He did not move the hills and the rocks with his music, because those days are passed away,—­the days when Orpheus had all Nature for his audience, when the audience would not keep its seat.  In those days trees and rocks may have held less firm root in the soil:  it was nearer the old Chaos-times, and they had not lost the habit of the whirling dance.  The trees had not found their “continental” home, and the rocks were not yet wedded to their places:  so they could each enjoy one more bachelor-dance before settling into their staid vegetable and mineral domestic happiness.

Our musician had no power, then, to move them from their place of ages:  he did not stir them as much as the morning and evening breezes among the leaves, or the streams trickling down among the great rocks and wearing their way over precipices.  But he moved men and women, of all natures and feelings.  He could translate Bach and Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Mozart,—­all the great poet-musicians that are silent now, and must be listened to through an interpreter.  All the great people and all the little people came to hear him.  A princess fell in love with him.  She would have married him.  She did everything but ask him to marry her.  Indeed, some of his friends declared she did this; but that cannot be believed.

“You ought to be satisfied,” said one of his friends to the musician, one day; “all the world admires you; money drops from the keys of your piano-forte; and a princess is in love with you.”

“With me?” answered the musician; “with my music, perhaps.  You talk nonsense, when you talk of her falling in love with me, of her marrying a poor musician.  What then?  To have one instrument more in her palace!  Let her marry her piano-forte,—­or her violin, if she objects to a quadruped!”

“You are as blind as Homer,” said his friend.  “Can’t you see that her love is purely personal?  Would she care to give a title to a pianist, if he were any other than Arnold Wulff?  If you had other eyes in your head, or if there were another man inside even that same face of yours, the strains might flow out under your fingers like streams from Paradise, in vain, so far as her heart was concerned.  Your voice is quite as persuasive as your music, with her.”

“If so, why must she put a title in front of my name, before I am worthy of her?” asked Arnold.  “She offers me some square miles of uninhabitable forest, because, as owner of them, I can wear a Von before my name.  I can put it on as an actor on the stage wears a chapeau of the Quatorze time.  It is one of the properties of the establishment.  You may call it a livery of the palace, if you please.  I may make love to her on the stage as ’My Lord.’  But my own little meagre part of Arnold,—­thank you, I prefer it, without my princess.”

“And yet, if you have the palace, a princess is necessary.  With your love of harmony, you yourself would not be pleased to see a cotton dress hanging across a damask couch, or rude manners interrupt a stately dinner.  The sound of the titles clangs well as you are ushered up through the redoubled apartments.  If the play is in the Quatorze time, let it be played out.  A princess deserves at least a lord for a husband.”