Born a musician, she played to enliven her mother. She sang by
nature, and loved the German airs which her mother taught her. From
these lessons and these attempts at self-instruction came a phenomenon
not uncommon to natures with a musical vocation; Modeste composed, as
far as a person ignorant of the laws of harmony can be said to
compose, tender little lyric melodies. Melody is to music what imagery
and sentiment are to poetry, a flower that blossoms spontaneously.
Consequently, nations have had melodies before harmony,--botany comes
later than the flower. In like manner, Modeste, who knew nothing of
the painter's art except what she had seen her sister do in the way of
water-color, would have stood subdued and fascinated before the
pictures of Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Murillo, Rembrandt, Albert Durer,
Holbein,--in other words, before the great ideals of many lands.
Lately, for at least a month, Modeste had warbled the songs of
nightingales, musical rhapsodies whose poetry and meaning had roused
the attention of her mother, already surprised by her sudden eagerness
for composition and her fancy for putting airs into certain verses.
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