uite appeased.

"We spent the evening together. Many changes take place in fourteen
years, which was the interval that had passed since I had seen my fair
friends. Lauretta, although looking somewhat older, was still not
devoid of charms. Teresina had worn better, without losing her graceful
form. Both were dressed in rather gay colours, and their manners were
just the same as before, that is, fourteen years younger than the
ladies themselves. At my request Teresina sang some of the serious
songs that had once so deeply affected me, but I fancied that they
sounded differently from what they did when I first heard them; and
Lauretta's singing too, although her voice had not appreciably lost
anything, either in power or in compass, seemed to me to be quite
different from my recollection of it of former times The sisters'
behaviour towards me, their feigned ecstasies, their rude admiration,
which, however, took the shape of gracious patronage, had done much to
put me in a bad humour, and now the obtrusiveness of this comparison
between the images in my mind and the not over and above pleasing
reality, tended to put me in a still worse. The droll priest, who in
all the sweetest words you can imagine was playing the _amoroso_ to
both sisters at once, as well as frequent applications to the good
wine, at length restored me to good humour, so that we spent a very
pleasant evening in perfect concord and gaiety. The sisters were most
pressing in their invitations to me to go home with them, that we might
at once talk over the parts which I was to set for them and so concert
measures accordingly. I left Rome without taking any further steps to
find out their place of abode."

"And yet, after all," said Edward, "it is to them that you owe the
awakening of your genius for music." "That I admit," replied Theodore,
"I owed them that and a host of good melodies besides, and that is just
the reason why I did not want to see them again. Every composer can
recall certain impressions which time does not obliterate. The spirit
of music spake, and his voice was the creative word which suddenly
awakened the kindred spirit slumbering in the breast of the artist;
then the latter rose like a sun which can nevermore set. Thus it is
unquestionably true that all melodies which, stirred up in this way,
proceed from the depths of the composer's being, seem to us to belong
to the singer alone who fanned the first spark within us. We hear her
voice