The gray-bearded master has trained many boys, and while kind and tender, is severe in requiring his pupils to do their best. The score on which the boy's eyes are resting is familiar to him through long years of use, and he feels that it is sacred. He shivers with horror when a note is flatted, as it sometimes is by a giddy singer whose ear is not accurate or whose voice is not disciplined.
The little fellow to whom the master is listening so critically while the sweet full tone chords so perfectly with the long-drawn note on the violin will be only one among a multitude of others in the great cathedral. But when the choir uplifts the Te Deum or the Inflammatus with its waves of melody floods every nook and corner of the grand church, one voice untrained and out of tune might mar the harmony.
[THE MULATTO OF MURILLO.]
A TRUE STORY.
One beautiful summer morning, about the year 1630, several youths of Seville approached the dwelling of the celebrated painter Murillo, where they arrived nearly at the same time. After the usual salutation they entered the studio. Murillo was not yet there, and each of the pupils walked up quickly to his easel to examine if the paint had dried, or perhaps to admire his work of the previous evening.
"Pray, gentlemen," exclaimed Isturitz, angrily, "which of you remained behind in the studio last night?"
"What an absurd question! Don't you recollect that we all came away together?"
With these words Mendez, with a careless air, approached his easel, when an exclamation of astonishment escaped him, and he gazed in mute surprise on his canvas, on which was roughly sketched a most beautiful head of the Virgin.
At this moment some one was heard entering the room. The pupils turned at the sound, and all made a respectful obeisance to the great master.