But now, as Valentine's hands powerfully
struck the keys, they both started and exchanged an involuntary glance of
keen surprise. The first few bars gave the lie to Valentine's assertion
that he could no longer play. A cataract of notes streamed from beneath
his fingers, and of notes so curiously combined, or following each other
in such a fantastic array, that they seemed arranged in the musical
pattern by an intelligence of the strangest order. It is often easy for a
cultivated ear to detect whether a given composition has sprung from the
brain of a Frenchman, a German, a Hungarian, a Russian. The wildness
of Bohemia, too, may be identified, or the vague sorrow of that northern
melody which seems an echo of voices heard amid the fiords or in pale
valleys near the farthest cape of Europe. And then there is that large
and lofty music of the stars and the spheres, of the mightiest passions
and of the deepest imaginings, that is of no definite country, but seems
to be of its own power and beauty, and not of the brain and heart of any
one man. It exists for eternity, and its creator can only wonder and
worship before it, far from conceit as God was when He said, "Let there
be light." Such music, too, is recognized on the instant by the men who
have loved and studied the secrets of the most divine of the arts, for
profound genius can utter itself as easily in five notes as in fifty.
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