The orchestra fills, one by one; instruments tune up--a familiar cacophony, sweet with seductive promise. The conductor takes his seat--applause--a hush--three taps--the baton waves once, twice, thrice--the eternal fountain of magic is let loose, and at the very first jet "_The cares that infest the day Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away_." Then lo! the curtain rises, and straightway we are in Seville--Seville, after Pentonville! Count Alma-viva, lordly, gallant, and gay beneath his disguise, twangs his guitar, and what sounds issue from it! For every instrument that was ever invented is in that guitar--the whole orchestra! "_Ecco ridente il cielo_....," so sings he (with the most beautiful male voice of his time) under Rosina's balcony; and soon Rosina's voice (the most beautiful female voice of hers) is heard behind her curtains--so girlish, so innocent, so young and light-hearted, that the eyes fill with involuntary tears. Thus encouraged, he warbles that his name is Lindoro, that he would fain espouse her; that he is not rich in the goods of this world, but gifted with an inordinate, inexhaustible capacity for love (just like Peter Ibbetson); and vows that he will always warble to her, in this wise, from dawn till when daylight sinks behind the mountain. But what matter the words? "Go on, my love, go on, _like this_!" warbles back Rosina--and no wonder--till the dull, despondent, commonplace heart of Peter Ibbetson has room for nothing else but sunny hope and love and joy! And yet it is all mere sound--impossible, unnatural, unreal nonsense! Or else, in a square building, decent and well-lighted enough, but not otherwise remarkable--the very chapel of music--four business-like gentlemen, in modern attire and spectacles, take their places on an unpretentious platform amid refined applause; and soon the still air vibrates to the trembling of sixteen strings--only that and nothing more! But in that is all Beethoven, or Schubert, or Schumann has got to say to us for the moment, and what a say it is! And with what consummate precision and perfection it is said--with what a mathematical certainty, and yet with what suavity, dignity, grace, and distinction! They are the four greatest players in the world, perhaps; but they forget themselves, and we forget them (as it is their wish we should), in the master whose work they interpret so reverently, that we may yearn with his mighty desire and thrill with his rapture and triumph, or ache with his heavenly pain and submit with his divine resignation. Not all the words in all the tongues that ever were--dovetail them, rhyme them, alliterate them, torture them as you will--can ever pierce to the uttermost depths of the soul of man, and let in a glimpse of the Infinite, as do the inarticulate tremblings of those sixteen strings. Ah, songs without words are the best!