but talking with a feigned and courtly indifference to his dear friend, "the profound scholar and perfect gentleman," Horatio; and in the gloom around them seemed to be arising the questionable shape which was
"So horridly to shake his disposition."
Strangely the music displayed its fine forms, mingling most curiously with, while it created, my fancied pictures,—and though my senses followed the changing visions, which flitted like a phantasmagoria before my eyes, my mind traced clearly the music train; but when the diminished seventh resolved gracefully into the melody which is taken alternately by 'cello and viola,—the close of the first movement,—my vision faded gradually away.
There was a short pause, but the fine artists who were executing the Quintette did not by any undignified movement break the illusion which the music had created; although a violin-string needed raising, it was done with quiet and skilful dexterity, and they proceeded to the second movement.
Smoothly and mournfully the Funeral March opened. The solemn melody which glides softly through it is totally unlike the restless trampings of Fate heard in other great compositions of the kind; yet Fate is unmistakably there, quiet, but relentless, like
"the Pontic sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on."
The Scherzo, with its beautiful octave run for the piano and delicious change of harmony in the next measure,—the weird melody sketched out by the first violin, and then yielded up to the piano,—and the strange, but truly inspired, modulations which follow,—lapped my spirit in a sweet bewilderment. I forgot all the before and after of that "sad and incapable story" of human life and love which my fancy had been weaving from the coarse, vulgar threads of common rumor; and even the pictures vanished which had been evoked of the young prince,
"In his blown youth blasted with ecstasy."
I ceased following the modulations, interesting as they were; for often music fills the thoughts so full that the ear forgets to listen to the sweet harmonies.
But I was again aroused by the fine suspension and sequence which open the last movement of the Quintette,—the Allegro ma non troppo. The fugued passage, the reiteration of the opening theme, and the sad close were all as tragic as the last scene in "Hamlet," the