by his ready skill in various things.  We all took him at first for a crusty old bachelor, and he never contradicted us.  After he had been living here some time, he went away, nobody knew where, and returned at the end of some months.  The evening following his return his windows were lit up to an unusual extent!  This alone was sufficient to arouse his neighbors’ attention, and they soon heard the surpassingly beautiful voice of a female singing to the accompaniment of a piano.  Then the music of a violin was heard chiming in and entering upon a keen ardent contest with the voice.  They knew at once that the player was the Councillor.  I myself mixed in the large crowd which had gathered in front of his house to listen to this extraordinary concert; and I must confess that, besides this voice and the peculiar, deep, soul-stirring impression which the execution made upon me, the singing of the most celebrated artistes whom I had ever heard seemed to me feeble and void of expression.  Until then I had had no conception of such long-sustained notes, of such nightingale trills, of such undulations of musical sound, of such swelling up to the strength of organ-notes, of such dying away to the faintest whisper.  There was not one whom the sweet witchery did not enthral; and when the singer ceased, nothing but soft sighs broke the impressive silence.  Somewhere about midnight the Councillor was heard talking violently, and another male voice seemed, to judge from the tones, to be reproaching him, whilst at intervals the broken words of a sobbing girl could be detected.  The Councillor continued to shout with increasing violence, until he fell into that drawling, singing way that you know.  He was interrupted by a loud scream from the girl, and then all was as still as death.  Suddenly a loud racket was heard on the stairs; a young man rushed out sobbing, threw himself into a post-chaise which stood below, and drove rapidly away.  The next day the Councillor was very cheerful, and nobody had the courage to question him about the events of the previous night.  But on inquiring of the housekeeper, we gathered that the Councillor had brought home with him an extraordinarily pretty young lady whom he called Antonia, and she it was who had sung so beautifully.  A young man also had come along with them; he had treated Antonia very tenderly, and must evidently have been her betrothed.  But he, since the Councillor peremptorily insisted on it, had had to go away again in a hurry.  What the relations between Antonia and the Councillor are has remained until now a secret, but this much is certain, that he tyrannizes over the poor girl in the most hateful fashion.  He watches her as Doctor Bartholo watches his ward in the Barber of Seville; she hardly dare show herself at the window; and if, yielding now and again to her earnest entreaties, he takes her into society, he follows her with Argus’ eyes, and will on no account suffer a musical note to be sounded, far less let Antonia sing—­ indeed,