Vag was very happy, leaning back into the cool comfort of the deep leather chair and listening to the four musicians, seated at one end of the intimate little room, playing the music he loved. He felt clean and invigorated when he heard the Bach which seemed like precise and classically perfect exercises in counterpoint. He smiled an inane smile of satisfaction and pleasure as the rich beauty of Beethoven filled his entire body with a feeling of quietly sensual pleasure. And being so extremely comfortable, he mused in a slow and comfortable manner.

At first he envied the great composers for their ability to cheat their mortality. Music like this couldn't possibly be something made and then cast away. It was an indelible part of the man that wrote it, and whenever it was played or wherever it was played, the composer lived again at a thousand different places. It was alive and vital, for Vag was sure that nothing inanimate could affect him so deeply. And more than any other form of expression, more than literature or art, music was timeless and everlasting.

And then Vag wondered at the sensitivity and skill of the musicians. He watched them in fascination--the violinists and viola player holding their instruments tenderly and almost caressingly between check and shoulder, the cellist bending protectively over his cello. He marvelled at that unanimity which made them function as one man--as if some supernatural and awing force made the thoughts of each the common property of all. He felt that they must all be friends, close friends, that they must know each other as well as it is possible for one man to fathom another.

And lastly, Vag gazed spellbound at the instruments themselves, the immediate producers of the music he heard. They were all graceful curves and deep rich colors--deep and rich as the music which poured from their willowy f holes. Vag thought of the man who had made them, Stradivarius, the wizardry master of Cremona. Somehow, he pictured him as looking like Pinnochio's Geppetto--small and wizened, with a rapidly thinning shock of white hair, bright rabbit-like eyes, wire-rimmed glasses set on the end of a very sharp nose, and a brown wart with two grey hairs protruding from the end of a long, sharp chin--Vag was very certain of the wart.

A last gradually building crescendo, a final thrilling chord, and the four musicians were bowing their appreciation of the audience's very audible approval. At first Vag felt cheated--the music should never have stopped; he should have been allowed to continue musing in this delicious manner. Finally, he forced himself to leave his chair and wander outside--the night air was crisp, the snow was an iridescent mass of white, and a haunting theme kept running through his sleepy mind. Vag went into hibernation to wait for the next Stradivarius concert on March first.