stirred in him as the sister played one piece after another belong to
the small number of things which it is not lawful to utter; words are
powerless to express them; like death, God, eternity, they can only be
realised through their one point of contact with humanity. Strangely
enough, the organ music seemed to belong to the school of Rossini, the
musician who brings most human passion into his art.

Some day his works, by their number and extent, will receive the
reverence due to the Homer of music. From among all the scores that we
owe to his great genius, the nun seemed to have chosen _Moses in Egypt_
for special study, doubtless because the spirit of sacred music finds
therein its supreme expression. Perhaps the soul of the great musician,
so gloriously known to Europe, and the soul of this unknown executant
had met in the intuitive apprehension of the same poetry. So at least
thought two dilettanti officers who must have missed the Theatre Favart
in Spain.

At last in the _Te Deum_ no one could fail to discern a French soul in
the sudden change that came over the music. Joy for the victory of the
Most Christian King evidently stirred this nun's heart to the depths.
She was a Frenchwoman beyond mistake. Soon the love of country shone
out, breaking forth like shafts of light from the fugue, as the sister
introduced variations with all a Parisienne's fastidious taste, and
blended vague suggestions of our grandest national airs with her music.
A Spaniard's fingers would not have brought this warmth into a
graceful tribute paid to the victorious arms of France. The musician's
nationality was revealed.

"We find France everywhere, it seems," said one of the men.

The General had left the church during the _Te Deum_; he could not
listen any longer. The nun's music had been a revelation of a woman
loved to frenzy; a woman so carefully hidden from the world's eyes,
so deeply buried in the bosom of the Church, that hitherto the most
ingenious and persistent efforts made by men who brought great influence
and unusual powers to bear upon the search had failed to find her. The
suspicion aroused in the General's heart became all but a certainty with
the vague reminiscence of a sad, delicious melody, the air of _Fleuve
du Tage_. The woman he loved had played the prelude to the ballad in
a boudoir in Paris, how often! and now this nun had chosen the song
to express an exile's longing, amid the joy of those that triumphed.
Ter