And then he crawled away like a snake, went into his room, closed the door and left me alone to my reflections.

Presently I heard the sound of the organ; and then I began to understand Erik's contemptuous phrase when he spoke about Opera music.

What I now heard was utterly different from what I had heard up to then.

His Don Juan Triumphant (for I had not a doubt but that he had rushed to his masterpiece to forget the horror of the moment) seemed to me at first one long, awful, magnificent sob.

But, little by little, it expressed every emotion, every suffering of which mankind is capable.