She seemed in a somewhat dreamy and sentimental
humour, and played tender little melodies and simple plaintive airs, that
were more agreeable to Gustave than those grand examples of the
mathematics of counter-point which she so loved to interpret.
"You like this melody of Gretry's," said the music-mistress, as M.
Lenoble seated himself close to the piano. "I do not think you care for
classic sonatas--the great works of Gluck, or Bach, or Beethoven?"
"No," replied the young man frankly; "I do not care about anything I
can't understand. I like music that goes to one's heart."
"And you, too, Madame Meynell, like simple melodies?" mademoiselle asked
of that lady, who was not wont to come so near the little piano, or to
pay so much attention to Mademoiselle Servin's performance.
"O yes," murmured the Englishwoman, "I like such music as that."
"And you, too, think that Beethoven never composed simple plaintive
airs--for example," exclaimed the pianist, playing softly while she
spoke. "You think he wrote only sonatas, quartettes, fugues, grand,
operas, like _Fidelio_. Have you never heard this by your scientific
Beethoven?"
Hereupon she played "Hope told a flattering tale," with much tenderness
and delicacy. Her two hearers listened, mute and deeply moved. And then
from that familiar melody she glided softly into another, most musical,
most melancholy, which has been set to some of the sweetest verses that
Thomas Moore ever composed:
"Those evening bells, those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells
Of youth and home, and that sweet time
When last I heard their soothing chime!"
All the world sang the verses of Ireland's divine bard in those days.
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