faces, his own ashy grey and inscrutable. Behind him all his orchestra were on their feet, an orchestra which numbered famous men in its ranks -Spohr and Mayseder, Romberg and Schuppanzigh and Dragonetti among the strings, Meyerbeer at the drums, and even old Salieri, Beethoven's own teacher.

As the master turned and bowed gravely, first on one side then towards the place where the isolated pair were standing, the ragged stranger made a sudden, convulsive movement as though to meet him, his mouth opened and some of those near thought they heard him ory aloud; then he shrank back, covering his face with his hands. When the music started he neither moved nor seemed to hear. It was a crashing military march of Pleyel, fit enough opening for the night in hand, but the stranger shook his head and never raised his eyes. "Not that, not that!" he muttered to himself again and again. Then came the "Battle Symphony" of Beethoven himself. The temper of of the the crowd was tumultuously alert; they went back to the great day for which the work had been written "Vittoria !" they whispered to one another in the triumph of the music, "Vittoria!" they shouted with thirsty, eager voices at the end-and the stranger against the orchestra rails above them raised his haggard face, terrible with a new secret exultation, and shouted hoarsely with them "Vittoria!"

VOL. CLXXXVIII.-NO. MCXXXIX.

Once again the conductor's baton was raised-in dead silence; as it fell the clear opening chord of the Seventh Symphony reached its great, first audience. In a moment the ragged stranger raised his eyes and fixed them on the crouching figure of Beethoven. His face was strained forward, his eyes cloudy under deep brows, his fingers rhythmically working.

The orchestra was

climbing as by giant stairs into the hurry and swing of the first movement. Beethoven sprang to his full height, shaking back his tangled hair, tearing his arms wide in the crashing fortissimo, shrinking down again into the hushed flowing of the pianissimo, swinging from side to side in the long, inexorable march of his music. And the stranger never moved his eyes from him; with the changing notes they changed and fired and glowed and fell.

Now the violins were feeling their way softly through the forest of sound, stealing out in clear voices between; then their lovely melody seemed to hesitate and fade away among the ringing brass, until the stranger waited breathless and motionless. Once more it started into life with the clarinets, and swept across the orchestra like sunshine over the yellow fields of spring. The stranger's fingers leaped and slid as over invisible strings; he clung with one arm to the rail of the orchestra, and leaning over towards the violins he seemed to cheer them on. Slower and more softly they played, 2 A

flickered down, like a quenching fire, into silence.

The end was not yet. Without a warning sign Beethoven sprang out in the fearful opening burst of the finale. Furious as the stormy sea, maddened into cruel, tremendous joy, the last movement broke on his astonished audience. Backwards and forwards the wild music was flung like the inhuman sport and laughter of giants in the first age of the world; in a reckless humour Beethoven was jesting with pigmy men. The stranger beside the orchestra seemed at last to have gone mad indeed. He swung his arms and laughed hoarsely, he clung heavily on the shoulder of the astonished boy beside him and laughed again; the perspiration streamed from his forehead and was lost among the tears of laughter on his cheeks.

The passion of the music wearied and began to fail, then turned into a broad, mid-ocean calm. Yet once more a voice of the old thunder returned from the depths, and with struggle and scurry of the violins all the storm was abroad again-sweeping up to heights till then unheard, the most tremendous climax of sound in all music. The audience was lifted in sheer wonder to its feet. Else it might have watched the stranger shake off restraining hands, fling up his two arms and shout aloud like a man struck suddenly. It might have noticed his head fallen on the orchestra rail, and his shoulders shaken with

long, tearless sobbing. As it was, there were few who saw or cared. In one mass they cheered and cheered again as men who claim fierce joys in a fierce time.

Bewildered and hesitating, Beethoven turned and bowed time after time. What could it mean to him-this living music of the crowd? For already the unspeakable tragedy of his deafness was closing all his career into a dead silence. He bowed again and again, then came down from his desk and made for the platform exit. As he passed swiftly and unheeding across the front of the stage the stranger clambered up and reached a bony hand to bar his way. The master stopped abruptly, gave an uncomprehending look into the fearfully eager face before him, wrung the outstretched hand brusquely, and passed on.

Immediately behind followed several of the players, one of whom, catching sight of a signal from the spectacled boy, came and leant over the orchestra rail. He held his violin still under his arm.

