loquently.

"Karlson is a Swede," with contempt. "The Swedes know the science of
music; but they are hard; they are seldom artists; they cannot
express. And when one of this nation--a man with the ice of his
country in his soul--tried to instruct me how to play the warm music
of my own Italy, I called him a fool!"

"I see," said the investigator.

"I am to blame," said Spatola, contritely. "But I could not help it.
He _was_ a fool, and fools seldom like to hear the truth."

"The Germans, now," said Ashton-Kirk, insinuatingly, "are somewhat
different from the Swedes. Were you ever employed under a German
conductor?"

"Twice," replied the violinist, with a shrug. "Nobody can deny the art
of the Germans. But they have their faults. They say they know the
violin. And they do; but the Italian has taught them. The violin
belongs to Italy. It was the glory of Cremona, was it not? The tender
hands of the Amatis, of Josef Guarnerius, of old Antonio Stradivari,
placed a soul within the wooden box; and that soul is the soul of
Italy!"

"Haupt, a German, wrote a treatise on the violin," said Ashton-Kirk.
"If you would read that--"

"I have read it," cried Spatola. "I have read it! It is like that,"
and he snapped his fingers impatiently.

"But you've probably read a translation in the English or Italian,"
insisted the investigator, smoothly. "And all translations lose
something of their vitality, you know."

"I have read it in the German," declared the Italian; "in his own
language, just as he wrote it. It is nothing."

Pendleton looked at Ashton-Kirk admiringly; the manner in which his
friend had established the fact that Spatola knew the German language
seemed to him very clever. But Ashton-Kirk made no sign other than
that of interest in the subject upon which they talked.

"A race that has given the world such musicians as Wagner, Beethoven
and Mozart," said he, "must possess in a tremendous degree the musical
sense. The German knowledge of tone and its combinations is
extraordinary; and their music in turn is as complex as their
psychology and as simple as the improvisation of a child."

Spatola seemed surprised at this apparent warmth; he looked at
Ashton-Kirk questioningly.

"And, with all their scholarship, the Germans are so practical," went
on the latter. "Only the other day I came upon a booklet published in
Leipzig that dealt with the difficulty a composer sometimes encounters
in getting the notes on p