"My charming concerts are at an end! Quantz, Brenda, and my glorious Graun are no more.

While they are listening to the heavenly choir, I must be content with the miserable, idle chatter of men; the thunder of battle deafening my ears, to which that mad, ambitious Emperor of Austria hopes to force me!" As the king thus soliloquized, he involuntarily drew from the box the beautiful ebony flute, exquisitely ornamented with silver.

A smile played around his delicate mouth.

He raised the flute to his lips, and a melancholy strain floated through the stillness--the king's requiem to the dead, his farewell to the dying! No sound of the outer world penetrated that lonely room.

The guard of honor, on duty upon the Sans-Souci terrace, halted suddenly, as the sad music fell upon his ear.