In that same moment my pangs were all renewed; my repose of mind
departed; once more my heart was on fire, my spirit filled with
vague doubts, grief, and commotion. The soft, sweet, preluding note
of the player had touched a chord in my soul as utterly different
from that which it expressed, as could by any possibility be
conceived. Heart and hope were instantly paralyzed. Fear and its
train, its haunting spectres of suspicion, took possession of the
undefended citadel, and established guard upon its deserted outposts.
I tottered to the window which I had left--I shrouded myself in the
folds of the curtain, and as the strains rose, renewed and regular,
I struggled to keep in my breath, listening eagerly, as if the
complaining instrument could actually give utterance to the cruel
mystery which I equally dreaded and desired to hear.
The air which was played was such as I had never heard before.
Indeed, it could scarcely be called an air. It was the most
capricious burden of mournfulness that had ever had its utterance
from wo. Fancy a mute--one bereft of the divine faculty of speech,
by human, not divine ministration. Fancy such a being endowed with
the loftiest desires, moved by the acutest sensibilities, having
already felt the pleasures of life, yet doomed to a denial of
utterance, denied the language of complaint, and striving, struggling
through the imperfect organs of his voice to give a name to the
agony which works within him. That flute seemed to me to moan, and
sob, and shiver, with some such painful mode of expression as would
be permitted to the "half made-up" mortal of whom I have spoken. Its
broken tones, striving and struggling, almost rising at times into
a shriek, seemed of all things to complain of its own voicelessness.
And yet it had its melody--melody, to me, of the most vexing power.
I should have called the strain a soliloquizing one. It certainly
did not seem addressed to any ears. It wanted the continuance
of apostrophe. It was capricious. Sometimes the burden fell off
suddenly--broken--wholly interrupted--as if the vents had been all
simultaneously and suddenly stopped. Anon, it rose again--soul-piercing
if not loud--so abruptly, and with an utterance so utterly gone
with wo, that you felt sure the poor heart must break with the next
breath that came from the laboring and inefficient lungs. A "dying
fall" succeeding, seemed to afford temporary relief. It seemed as
if tears must have fallen upon the instrument, Its language grew
more methodical, more subdued, but not less touching. I fancied,
I felt, that, entering into the soul of the musician, I could give
the very words to the sentiment which his instrument vainly strove
to speak. What else but despair and utter self-abandonment was
in that broken language? The full heart over-burdened, breaking,
to find a vent for the feelings which it had no longer power to
contain. And yet; content to break, breaking with a melancholy sort
of triumph which seemed to say-"Such a death has its own sweetness; love sanctifies the pang to
its victim. It is a sort of martyrdom. He who loves truly, though
he loves hopelessly, has not utterly loved in vain. The devoted
heart finds a joy in the offering, though the Deity withholds his
acceptance--though a sudden gust from heaven scatters abroad the
rich fruits which the devotee has placed upon the despised and
dishonored altar."