The perfume of oranges rose from the gardens and streamed in through the widely-opened doors on to the balcony, and was wafted intoxicatingly through the apartments. Clear, full of great beauty and intense peace, lay the moonlight above the old town, and the dim distance disappeared in the blue, misty vapour. The fountain rustled dreamily amongst the blooming trees, and the light which shone in the falling drops illuminated with powerful distinctness the whole row of apartments, with their marble treasures of art; it illuminated the picture in the richly gilt frame, so that the witch-like, beautiful figure above seemed to live; and the same light fell upon the countenance of the man, whose brow, amid all this beauty and all this peace, remained so heavily overcast. How many years, and, indeed, much besides which weighed more heavily than years only, lay between those long northern winter nights on which the young musician created his first compositions, and this balmy moonlight night of the south, on which the world-renowned Rinaldo repeated, in endless variations, the principal theme of his newest opera. And yet all vanished in this hour. Softly, recollection passed before him, and let long-forgotten days live again, long-forgotten pictures stand before him; the little garden house, with its old-fashioned furniture, and the stunted vines over the window, the miserable little strip of garden with its few trees and shrubs, and the high, prison-like walls around it; the narrow, gloomy house, with the so intensely hated business-room. Faint, colourless pictures--and yet they would not give way, as above them floated smilingly a pair of large, deep, blue child's eyes, which only there had shone for the father, and which here, in this orbit, full of poetry and beauty, he sought for in vain. He had seen them so often in his child's face, and also once--somewhere else. The remembrance of this was certainly but dim, almost forgotten; they had only then shown themselves to him for a moment, before being veiled again immediately, as they had been for years; but it was still those eyes, which hovered before him, as now, out of the storming and rolling tones, a magically sweet melody arose. An endless longing spoke in it, a pain which his lips would not utter, and thus formed a bridge across into the far distant past. Now had genius burst the fetters which then oppressed and confined him; now he stood aloft on the once dreamed-of heights. All that life and success, fame and love could give had become his portion, and now--again like a storm, it swept over the notes, wild, passionate, bacchante-like, and through it ever again that melody came plaintively, with its touching pain, its restless longing, which could not be pacified. * * * * *