"There you have the poetic reverie," said Flemming, "and the dull prose commentary and explanation in matter of fact. The song is pretty; and was probably suggested by some such scene as this, which we are now beholding. Doubtless all your old national traditions sprang up in the popular mind as this song in the poet's." "Your opinion is certainly correct," answered the Baron; "and yet all this play of poetic fancy does not prevent me from feeling the chill night air, and the pangs of hunger. Let us go back to the mill, and see what our landlady has for supper. Did you observe what a loud, sharp voice she has?" "People always have, who live in mills, and near water-falls." On the following morning they emerged unwillingly from the green, dark valley, and journeyed along the level highway to Frankfort, where in the evening they heard the glorious Don Giovanni of Mozart. Of all operas this was Flemming's favorite. What rapturous flights of sound! what thrilling, pathetic chimes! what wild, joyous revelry of passion! what a delirium of sense!--what an expression of agony and woe! all the feelings of suffering and rejoicing humanity sympathized with and finding a voice in those tones. Flemming and the Baron listened with ever-increasing delight. "How wonderful this is!" exclaimed Flemming, transported by his feelings. "How the chorus swells and dies, like the wind of summer! How those passages of mysterious import seem to wave to and fro, like the swaying branches of trees; from which anon some solitary sweetvoice darts off like a bird, and floats away and revels in the bright, warm sunshine! And then mark! how, amid the chorus of a hundred voices and a hundred instruments,--of flutes, and drums, and trumpets,--this universal shout and whirl-wind of the vexed air, you can so clearly distinguish the melancholy vibration of a single string, touched by the finger,--a mournful, sobbing sound! Ah, this is indeed human life! where in the rushing, noisy crowd, and amid sounds of gladness, and a thousand mingling emotions, distinctly audible to the ear of thought, are the pulsations of some melancholy string of the heart, touched by an invisible hand."