“In the Duchesse de Langeais’ boudoir, my friend.” “No, no. No more of the Duchess, no more of Langeais; I am with my dear Antoinette.” “Will you do me the pleasure to stay where you are,” she said, laughing and pushing him back, gently however. “So you have never loved me,” he retorted, and anger flashed in lightning from his eyes. “No, dear”; but the “No” was equivalent to “Yes.” “I am a great ass,” he said, kissing her hands. The terrible queen was a woman once more.--“Antoinette,” he went on, laying his head on her feet, “you are too chastely tender to speak of our happiness to anyone in this world.” “Oh!” she cried, rising to her feet with a swift, graceful spring, “you are a great simpleton.” And without another word she fled into the drawing-room. “What is it now?” wondered the General, little knowing that the touch of his burning forehead had sent a swift electric thrill through her from foot to head. In hot wrath he followed her to the drawing-room, only to hear divinely sweet chords. The Duchess was at the piano. If the man of science or the poet can at once enjoy and comprehend, bringing his intelligence to bear upon his enjoyment without loss of delight, he is conscious that the alphabet and phraseology of music are but cunning instruments for the composer, like the wood and copper wire under the hands of the executant. For the poet and the man of science there is a music existing apart, underlying the double expression of this language of the spirit and senses. _Andiamo mio ben_ can draw tears of joy or pitying laughter at the will of the singer; and not unfrequently one here and there in the world, some girl unable to live and bear the heavy burden of an unguessed pain, some man whose soul vibrates with the throb of passion, may take up a musical theme, and lo! heaven is opened for them, or they find a language for themselves in some sublime melody, some song lost to the world. The General was listening now to such a song; a mysterious music unknown to all other ears, as the solitary plaint of some mateless bird dying alone in a virgin forest. “Great Heavens! what are you playing there?” he asked in an unsteady voice. “The prelude of a ballad, called, I believe, _Fleuve du Tage_.” “I did not know that there was such music in a piano,” he returned. “Ah!” she said, and for the first time she looked at him as a woman looks at the man she loves, “nor do you know, my friend, that I love you, and that you cause me horrible suffering; and that I feel that I must utter my cry of pain without putting it too plainly into words. If I did not, I should yield----But you see nothing.” “And you will not make me happy!” “Armand, I should die of sorrow the next day.” The General turned abruptly from her and went. But out in the street he brushed away the tears that he would not let fall.