over-wrought; when the walls of the room are transparent;
when the garret has no roof, and the soul soars in the empyrean of
spirits.

Marianna, with some little difficulty, removed the covers from an
instrument as large as a grand piano, but with an upper case added. This
strange-looking instrument, besides this second body and its keyboard,
supported the openings or bells of various wind instruments and the
closed funnels of a few organ pipes.

"Will you play me the prayer you say is so fine at the end of your
opera?" said the Count.

To the great surprise of both Marianna and the Count, Gambara began
with a succession of chords that proclaimed him a master; and their
astonishment gave way first to amazed admiration and then to perfect
rapture, effacing all thought of the place and the performer. The
effects of a real orchestra could not have been finer than the voices
of the wind instruments, which were like those of an organ and combined
wonderfully with the harmonies of the strings. But the unfinished
condition of the machine set limits to the composer's execution, and his
idea seemed all the greater; for, often, the very perfection of a work
of art limits its suggestiveness to the recipient soul. Is not this
proved by the preference accorded to a sketch rather than a finished
picture when on their trial before those who interpret a work in their
own mind rather than accept it rounded off and complete?

The purest and serenest music that Andrea had ever listened to rose up
from under Gambara's fingers like the vapor of incense from an altar.
The composer's voice grew young again, and, far from marring the noble
melody, it elucidated it, supported it, guided it,--just as the feeble
and quavering voice of an accomplished reader, such as Andrieux, for
instance, can expand the meaning of some great scene by Corneille or
Racine by lending personal and poetical feeling.

This really angelic strain showed what treasures lay hidden in that
stupendous opera, which, however, would never find comprehension so
long as the musician persisted in trying to explain it in his present
demented state. His wife and the Count were equally divided between the
music and their surprise at this hundred-voiced instrument, inside which
a stranger might have fancied an invisible chorus of girls were hidden,
so closely did some of the tones resemble the human voice; and they
dared not express their ideas by a look or a word. Marianna's fa