The Prose Writings of Heinrich Heine Part 11

"I can imagine, dear friend, that this sweetheart was of very doubtful character. And when will you tell me the history?"

"To-morrow. It is too long, and I am tired to-night. I have just come from the opera, and have too much music in my ears."

"You often go to the opera now, and I think, Max, you go there more to see than to hear."

"You are not mistaken, Maria; I go to the opera, indeed, to look at the faces of the beautiful Italian women. In truth, they are beautiful enough outside the theatre, and a connoisseur in faces could easily trace in the ideality of their features the influence which the arts have had on the physique of the Italian people. Nature has taken back from the artists the capital she once lent, and see how delightfully the interest has increased! Nature, who once furnished the artists with their model, now on her side copies the masterpieces which have thus arisen. The sense of the beautiful has permeated the whole people, and as once the flesh on the spirit, so now the spirit works on the flesh.

The devotion paid before those fair Madonnas and lovely altar-pieces, which impress themselves on the mind of the bridegroom, while the bride bears a handsome saint in her ardent heart, is not fruitless. From this affinity a race has arisen still fairer than the gracious earth on which it flourishes, and the sunny sky that is as bright around it as a golden frame. The men do not interest me much when they are not painted or sculptured, and I resign to you, Maria, all possible enthusiasm in regard to those handsome, supple Italians, who have such wild-black beards, such bold n.o.ble noses, and such soft subtle eyes. They say the Lombards are the most handsome men. I have never made any investigations on the subject, but I have earnestly considered the Lombardy women, and they, I have noted well, are indeed as beautiful as report announces.

Even in the middle ages they must have been tolerably beautiful. It is said of Francis I. that the fame of the beauty of the Milanese women was a secret motive which impelled him to the Italian campaign; the chivalrous king was certainly curious whether the kinsfolk of his spiritual muses were really as beautiful as fame reported. Poor rogue!

he had to atone dearly for this curiosity at Pavia!

"But how beautiful they are, these Italian women, when music illuminates their countenances! I say 'illuminates,' because the effect of the music, which I marked in the opera, on the faces of the beautiful women altogether resembled those light-and-shade effects which surprise us so when we look at statues by torch-light at night-time. These marble forms reveal to us then, with terrifying truth, their indwelling spirit and their horrible dumb secrets. In the same way the whole life of the fair Italian women becomes known to us when we see them in the opera; the changing melodies wake in their souls a succession of emotions, memories, wishes, scandals, which visibly speak in the movements of their features, in their blushes, in their pallors, and even in their eyes. He who knows how to read them may then see in their faces many very sweet and interesting things--histories as remarkable as Boccaccio's tales, emotions as tender as Petrarch's sonnets, caprices as full of adventure as Ariosto's _ottaverime_, sometimes, too, fearful treachery and sublime wickedness as poetic as Dante's _Inferno_. It is worth while to gaze at the boxes. If the men would only express their enthusiasm meanwhile with less frightful sounds! This mad noise in an Italian theatre often annoys me. But music is the soul of these men, their life, their national business. In other countries, certainly, there are musicians who equal the greatest Italian masters, but there is no other musical nation. Here, in Italy, music is not represented by individuals; it manifests itself in the whole population; music has become a nation. With us in the north it is quite different; there music only becomes a man, and is called Mozart or Meyerbeer; and when, moreover, they would accurately investigate what is the best that this northern music offers us, they find it in Italian sunshine and orange-perfume; and much rather than to our Germany those belong to fair Italy, the home of music. Yes, Italy will always be the home of music, even though her great _maestri_ descend early into the grave or become dumb--even though Bellini dies and Rossini keeps silence."

"Indeed," remarked Maria, "Rossini has preserved a very long silence. If I do not mistake, he has been silent for ten years."

