Sealed Lips — page 23: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SEALED LIPS, 15 must have their day. You, my dear fellow, have come too soon or too late.” The old professor did not convince Godefroid, for two other voices spoke louder stillin the young master’s ear than experience and wisdom. One of these voices was that of immortal art. I will tell you of the other later. Until he was forty years old his profession had been his only faith, hope, and_love. Even from his youth art, like a beneficent god, had taken him by the hand in the humble school-house of a village in Touraine, where his father gained a scanty subsist- ence as instructor. One day the lady of the castle, Countess O’Far- rell, mother of Patrice, was surprised to hear the little parish church organ depart from its vulgar flourishes and play a sweet touching melody. The organist was sent for to come to the castle—castles were of some use in those days—and was compli- mented and questioned. The little fellow, fourteen years old, told how, until then, nature had been his only teacher. The sacred spark had kindled in him, he said, the first time he heard the talented organist at the cathedral play, on a trip that he had taken to the city with his father when very young. Still filled with ecstasy, he returned to his humble home, and passed the entire night in trying to find on a dilapidated old instrument the harmony that had transported him the night before into a new world. Thus, step by step, degree by degree, guided GOMmIGbDooks (Cl Q)