kindly to the touches he felt, and thanked his helpers with a
smile. Then the coach drove away.

Leaning back in its depths, Ortensia wound her arms round her husband's
neck, and kissed him tenderly.

'I shall sing for you only, love,' he said. 'Even if you cannot see me,
you will know that every note comes from my heart, and is meant only for
your ears!'

'One day more, and I shall have you all to myself,' she answered softly.

The coach stopped again, and Cucurullo dropped from the footboard behind
and came to the door. Stradella had now no time to lose, and he let
Ortensia get out alone and go in with his man, and before she had
disappeared he was driven away to the door of the sacristy. A few
moments later he was in the singers' robing-room, hastily getting into
the purple silk cassock and the spotless lace-trimmed cotta which he had
to wear when he appeared in the organ-loft of a basilica, or among the
singers of the Sistine Chapel. He brought these things, with his own
score of his music, in a purple cloth bag which Ortensia had worked for
him, and she had embroidered a lyre on it in silver thread, with the
word 'Harmonia' in cursive letters for a motto.

Half the singers were already in the organ loft, and the Canons were in
their places droning the psalms for the day antiphonally, and very much
through their portentous noses, even as they do to-day. As the noise
they made was neither musical nor edifying, Roman society was conversing
without the least restraint, except from the fact of being packed rather
close together in a comparatively small space. Here and there little
openings in the crowd marked the positions of the Cardinals and their
parasites, of Queen Christina with her court, and of two or three of the
greatest Roman ladies, such as the Princess Orsini and the Princess
Rospigliosi, whose husbands were Princes of the Empire as well as Roman
nobles. They all talked pleasantly and jested, and even laughed, as if
they were anywhere but in church, only pausing when the Gloria Patri was
sung from time to time at the end of a psalm.

Far overhead the level beams of the lowering sun poured through the
northwest windows. From the ancient mosaic of the tribune vault the
still faces of heavenly personages looked down at the doings of a
half-believing age with a sad and solemn surprise.

While they talked, the ex-Queen and many others glanced occasionally at
the balcony of the organ, and when Stradella at