A friend with a tenor voice used to sing _Lohengrin_ in Catalan.

Enthusiasm made the most excitable roar, "the hymn ...

the hymn!" It was not possible to misunderstand.

For them there was only one hymn in existence, and in a trilling undertone they would accompany the liturgic music of _Los Segadores_ (The Reapers).
[The revolutionary song of Catalunia, originated by a band of reapers in the seventeenth century.] Ulysses used to recall with homesickness his life as commander of a transatlantic liner,--a wide, universal life of incessant and varied horizons, and cosmopolitan crowds.

He could see himself detained on deck by groups of elegant maidens who would beg him for new dances in the coming week.