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One could hear louder and louder a thousand noises, measured

marching, war, an attack, a storm; one could hear the reports of

guns, the groans of children, the weeping of mothers. So finely

did the wonderful master render the horrors of a storm that the

village girls trembled, calling to mind with tears of grief the

Massacre of Praga,229 which they knew from song and story; they

were glad when finally the master thundered with all the strings

at once, and choked the outcries as though he had crushed them

into the earth.