compelled to furnish his own slow music and to play on a flute as he
died.



CHAPTER III.


THE MEN OF FLANDERS

The Belgian historian, Van der Straeten, has illuminated the crowded
shelves of his big work, "La Musique aux Pays-Bas avant Le XIXe Siècle,"
with various little instances of romance that occurred to the numberless
minstrels and weavers of tangled counterpoint in the Netherlands of the
old time. Some of these instances are simply hints, upon which the
fervid imagination will spin imaginary love yarns in endless gossamer.
Thus of Marc Houtermann (1537--1577) "Prince of musicians" at Brussels.
All we know of his wife is from her epitaph. She died the same year he
died--so we fancy it was of a broken heart she died; and she was only
twenty-six at the time--so we can imagine how young and lithely
beautiful she must have been. Her name, too, was Joanna Gavadia--a sweet
name, surely never wasted on an ungraceful woman; and on her tombstone
she is called "pudicissima et musicis scientissima." So she was good
and she was skilful in music, like Bach's second wife; and doubtless,
like her, of infinite help and delight to her husband.

Van der Straeten's book is cluttered up with documents of musty
interest. Among them are a number that gain a pathetic interest by the
frequence of the appeals of musicians or their widows for a pittance of
charity from the hand of some royal or ducal patron. If there be in