counting heads below. For this reason or a better, he begged Nesta to
supplant the flute duet with the soprano and contralto of the Helena
section of the Mefistofele, called the Serenade: La Luna immobile. She
consulted her mother, and they sang it. The crowds below, swollen to
a block of the street, were dead still, showing the instinctive
good manners of the people. Then mademoiselle astonished them with a
Provencal or Cevennes air, Huguenot, though she was Catholic; but
it suited her mezzo-soprano tones; and it rang massively of the
martial-religious. To what heights of spiritual grandeur might not
a Huguenot France have marched! Dudley Sowerby, heedlessly, under an
emotion that could be stirred in him with force, by the soul of religion
issuing through music, addressed his ejaculation to Lady Grace Halley.
She did nor shrug or snub him, but rejoined: 'I could go to battle with
that song in the ears.' She liked seeing him so happily transformed; and
liked the effect of it on Nesta when his face shone in talking. He was
at home with the girl's eyes, as he had never been. A song expressing in
one of the combative and devotional, went to the springs of his blood;
for he was of an old warrior race, beneath the thick crust of imposed
peaceful maxims and commercial pursuits and habitual stiff correctness.
As much as wine, will music bring out the native bent of the civilized
man: endow him with language too. He was as if unlocked; he met
Nesta's eyes and ran in a voluble interchange, that gave him flattering
after-thoughts; and at the moment sensibly a new and assured, or to some
extent assured, station beside a girl so vivid; by which the young lady
would be helped to perceive his unvoiced solider gifts.

Nataly observed them, thinking of Victor's mastering subtlety. She had
hoped (having clearly seen the sheep's eye in the shepherd) that Mr.
Barmby would be watchful to act as a block between them; and therefore
she had stipulated for his presence on the journey. She remembered
Victor's rapid look of readiness to consent:--he reckoned how naturally
Mr. Barmby would serve as a foil to any younger man. Mr. Barmby had
tried all along to perform his part: he had always been thwarted;
notably once at Gisors, where by some cunning management he and
mademoiselle found themselves in the cell of the prisoner's Nail-wrought
work while Nesta had to take Sowerby's hand for help at a passage here
and there along the narrow outer cast