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She was not playing in the next two pieces fantasies for treble and tenor viols and she sat in the background, catching glimpses of Owen between the hands and the heads of the viol players, and over the rims of their, instruments.
He traced out the chords and the harmonies with the same fervor that he followed the course of a stream or climbed a mountain-path. A great player was he, although the power of creation was not in him, for he fingered his viol with the ardor of a soul set in its favorite way of all others.
She had him carried to it, put him to bed in her own chamber, watched over him and lavished every care for his recovery. On coming to himself, he smelt the perfume of myrtles and roses, and looking out of window saw a garden that descended in successive declivities to the sea. Signora Loreta, standing at his bed's head, took up her viol and began playing a tender air.
A horrible silence reigned. Through the dull wail of the snowstorm came again the melody of the viol and the heavenly voice, faint as the dawning day. The dying man smiled. "I thank you for having brought singers and music! A banquet, young and beautiful women, with dark locks, all the pleasures of life. Let them remain. I am about to be born again."
The festivities were prolonged until deep in the midsummer's night, and harp and viol were still inspiring the feet of the dancers, when on a sudden, in the midst of the holiday-groups, appeared the grim visage of Martin Schenk, the man who never smiled.
But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute.
"Mademoiselle Auricule," said the princess, presenting to his majesty a fat, fair girl of two-and-twenty, who at a village fete might have been taken for a peasant in Sunday finery, "the daughter of my music-mistress." The king smiled. Madame had never been able to extract four correct notes from either viol or harpsichord.
Better than this, as a diversion, is it to have some department of natural history or art to which you may turn, a case of shells or birds, or a season ticket to some picture gallery. If you do nothing but play on one string of the bass viol, you will wear it out and get no healthy tune.
And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine are in their feasts; but they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands. Therefore, my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge; and their honorable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.
"Why, when a youth of parts once takes service with my master, he never leaves it for any other, not even the King's!" Which in its way was a true enough statement. "Well," quoth Master Laurence, when he had tied his string and finished cocking his viol and twingle-twangling it to his satisfaction, "you speak well. And I am not sure but what I may think of it.
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