anny looking instruments, strange even to Asiatic eyes, were
seated, and then the dusky servants lifted with infinite care the aged
Bundelcund into a standing posture, placed him at the stand, and while
four held him there the two flappers were so unremitting in their
attentions that one might suppose the old man's face would be sore,
were it not for its almost total absence of flesh, and also his long,
thick hair, which fell far below his waist.

Standing in an erect attitude he was an appalling figure to behold, and
the two lighted tapers in massive candelabras on each side of the desk
lighted up his face with an unholy and gruesome glare. The funereal
aspect of the scene was heightened by the house being in total darkness,
and though many women had fainted, oppressed by the charnel-house
atmosphere that surrounded us, still the audience as a whole remained
spellbound in their seats. The medical man now plied the
conductor-pianist with the contents of the mysterious phial, and placing
a long, white ostrich plume in his hand, he made a signal for the
orchestra to begin. The conductor, despite his deafness, appeared to
comprehend what was going on and feebly waved the plume in air, and the
first gloomy chords of the _Marche Funebre a la Tartare_ were heard. Of
all the funeral marches ever penned this composition certainly outdid
them all in diabolical waitings and the gnashing of teeth of damned
souls.

It was the funeral march of some mid-Asiatic pachyderm, and the whole
herd were howling their grief in a manner which would put Wagner,
Berlioz, and Meyerbeer to shame; for such a use of brass had never been
even dreamed of, and the peculiar looking instruments I first spoke of
now came to the fore and the din they raised was positively hellish.
Those who could see the composer's face afterward declared it was
wreathed in smiles, but this, of course, I could not see; but I did see,
and we all saw, after the rather abrupt end of the march (which finished
after a long-drawn-out suspension, _capo d'astro_, resolved by the use
of the diseased chord of the minor thirteenth into a dissipated fifth),
the venerable virtuoso suddenly collapse, and suddenly fall into the
arms of the attendants, whose phlegm, while being thoroughly Oriental,
still smacked of anticipation of this very event. Instantly the lights
went out and a panic ensued, everyone getting into the street somehow or
other. I found myself there side by side with my