“Harry,” I said, “what are you doing there?”

“Nothing,” said he in the mirror, “I am only waiting. I am waiting for death.”

“Where is death then?”

“Coming,” said the other. And I heard from the empty spaces within the theatre the sound of music, a beautiful and awful music, that music from Don Giovanni that heralds the approach of the guest of stone. With an awful and an iron clang it rang through the ghostly house, coming from the other world, from the immortals.

“Mozart,” I thought, and with the word conjured up the most beloved and the most exalted picture that my inner life contained.

At that, there rang out behind me a peal of laughter, a clear and ice-cold laughter out of a world beyond unknown to men, a world born of sufferings, purged and divine humour. I turned about, frozen through with the blessing of this laughter, and there came Mozart. He passed by me laughing as he went and, strolling quietly on, he opened the door of one of the boxes and went in. Eagerly I followed the god of my youth, the object, all my life long, of love and veneration. The music rang on. Mozart was leaning over the front of the box. Of the theatre nothing was to be seen. Darkness filled the boundless space.

“You see,” said Mozart, “it goes all right without the saxophone⁠—though to be sure, I shouldn’t wish to tread on the toes of that famous instrument.”

“Where are we?” I asked.

“We are in the last act of Don Giovanni . Leporello is on his knees. A superb scene, and the music is fine too. There is a lot in it, certainly, that’s very human, but you can hear the other world in it⁠—the laughter, eh?”