lost all her attractiveness.
Teresina had worn better, and still retained her beautiful figure. They
dressed in much the same style as of old, and had all their former
ways: that's to say, their dress and manners were fourteen years
younger than themselves. At my request, Teresina sang some of those
earnest, serious _arias_ which had impressed me so much in early days,
but they did not seem to be quite what my memory had represented them.
And it was the same with Lauretta's singing: though her voice had
fallen off little, either in power or in compass, still it was
different from the singing which lived in my memory as hers; and this
attempt to compare a mental idea with the not altogether satisfactory
reality, untuned me even more than the sisters' behaviour--their
pretended ecstasy, their coarse admiration (which at the same time took
the form of a generous patronage) had done at the beginning. But the
droll little _Abbate_--who was playing the _amoroso_ to both the
sisters at once, in the most sugary manner--and the good wine (of which
we had a fair share) gave me my good humour back at length, so that we
all enjoyed our evening. The sisters invited me, in the most pressing
manner, to go and see them, so that we might talk over the parts I was
to compose for them; however I left Rome without ever seeing them
again.

"'"Still," said Edward, "you have to thank them for awaking the music
within you."

"'Undoubtedly,' answered Theodore, 'and for a quantity of good melodies
into the bargain; but that is exactly the reason why I never should
have seen them again. No doubt every composer can remember some
particular occasion when some powerful impression was made on him,
which time never effaces. The spirit which dwells in music spoke, and
the spirit _en rapport_ with it within the composer awoke at that
creative fiat; it flamed up with might, and could never be extinguished
again. It is certain that all the melodies which we produce under an
impulse of this sort seem to belong only to the singer who cast the
first spark into us. We hear her, and merely write down what she has
sung; but it is the lot of us feeble earthly creatures, clamped to the
dust as we are, to long and strive to bring down whatever we can of the
super-earthly into the wretched little bit of earthly life in which we
are cribbed up. And thus the singer becomes our beloved--perhaps our
wife! The spell is broken; our inward melody, with its message, or