The rain would beat on the window of the little room, and in the dull grey twilight the musician would turn over his portfolios, or letting his hands wander over the harmonium, he would talk the while with Gabriel, who was seated on the bed.
The musician would grow excited, speaking of his love of art.

In the midst of some peroration he would become suddenly silent, and bending over the instrument its melodies would fill the room, and floating down the staircase would reach the ears of the walkers in the cloister like a distant echo.

Suddenly he would cease playing and resume his chattering, as though afraid that with his absent-mindedness his ideas would evaporate.
The silent Luna was the only listener he had met with in the Cathedral; the first who would listen to him for long hours without ridiculing him or thinking him crazy, and who often showed by his short interruptions and questions the pleasure with which he listened.
The end of the evening's conversation was always the same--the greatness of Beethoven, the idol of the poor musician.
"I have loved him all my life," said the Chapel-master, "I was educated by a Jeronomite friar, an old man driven from his convent who, after leaving it, had wandered over the world as a professor of the violoncello.

The Jeronomites were the great musicians of the Church.

You did not know this, neither should I have known it if this holy man had not taken me under his protection soon after I was born, and been to me a real father.