host sat on in the empty hail, fondly talking to his guest of his bygone
Paris and fondly learning of the later Paris that the guest had seen. And
thus the two lingered, exchanging their enthusiasms, while the candles
waned, and the long-haired Indians stood silent behind the chairs.

"But we must go to my piano," the host exclaimed. For at length they had
come to a lusty difference of opinion. The Padre, with ears critically
deaf, and with smiling, unconvinced eyes, was shaking his head, while
young Gaston sang Trovatore at him, and beat upon the table with a fork.

"Come and convert me, then," said Padre Ignacio, and he led the way.
"Donizetti I have always admitted. There, at least, is refinement. If the
world has taken to this Verdi, with his street-band music--But there,
now! Sit down and convert me. Only don't crush my poor little Erard with
Verdi's hoofs. I brought it when I came. It is behind the times, too.
And, oh, my dear boy, our organ is still worse. So old, so old! To get a
proper one I would sacrifice even this piano of mine in a moment--only
the tinkling thing is not worth a sou to anybody except its master. But
there! Are you quite comfortable?" And having seen to his guest's needs,
and placed spirits and cigars and an ash-tray within his reach, the Padre
sat himself comfortably in his chair to hear and expose the false
doctrine of Il Trovatore.

By midnight all of the opera that Gaston could recall had been played and
sung twice. The convert sat in his chair no longer, but stood singing by
the piano. The potent swing and flow of rhythms, the torrid, copious
inspiration of the South, mastered him. "Verdi has grown," he cried.
"Verdi is become a giant." And he swayed to the beat of the melodies, and
waved an enthusiastic arm. He demanded every note. Why did not Gaston
remember it all? But if the barkentine would arrive and bring the whole