he curtained court pew of the Lutheran
Church, to which he had presented its massive golden crucifix, to
listen to the chorales, the execution of which he [132] had managed to
time to his liking, relishing, he could hardly explain why, those
passages of a pleasantly monotonous and, as it might seem, unending
melody--which certainly never came to what could rightly be called an
ending here on earth; and having also a sympathy with the cheerful
genius of Dr. Martin Luther, with his good tunes, and that ringing
laughter which sent dull goblins flitting.

At this time, then, his mind ran eagerly for awhile on the project of
some musical and dramatic development of a fancy suggested by that old
Latin poem of Conrad Celtes--the hyperborean Apollo, sojourning, in the
revolutions of time, in the sluggish north for a season, yet Apollo
still, prompting art, music, poetry, and the philosophy which
interprets man's life, making a sort of intercalary day amid the
natural darkness; not meridian day, of course, but a soft derivative
daylight, good enough for us. It would be necessarily a mystic piece,
abounding in fine touches, suggestions, innuendoes. His vague proposal
was met half-way by the very practical executant power of his friend or
servant, the deputy organist, already pondering, with just a satiric
flavour (suppressible in actual performance, if the time for that
should ever come) a musical work on Duke Carl himself; Balder, an
Interlude. He was contented to re-cast and enlarge the part of the
northern god of light, with a now wholly serious intention. But still,
[133] the near, the real and familiar, gave precision to, or actually
superseded, the distant and the ideal. The soul of the music was but a
transfusion from the fantastic but so interesting creature close at
hand. And Carl was certainly true to his proposed part in that he
gladdened others by an intellectual radiance which had ceased to mean
warmth or animation for himself. For him the light was still to seek in
France, in Italy, above all in old Greece, amid the precious things
which might yet be lurking there unknown, in art, in poetry, perhaps in
very life, till Prince Fortunate should come.

Yes! it was thither, to Greece, that his thoughts were turned during
those romantic classical musings while the opera was made ready. That,
in due time, was presented, with sufficient success. Meantime, his
purpose was grown definite to visit that original country