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Updated: June 24, 2025
After the tenor's death, the difficulty had been who should succeed him. There was nobody immediately forthcoming, and this had put the dean and chapter in a fix, for it happened that there were services of particular importance going on in the cathedral at the time, to which strangers flocked from a distance, and it was felt that it would never do to disapppoint them of their music.
So I said: "Why, madam, MY experience warrants me in stating that that tenor's voice is not a voice at all, but only a shriek the shriek of a hyena." "That is very true," she said; "he cannot sing now; it is already many years that he has lost his voice, but in other times he sang, yes, divinely! So whenever he comes now, you shall see, yes, that the theater will not hold the people.
This was not such a very extravagant speech, either, for that burly Mannheim tenor's praises had been the talk of all Heidelberg for a week before his performance took place yet his voice was like the distressing noise which a nail makes when you screech it across a window-pane.
All whom he had ever cared for were present with him, coming as he called them even the dean, who was kneeling now beside his bed murmuring accustomed prayers. "What happiness!" The Tenor murmured. "I was so sorrowful this afternoon, and now! A happy death! a happy death! Ah, Boy, do you not see that he gives us our heart's desire? He slumbers not, nor sleeps," and the Tenor's face shone.
The curtain went up before Lushington came back, but the prima donna did not look at the stage and scarcely heard the tenor's lament, the chorus and the rest. She seemed quite lost in her thoughts. Then Lushington appeared with a big dark cloak on his arm. 'Will this do, mother? he asked. She stood up and made him put it over her.
Then they resettled themselves, lolling luxuriously, the one in the bows, the other in the stern; and the Tenor's soul was uplifted, as was the case with him in every pause of life, to the heaven of heavens which only could contain it; while the Boy's roamed away to realms of poesy where it revelled amid blossoming rhymes, or rested satisfied on full blown verses, some of which he presently began to chant to himself monotonously.
The dean preached a sermonette on Saturday afternoon, which he took the precaution to deliver before the anthem, so that the people might still have something to look forward to and keep their seats. The sermonette over, the organ played the opening bars of the Tenor's solo, and the choir stood up. While he waited for the note, the Tenor absently fixed his eyes on a lady in the canon's pew.
The music-mad-one had come to make the Tenor golden offers, and he did not leave him now until the Tenor had agreed to accept them. The dean came in by chance in time to witness the conclusion of the bargain, adding by his congratulations and good wishes to the Tenor's own belief that such an opportunity was not to be lost.
But the time for the trip the end of August had been unfortunately chosen. And, as she returned ornamented with scratches administered by the tenor's pursuing wife no one believed her. Next winter she ruined a counsellor of a legation and magnate's son so thoroughly that he decamped to an unfrequented equatorial region, leaving behind him numerous promissory notes of questionable value.
How long the Tenor's dream would have remained unbroken by action it is hard to say.
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