"Remember us to - night, Franzl," he said, "we sup at my hotel at midnight; we drink to the master he is wonderful, wonderful tonight!"

The ragged stranger thrust himself forward impetuously. "I am one of you," he cried. "I too have played for the master-I, Louis Boermer! Give me the violin," and he snatched almost savagely at it, "I will play for the master

again.

Louis Boermer! man, I am Louis Boermer!" The musician drew hastily back, staring more with perplexity than annoyance. "Two years ago," he said slowly, "I played in an orchestra beside Louis Boermer. But he was young-he was not like you." "Myname is Louis Boermer," the stranger cried again eagerly, "and yours is Mayseder. Two years ago we shared the same score. My God, they have all forgotten!"

on

The musician laid his hand the ragged stranger's shoulder. "Louis Boermer," he said kindly, "I cannot tell what this means. But tonight you are one of us. You will ask for me at my hotel; you will be shown to my room. After supper we will play again, you and I, from the same score together. Franz, till then I leave him with you."

Already the lights were being lowered one by one and the great hall was empty. The strange pair were alone, and Franz Schubert, with all his dreams before him, held the beaten and daunted Louis Boermer in his arms.

Viennese painters lolled in his chair, his yellow hair ruffled, his blue eyes brimming bright with mirth. All heads save one were turned towards him. "Go on, go on!" they cried. "Well," he went on, "the king lost his temper with the cook at dinner-time and said, "Where the deuce is the stork's other leg, villain?' The cook, all twittering with fright like this,"-here there were shouts of laughter-"answered, "An it please your Majesty, some storks have only one leg from birth, as your Majesty can see for your Majesty's self on yonder chimney-pot any day.' And sure enough there was a stork on one leg upon the chimney at the very moment. Then the king bawled for his gun

Louis Boermer raised his head from his arms and looked at the speaker. "That's enough of your children's stories," he growled. He wore a clean stock, but there were fresh wine - stains on his borrowed black coat; his face was very flushed, and his eyes were red and wild. In the sudden check of his companions' enjoyment he rose unsteadily to his feet. "Gentlemen!" he cried, "I give you damnation to the Emperor!" He raised his beer-mug, then dashed it to the table with such sudden fury that the handle was left in his hand among a crash of splintered shreds. A bright spurt of red started across his wrist as he collapsed into his seat and dropped his head wearily upon his arms again. There was

silence in the room, except that Spohr leaned over and whispered in Schubert's ear.

Before anyone else moved, Louis Boermer rose again to his feet, this time without a waver-stiff, alert, mastered by a new purpose. "The violin!" he said in a deep, trembling voice to May seder, who sat beside him. "I play for the master again." In silence he took it into his hand, tried it at his ear, tuned it, and raised the bow to play. He sounded several notes, but they did not ring true. His face clouded, and, with 8 shake of his shoulders, he began afresh. Halting and tremulous the sound came out, then steadied itself into the opening phrases of the C Minor Symphony. Through broken snatches and strange, false sounds the rhythm of that immortal music made its way; fell, moment by moment, into its gigantic, settled stride. Louis Boermer's face seemed more deeply sunken, and grew white as death. A long smear from his bleeding wrist across one cheek made it ghastlier still. His eyes saw nothing of the things around him; they were bent only on some compelling memory of years ago. "He beats too fast, too fast!" he muttered, then stopped, trembling and panting-almost in tears.

Yet once again he raised the bow, drew it wildly across the strings, and plunged into the passage of Beethoven's sternest and loneliest griefs. The master had listened to Fate "knocking at the door,"

Now he had slipped out of that strong music into things unheard-a wicked, incoherent tangle of sound. On a sudden he threw back his tortured face and stopped dead. "My God!" he screamed, "I cannot find it.

It will never come back!" He raised the violin in both hands and crashed it suddenly across his knee, then flung the splinters and tangled strings into the blazing hearth. When the astounded guests sprang with one impulse towards him, Louis Boermer held out his hands to them, laughing and chattering like a little child.

They led him gently away to a bedroom of the hotel and watched him fall asleep. Just as the faint December dawn crept up through the rain, the concierge was startled out of his dozing by the tattered figure of a man, who leaped from the stairs like a hunted animal, and was lost to sight in the misty street. As he sped past he seemed to whisper the name "Margaret!"