In Seville, in the very portico of Santa Inés, and while, on Christmas
Eve, I was waiting for the Midnight Mass to begin, I heard this
tradition from a lay-sister of the convent.
As was natural, after hearing it, I waited impatiently for the ceremony
to commence, eager to be present at a miracle.
Nothing could be less miraculous, however, than the organ of Santa Inés,
and nothing more vulgar than the insipid motets with which that night
the organist regaled us.
On going out from the mass, I could not resist asking the lay-sister
mischievously:
“How does it happen that the organ of Master Pérez is so unmusical at
present?”
“Why!” replied the old woman. “Because it isn’t his.”
“Not his? What has become of it?”
“It fell to pieces from sheer old age, a number of years ago.”
“And the soul of the organist?”
“It has not appeared again since the new organ was set up in place of
his own.”
If anyone of my readers, after perusing this history, should be moved to
ask the same question, now he knows why the notable miracle has not
continued into our own time.