dante's grandeur of Liszt--the
two musicians who most nearly approach Paganini's temperament. When
execution reaches this supreme degree, the executant stands beside the
poet, as it were; he is to the composer as the actor is to the writer of
plays, a divinely inspired interpreter of things divine. But that
night, when Schmucke gave Pons an earnest of diviner symphonies, of that
heavenly music for which Saint Cecile let fall her instruments, he
was at once Beethoven and Paganini, creator and interpreter. It was an
outpouring of music inexhaustible as the nightingale's song--varied
and full of delicate undergrowth as the forest flooded with her trills;
sublime as the sky overhead. Schmucke played as he had never played
before, and the soul of the old musician listening to him rose to
ecstasy such as Raphael once painted in a picture which you may see at
Bologna.

A terri