Mademoiselle Servin, the teacher of music, upon this occasion deserted her favourite masters. She seemed in a somewhat dreamy and sentimental humour, and played tender little melodies and simple plaintive airs, that were more agreeable to Gustave than those grand examples of the mathematics of counter-point which she so loved to interpret. "You like this melody of Gretry's," said the music-mistress, as M. Lenoble seated himself close to the piano. "I do not think you care for classic sonatas--the great works of Gluck, or Bach, or Beethoven?" "No," replied the young man frankly; "I do not care about anything I can't understand. I like music that goes to one's heart." "And you, too, Madame Meynell, like simple melodies?" mademoiselle asked of that lady, who was not wont to come so near the little piano, or to pay so much attention to Mademoiselle Servin's performance. "O yes," murmured the Englishwoman, "I like such music as that." "And you, too, think that Beethoven never composed simple plaintive airs--for example," exclaimed the pianist, playing softly while she spoke. "You think he wrote only sonatas, quartettes, fugues, grand operas, like _Fidelio_. Have you never heard this by your scientific Beethoven?" Hereupon she played "Hope told a flattering tale," with much tenderness and delicacy. Her two hearers listened, mute and deeply moved. And then from that familiar melody she glided softly into another, most musical, most melancholy, which has been set to some of the sweetest verses that Thomas Moore ever composed: "Those evening bells, those evening bells! How many a tale their music tells Of youth and home, and that sweet time When last I heard their soothing chime!" All the world sang the verses of Ireland's divine bard in those days. The song was one which the Englishwoman had sung years ago in a happy home. What recollections, what associations, were evoked by that plaintive melody, who shall say? The words came back with the music to which they have been eternally wedded. The words, their mournful meaning, the faces of the friends amongst whom she had last sung them, the picture of the peaceful home whose walls had echoed the music,--all these things arose before her in a vision too painfully vivid; and the lonely boarder at the Pension Magnotte covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud. The passion of tears lasted but a minute. Madame Meynell dried her eyes, and rose to leave the room. "Do not question me," she said, perceiving that her two companions were about to offer her their sympathy. "I cannot tell you the memories that were conjured up by that music. It brought back a home I shall never see again, and the faces of the dead--worse than dead to me--and the happiness I have lost, and the hopes and dreams that once were mine. Oh, I pray God I may never hear that melody again."