"All things bright and all things fair," sang the music, flowing and beautiful, gemmed with star-like points of song. The skylark called from the seventh heaven, and the wind and the rivers, the echoes of the hills, the shepherd's song and the bells of sheep, the dim blue violets and dancing daffodils made answer, heaven echoing earth, earth heaven, till, deepening and changing, as a landscape stained with cloud shadows, the music became overcast as if by the shadow of that tragic figure Man. Man, for whom Spring is everything, and for whom Spring cares not at all. Man, who gives a soul to Nature as her mortal lover gave a soul to Undine; Man, who pursues a shadow for ever, even as the mysterious hunters in the hunting-song pursued the shadow stag. "Hound and horn give voice and tongue, Fill the woods with music gay; Let your echoes sweet be flung To the Brocken far away." Yes; there it was, the song that seemed woven in the texture of my life; and as I sat, holding Eloise's hand and listening, it seemed to me that the overture of "Undine" was in some way connected with the story of my life, so gay and joyous in the opening bars, deepening now and shadowed by Fate. There it was, the horn and the echoes of the horn leading the shadowy dogs and the ghostly huntsmen--where? In pursuit of a shadow. Whither? That was the last mysterious message of the overture, in whose last bars, sublime and peaceful, lay spread the mysterious country where all hunting ceases, recalling from the loveliest of poems that country where Orion, the hunter of the shadowy stag, possessed of Merope, dwells with her in a remote and dense grove of cedars for ever and happily, whilst the tamed shadow-stag drinks for ever at the stream. "The shadow of a stag stoops to the stream. Swift rolling toward the cataract, and drinks deeply. Throughout the day unceasingly it drinks, And when the sun hath vanished utterly, Arm over arm the cedars spread their shade Above that shadowy stag whose antlers still Hang o'er the stream." When the curtain fell on the first act of "Undine," the opera was already a success. "Ah, yes," said M. le Vicomte, "that is music. Beside it, the drumming and trumpeting of Wagner sound like the noise of a village fair." Then, turning to Eloise: "My congratulations." Then he left the box, to talk to friends and take his share in the incipient triumph. It was really a triumph for him. He had boasted at the clubs of the new musician he had discovered; and it was a supreme satisfaction to him that his diamond had not turned out to be a piece of glass. "Eloise," said I, "it's a success already; and if I had written ten thousand operas of my own, and they had all been successful on the same night, I would not feel the pleasure I feel now. Dear old Franzius----"