ut his plans. The
General, nothing if not "catholic and monarchical," took occasion to
inform himself of the hours of the services, and manifested the greatest
zeal for the performance of his religious duties, piety which caused no
remark in Spain.

The very next day, while the division was marching out of the town, the
General went to the convent to be present at vespers. He found an empty
church. The townsfolk, devout though they were, had all gone down to the
quay to watch the embarkation of the troops. He felt glad to be the only
man there. He tramped noisily up the nave, clanking his spurs till the
vaulted roof rang with the sound; he coughed, he talked aloud to himself
to let the nuns know, and more particularly to let the organist know
that if the troops were gone, one Frenchman was left behind. Was this
singular warning heard and understood? He thought so. It seemed to him
that in the _Magnificat_ the organ made response which was borne to him
on the vibrating air. The nun's spirit found wings in music and fled
towards him, throbbing with the rhythmical pulse of the sounds. Then, in
all its might, the music burst forth and filled the church with warmth.
The Song of Joy set apart in the sublime liturgy of Latin Christianity
to express the exaltation of the soul in the presence of the glory of
the ever-living God, became the utterance of a heart almost terrified by
its gladness in the presence of the glory of a mortal love; a love that
yet lived, a love that had risen to trouble her even beyond the grave in
which the nun is laid, that she may rise again as the bride of Christ.

The organ is in truth the grandest, the most daring, the most
magnificent of all instruments invented by human genius. It is a whole
orchestra in itself. It can express anything in response to a skilled
touch. Surely it is in some sort a pedestal on which the soul poises for
a flight forth into space, essaying on her course to draw picture after
picture in an endless series, to paint human life, to cross the Infinite
that separates heaven from earth? And the longer a dreamer listens to
those giant harmonies, the better he realizes that nothing save this
hundred-voiced choir on earth can fill all the space between kneeling
men, and a God hidden by the blinding light of the Sanctuary. The music
is the one interpreter strong enough to bear up the prayers of humanity
to heaven, prayer in its omnipotent moods, prayer tinged by the
melancholy of