The same phrase is used of a poet without inspiration.

Acoustics give the lie to the popular belief.

You may break the mirrors, remove the covers with a snip of the scissors, and tear the yellow anterior membrane, but these mutilations do not silence the song of the Cigale; they merely change its quality and weaken it.

The chapels are resonators; they do not produce the sound, but merely reinforce it by the vibration of their anterior and posterior membranes; while the sound is modified by the dampers as they are opened more or less widely.
The actual source of the sound is elsewhere, and is somewhat difficult for a novice to find.

On the outer wall of either chapel, at the ridge formed by the junction of back and belly, is a tiny aperture with a horny circumference masked by the overlapping damper.