“Corbetti’th, your Highneth meanth.” The puppy--strange scion of a house distinguished, in the persons of its head and firstborn, for both courage and nobility--glowed with gratified vanity. He really believed at last that ’twas he himself had originated that exquisite specific against the curse of the ocean, and that the Duke was his admiring debtor for it. He struck an attitude, slung his guitar into position, and, receiving a nod from his auditor, forthwith touched out the measure of Signor Francesco’s saraband. It was a quite graceful composition, and he played it well. The Duke was enraptured. “It is in truth a most sweet and moving piece,” he said, “and masterly rendered. I have never known to be displayed a more perfect accord between composer, performer, and instrument. Yet, if they were to be considered in order of merit, I should put, without hesitation, the executant in the first place and the guitar in the least.” “Yet it’th a good guitar, Thir,” ventured the glowing youth. He lifted and eyed with beatific patronage that faithful recorder of his genius. “Good,” answered the Duke; “yet good is not good enough to be the servant of the best. But where, indeed, could one look for an instrument worthy of an Orpheus?” “O, I bluth, your Highneth! Yet I will not thay but what I might give a better account of mythelf on an inthtrument pothethed by my thithter, my lady Chethterfield. It ith a wonder, that. Corbetti himthelf hath declared it.” “Indeed?” James spoke abstractedly, seeming hardly to attend. “Now, will you make me your debtor, my lord, for a hint or two. It would flatter my poor skill to expend it on so rare a melody.” He was so full of compliment and ingratiation, that the first diffidence of the sweet Earl was soon exchanged for a vanity approaching condescension. He took his royal pupil in hand, and conducted him over the opening bars of the composition. But the Duke, strange to say, proved himself a most sad bungler. He could not, for some reason, master the air, and finally, with a shrug of impatience, he desisted, and begged his instructor to repeat to him his own version of certain ingenious passages. “I will murder the innocents no longer,” quoth he, handing back the instrument. “Render them again in living phrase, and so take the taste of my own villainy out of my mouth.” “It is thith way,” said his lordship, and went on thrumming most mellifluously. “Ah!” said the Duke. “If one could take the way of genius only by having it pointed out to one! Yet, did not that last note ring a little false?” “No, by my fay, Thir.” “You may be right. Yet methinks I have a very hair-splitting ear. It will quarrel on so little as a fraction of a tone. Not the player, but the string, maybe, was to blame. Even your best of instruments will lack perfection, betraying weak places in their constitution, like broken letters in a printed type. Sound it again. ... Ah! it is not quite true, indeed.”