“ ‘Come, let us go elsewhere. Like a boy with sweets, I have kept the best to the last. You must tighten the drum of your ear, adjust your sense of hearing to its finest pitch, in order to appreciate the delicate strains that should touch your heart.’ { 114}
“ ‘I hope,’ I replied, ‘to tune my tympanum so as to gather up the finest chords.’
“ ‘I am by no means certain about that,’ said my Mentor. ‘Even I myself, who am thoroughly initiated, lose some of the finest phrases. One must know by a sort of intuition how to discover the sentiments of the composer, just as a gourmet selects the carp’s tongue, while a vulgar person polishes the bones. Wherein do you think consists the charm of instrumental music?’
“ ‘In the selection of a choice melody,’ I replied, ‘and the happy association of such harmony as shall lend it force and beauty; just as in a picture the true artist so marshals his lights and colours as to give power of expression to his composition.’
“ ‘You are quite wrong,’ said he; ‘such notions are at least a century old. Nowadays the charm of music consists in the agility of the performer’s hands, in the shaggy vegetable-looking growth of the insect who manipulates the sonorous tool. It is undeniable that the harmony and sweetness of instrumental music lies in the nervous appearance of the animal who wakes the articulation of his instrument, in the colour of his skin, roll of his eyes, and the curious manner in which he curves his spine round the violoncello. We are about to listen to one of those profound artists who give a mystic, and at the same time lucid, rendering of the vague harmony that breathes in the moods and passions of life.’
“ ‘Oh, bother!’ I said, ‘such fine affairs will be far beyond my dull comprehension. No matter, lead on, my curiosity exceeds my discretion.’
“May-bug introduced me into the open calyx of a _Datura fastuosa_, richly decorated for an instrumental concert, to which one could only gain admittance by paying a very high price. The assembly was even more brilliant than that of the Academy. A number of insects were ranged round an instrument with a very long tail, from which were to be drawn prodigies of harmony by the feet of a famous centipede.