Victor now saw for the first time, by Clotilda's delight in the musician he had brought with him, that her harmonious heart loved to tremble in unison with strings; in fact, he was often mistaken about her, because she--like thee, dearest * * *--expressed her highest praise as well as her highest censure by silence. She begged her father, who had already heard the mouth-harmonica in Carlsbad, to give her and Victor an idea of it,--he gave it: "It expressed in masterly manner, not so much the _fortissimo_ as the _piano-dolce_, and, like the simple harmonica, was best adapted to the _adagio_." She answered,--leaning on the arm of Victor, who led her into a still chamber darkened for the occasion,--"music was perhaps too good for drinking-songs and for mirthful sensations. As sorrow ennobled man, and, by the little cutting pangs which it gave him, unfolded him as regularly as they do the buds of the carnation, which they slit open with a knife that they may bloom without bursting; so music as an artificial sorrow took the place of the true." "Is the true so rare?" said Victor in the dark chamber which only _one_ wax-taper lighted. He came close to Clotilda, and her father sat opposite to him. Blissful hour! thou--that didst once, with the echo-strains of this harmonica, pass through my soul,--glide along by me once more, and let the resonance of that echo again murmur around thee! But scarcely had the modest, quiet virtuoso put the instrument of enchantment to his lips, when Victor felt that now (before the light was removed) he should not dare to do as at other times, when he pictured to himself at every adagio appropriate scenes, and underlaid every piece with peculiar fantasyings for its texts. For it is an unfailing method of giving tones their omnipotence, when one makes them the accompanying voices of our inner mood, and so out of instrumental music makes as it were vocal music, out of inarticulate tones articulate ones, whereas the fairest series of tones, which no definite subject arranges into alphabet and speech, glides off from bathed, but not softened hearts. When, therefore, the sweetest sounds that ever flowed over human lips as consonants of the soul began to well forth from the trembling mouth-harmonica,--when he felt that these little steel-rings, as if they were the setting and touch-board[46] of his heart, would make their agitations his own,--then did he constrain his feverish heart, on which, besides, all wounds came out to-day, to shrink up against the tones, and not picture to itself any scenes, merely that he might not burst into tears before the light was gone.