patron of the fine arts:  a young couple was going to be married, and had invited the friend of the bride-groom, an interesting but melancholy and mysterious young man, to their wedding.  Intimately connected with the whole affair was a strange old organist.  The mystic relations which gradually developed between the old musician, the melancholy young man and the bride, were to grow out of the unravelment of certain intricate events, in a somewhat similar manner to that of the mediaeval story above related.  Here was the same idea:  the young man mysteriously killed, the equally strange sudden death of his friend’s bride, and the old organist found dead on his bench after the playing of an impressive requiem, the last chord of which was inordinately prolonged as if it never would end.

I never finished this novel:  but as I wanted to write the libretto for an opera, I took up the theme again in its original shape, and built on this (as far as the principal features went) the following dramatic plot:—­

Two great houses had lived in enmity, and had at last decided to end the family feud.  The aged head of one of these houses invited the son of his former enemy to the wedding of his daughter with one of his faithful partisans.  The wedding feast is thus used as an opportunity for reconciling the two families.  Whilst the guests are full of the suspicion and fear of treachery, their young leader falls violently in love with the bride of his newly found ally.  His tragic glance deeply affects her; the festive escort accompanies her to the bridal chamber, where she is to await her beloved; leaning against her tower-window she sees the same passionate eyes fixed on her, and realises that she is face to face with a tragedy.

When he penetrates into her chamber, and embraces her with frantic passion, she pushes him backwards towards the balcony, and throws him over the parapet into the abyss, from whence his mutilated remains are dragged by his companions.  They at once arm themselves against the presumed treachery, and call for vengeance; tumult and confusion fill the courtyard:  the interrupted wedding feast threatens to end in a night of slaughter.  The venerable head of the house at last succeeds in averting the catastrophe.  Messengers are sent to bear the tidings of the mysterious calamity to the relatives of the victim:  the corpse itself shall be the medium of reconciliation, for, in the presence of the different generations of the suspected family, Providence itself shall decide which of its members has been guilty of treason.  During the preparations for the obsequies the bride shows signs of approaching madness; she flies from her bridegroom, refuses to be united to him, and locks herself up in her tower-chamber.  Only when, at night, the gloomy though gorgeous ceremony commences, does she appear at the head of her women to be present at the burial service, the gruesome solemnity of which is interrupted by the news of the approach of hostile