iver-side, the seemingly half-witted "brother" sought
and found the needful varieties of reed. The carpenters, under his
instruction, set up the great wooden passages for the thunder; while
the little pipes of pasteboard simulated the sound of the human voice
singing to the victorious notes of the long metal trumpets. At times
this also, as people heard night after night those wandering sounds,
seemed like the work of a madman, though they awoke sometimes in wonder
at snatches of a new, an unmistakable new music. It was the triumph of
all the various modes of the power of the pipe, tamed, ruled, united.
Only, on the painted shutters of the organ-case Apollo with his lyre in
his hand, as lord of the strings, seemed to look askance on the music
of the reed, in all the jealousy with which he put Marsyas to death so
cruelly.

Meantime, the people, even his enemies, seemed to have forgotten him.
Enemies, in truth, they still were, ready to take his life should the
opportunity come; as he perceived when at last he ventured forth on a
day of public ceremony. The bishop was to pronounce a blessing upon the
foundations of a new bridge, designed to take the place of the ancient
Roman bridge which, repaired in a thousand places, had hitherto served
for the chief passage of the Yonne. It was as if the disturbing of that
time-worn masonry let out the dark spectres of departed times. Deep
down, at the core of the central pile, a painful object was
exposed--the skeleton of a child, placed there alive, it was rightly
surmised, in the superstitious belief that, by way of vicarious
substitution, its death would secure the safety of all who should pass
over. There were some who found themselves, with a little surprise,
looking round as if for a similar pledge of security in their new
undertaking. It was just then that Denys was seen plainly, standing, in
all essential features precisely as of old, upon one of the great
stones prepared for the foundation of the new building. For a moment he
felt the eyes of the people upon him full of that strange humour, and
with characteristic alertness, after a rapid gaze over the grey city in
its broad green framework of vineyards, best seen from this spot, flung
himself down into the water and disappeared from view where the stream
flowed most swiftly below a row of flour-mills. Some indeed fancied
they had seen him emerge again safely on the deck of one of the great
boats, loaded with grapes and wrea