Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/172

 forgotten as they hearkened to that voice of hers which seemed, even as the nightingales' voices do when many of them sing together, to be like the sound of silver cymbals smiting one another.

Joconda discouraged and disliked this power of improvisation, this inborn melody.

'Who knows where it may lead her one day,' she thought; 'and if she became one of those singing-women who give their throats for gold, and show themselves half stripped upon the stage of the world, then had I better have left her to be eaten by the rats under the pine-trees of her father's lair.'

For Joconda was a Puritan at heart, having in her by her mother the Waldensian blood; and she did her best to discourage the gifts of voice in Saturnino's child. But nature is stronger than counsel, and Musa rhymed and sang. Knowing nothing of the metrical laws that govern the sonnet, she yet imitated these so well that she strung many a sonnet like a row of pearls; only never hardly could she keep the text unchanged, her fancy varied, and her spoken poems varied also as the quail's call varies, when he cries across the waving grass to his mate.

'Sing the same as yesterday,' her neigh-