n sat by his side, and praised and flattered when the world had but
jeered and scorned. In one corner he found the laurel-wreath she had
placed on his brows that happy night of fame and triumph; and near it,
half hid by her mantilla, lay in its case the neglected instrument.

Viola was not long gone: she had found the physician; she returned with
him; and as they gained the threshold, they heard a strain of music from
within,--a strain of piercing, heart-rending anguish. It was not like
some senseless instrument, mechanical in its obedience to a human
hand,--it was as some spirit calling, in wail and agony from the forlorn
shades, to the angels it beheld afar beyond the Eternal Gulf. They
exchanged glances of dismay. They hurried into the house; they hastened
into the room. Pisani turned, and his look, full of ghastly intelligence
and stern command, awed them back. The black mantilla, the faded
laurel-leaf, lay there before him. Viola's heart guessed all at a single
glance; she sprung to his knees; she clasped them,--"Father, father, _I_
am left thee still!"

The wail ceased,--the note changed; with a confused association--half of
the man, half of the artist--the anguish, still a melody, was connected
with sweeter sounds and thoughts. The nightingale had escaped the
pursuit,--soft, airy, bird-like, thrilled the delicious notes a moment,
and then died away. The instrument fell to the floor, and its chords
snapped. You heard that sound through the silence. The artist looked
on his kneeling child, and then on the broken chords... "Bury me by her
side," he said, in a very calm, low voice; "and THAT by mine." And with
these words his whole frame became rigid, as if turned to stone. The
last change passed over his face. He fell to the ground, sudden and
heavy. The chords THERE, too,--the chords of the human instrument were
snapped asunder. As he fell, his robe brushed the laurel-wreath, and
that fell also, near but not in reach of the dead man's nerveless hand.

Broken instrument, broken heart, withered laurel-wreath!--the setting
sun through the vine-clad lattice streamed on all! So smiles the eternal
Nature on the wrecks of all that make life glorious! And not a sun that
sets not somewhere on the silenced music,--on the faded laurel!

CHAPTER 1.X.

Che difesa miglior ch' usbergo e scudo,
E la santa innocenza al petto ignudo!
"Ger. Lib.," c. viii. xli.

(Better defence than shield or breastplate