The villagers, by groups, in twos, in threes, with happy faces, coming from far and near, poured into the church. Paying no heed to any one as he passed, Franz entered by the side door, and went immediately up into the organ-gallery. With glad eyes, the little Alice saw the church in its festival decorations. Beautiful wreaths of cedar coiled themselves around the great pillars, and crept in waving lines over altar, arch, and casement, their unfading green sometimes flecked with amber, sometimes dyed in violet light, as the rays of the sun caught the tints from the windows of stained glass. Resting against the center of the chancel rail, a magnificent cross of hot house flowers loaded the air with the perfumes of summer—an incense more pure and holy than the incense of myrrh; and on either side sprays of English ivy, in long and twining branches, displayed their wax-like leaves. The last vibrations of the bell died away. The congregation chanted its anthem; the minister read the Christmas service; and the first strains of the organ-voluntary, after the close of the litany, sounded through the church. The little Alice, with a throbbing pulse, crept close to Franz as he played; but it was only the familiar music, that the world already knew by heart, and had heard a thousand times before. Poor Franz, warring against himself, had been driven back to the composition of others, though he knew he possessed within him a power that should have created, that should have raised him above all written measure. But now even his execution was a dead, mechanical labor. A swift expression of keen disappointment fell upon the child’s face. She looked up at him, with a gesture, slight but strangely appealing, and with eyes filled by a sorrowful reproach—such a look as one might wear in the last moment, whose most cherished friend had suddenly turned and dealt him a death-blow. But Franz played on mechanically, with the pang of despair at his heart. Suddenly, half-way in a bar, in the very midst of a single note almost, a sensation of fear came upon him—an overwhelming awe that seemed to lock his muscles and turn his hands into stone. The organ ceased abruptly; he sat motionless as a statue; and a death-like silence reigned throughout the church. Had the same unaccountable awe fallen upon the congregation, too? The whole universe waited.