At last the looked-for moment arrived, when the priest, after bowing low and murmuring the sacred words, took the host in his hands. The bells gave forth a peal, like a rain of crystal notes; the transparent waves of incense rose, and the organ sounded.
But its first chord was drowned by a horrible clamor which filled the whole church. Bagpipes, horns, timbrels, drums, every instrument known to the populace, lifted up their discordant voices all at once.
The confusion and clangor lasted but a few seconds. As the noises began, so they ended, all together.
The second chord, full, bold, magnificent, sustained itself, pouring from the organ`s metal tubes like a cascade of inexhaustible and sonorous harmony.
Murmur like rain
Celestial songs like those that caress the ear in moments of ecstasy; songs which the soul perceives, but which the lip cannot repeat; single notes of a distant melody, which sound at intervals, borne on the breeze; the rustle of leaves kissing each other on the trees with a murmur like rain; trills of larks which rise with quivering songs from among the flowers like a flight of arrows to the sky; nameless sounds, overwhelming as the roar of a tempest; fluttering hymns, which seemed to be mounting to the throne of the Lord like a mixture of light and sound—all were expressed by the organ`s hundred voices, with more vigor, more subtle poetry, more weird coloring, than had ever been known before.
When the organist came down from the loft the crowd which pressed up to the stairway was so great, and their eagerness to see and greet him so intense, that the chief judge, fearing, and not without reason, that he would be suffocated among them all, ordered some of the officers to open a path for the organist, with their staves of office, so that he could reach the high altar, where the prelate was waiting for him.
“You perceive,” said the archbishop, “that I have come all the way from my palace to hear you. Now, are you going to be as cruel as Maese Perez? He would never save me the journey, by going to play the Christmas Eve mass in the cathedral.”
“Next year,” replied the organist, “I promise to give you the pleasure ; since, for all the gold in the world, I would never play this organ again.”
“But why not?” interrupted the prelate.
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