“How wonderful this is!” exclaimed Flemming, transported by his feelings.  “How the chorus swells and dies, like the wind of summer!  How those passages of mysterious import seem to wave to and fro, like the swaying branches of trees; from which anon some solitary sweetvoice darts off like a bird, and floats away and revels in the bright, warm sunshine!  And then mark! how, amid the chorus of a hundred voices and a hundred instruments,—­of flutes, and drums, and trumpets,—­this universal shout and whirl-wind of the vexed air, you can so clearly distinguish the melancholy vibration of a single string, touched by the finger,—­a mournful, sobbing sound!  Ah, this is indeed human life! where in the rushing, noisy crowd, and amid sounds of gladness, and a thousand mingling emotions, distinctly audible to the ear of thought, are the pulsations of some melancholy string of the heart, touched by an invisible hand.”

Then came, in the midst of these excited feelings, the ballet; drawing its magic net about the soul.  And soon, from the tangled yet harmonious mazes of the dance, came forth a sylph-like form, her scarf floating behind her, as if she were fanning the air with gauze-like wings.  Noiseless as a feather or a snow-flake falls, did her feet touch the earth.  She seemed to floatin the air, and the floor to bend and wave under her, as a branch, when a bird alights upon it, and takes wing again.  Loud and rapturous applause followed each wonderful step, each voluptuous movement; and, with a flushed cheek and burning eye, and bosom panting to be free, stood the gracefully majestic figure for a moment still, and then the winged feet of the swift dancing-girls glanced round her, and she was lost again in the throng.

“How truly exquisite this is!” exclaimed the Baron, after joining loudly in the applause.  “What a noble figure!  What grace! what attitudes!  How much soul in every motion! how much expression in every gesture!  I assure you, it produces upon me the same effect as a beautiful poem.  It is a poem.  Every step is a word; and the whole together a poem!”

The Baron and Flemming were delighted with the scene; and at the same time exceedingly amused with the countenance of an old prude in the next box, who seemed to look upon the wholemagic show, with such feelings as Michal, Saul’s daughter, experienced, when she looked from her window and saw King David dancing and leaping with his scanty garments.

“After all,” said Flemming, “the old French priest was not so far out of the way, when he said, in his coarse dialect, that the dance is the Devil’s procession; and paint and ornaments, the whetting of the devil’s sword; and the ring that is made in dancing, the devil’s grindstone, whereon he sharpens his sword; and finally, that a ballet is the pomp and mass of the Devil, and whosoever entereth therein, entereth into his pomp and mass; for the woman who singeth is the prioress of the Devil, and they that answer are clerks, and they that look on are parishioners, and the cymbals and flutes are the bells, and the musicians that play are the ministers, of the Devil.”