"Perhaps that is a joke on his part," answered Maximilian. "He wishes to show that the t.i.tle, "Swan of Pesaro," which has been conferred upon him, is quite unsuitable. Swans sing at the end of their lives, but Rossini has left off singing in the middle of his life. And I believe that he has done well in that, and shown, even by that, that he is a genius. The artist who has only talent retains to the end of his life the impulse to exercise that talent; ambition stimulates him; he feels that he is constantly perfecting himself, and he is compelled to strive after the highest. But genius has already accomplished the highest; it is content; it contemns the world and small ambition, and goes home to Stratford-on-Avon, like William Shakespeare, or walks about the Boulevard des Italiens at Paris, and laughs and jokes, like Giacomo Rossini. If genius has a not altogether badly const.i.tuted body, it lives on in this way for a good while after it has given forth its masterpieces, or, as people express it, after it has fulfilled its mission. It is owing to a prepossession that people say that genius must die early; I think that from the thirtieth to the thirty-fourth year has been indicated as the most dangerous period for genius. How often have I bantered poor Bellini on this subject, and playfully prophesied that, being a genius, and having reached that dangerous age, he must soon die.

Singular! in spite of the playful tone, he tormented himself about this prophecy; he called me his _jettatore_, his evil eye, and always made the _jettatore_ sign. He so wished to live, he had an almost pa.s.sionate hatred of death: he would hear nothing of dying; he was frightened of it as a child who is afraid to sleep in the dark.... He was a good, dear child, often rather naughty, but then one only needed to threaten him with an early death, and he would immediately draw in, and entreat, and make with his two raised fingers the _jettatore_ sign. Poor Bellini!"

"So you knew him personally? Was he handsome?"

"He was not ugly. You see, we cannot answer affirmatively when anyone asks us such a question about our own s.e.x. He had a tall, slender figure, which moved in an elegant, I might say a coquettish, manner; always _a quatre epingles_; a long, regular face, with a pale rosiness; very fair, almost golden, hair, put into small curls; very high n.o.ble brows, a straight nose, pale blue eyes, a beautifully-chiselled mouth, a round chin. His features had something vague and characterless; something like milk, and in this milk-face often mingled, half sweet, half bitter, an expression of sorrow. This expression of sorrow compensated for the want of soul in Bellini's face, but it was a sorrow without depth; it glistened in the eyes without poetry, it played pa.s.sionless about his lips. The young _Maestro_ seemed anxious to make this flat, languid sorrow conspicuous in his whole person. His hair was curled in such a fanciful, melancholy way, his clothes sat so languidly about his frail body, he carried his little Spanish cane in so idyllic a way, that he always reminded me of the affected young shepherds with their be-ribboned sticks, and bright-coloured jackets, and pantaloons that we see in our pastorals. And his gait was so young-lady-like, so elegiac, so ethereal. The whole man looked like a sigh _en escarpins_.

He had received much applause among women, but I doubt if he anywhere awakened a strong pa.s.sion. In himself his appearance had something comically unenjoyable, the reason of which lay in his way of speaking French. Although Bellini had lived many years in France, he spoke the language so badly, that even in England it could scarcely be spoken worse. I ought not to call it 'bad;' bad is here much too good. One must call it awful, a violation, something enough to overturn the world. Yes, when one was in society with him, and he mangled the poor French words like an executioner, and displayed, unmoved, his colossal _coq-a-l'ane_, one thought sometimes that the world must fall in with a crash of thunder. The stillness of the grave reigned on the whole room; a death agony was painted on all faces in chalk or in vermilion; the ladies were uncertain whether to faint or to escape; the gentlemen gazed in alarm at their trousers, to convince themselves that they actually had them on; and what was most horrible, this fright raised at the same time a convulsive desire to laugh, which could hardly be suppressed. So that when one was in Bellini's society, his presence inspired a certain anxiety, which by a horrible charm was at once repellant and attractive.

Often his involuntary _calembours_ were merely amusing, and in their droll insipidity reminded one of the castle of his fellow-countryman, the Prince of Pallagonia, which Goethe in his _Italian Journey_ has described as a museum of uncouth distortions and absurd deformities. As Bellini on such occasions always imagined he had said something quite harmless and earnest, his face and his words formed the maddest contrast. That which displeased me in his face came at such moments specially prominent. What I disliked could not be exactly described as something lacking, and may not have been displeasing to women at all.

Bellini's face, like his whole appearance, had that physical freshness, that bloom of flesh, that rosiness which makes a disagreeable impression on me--on me, because I like much more what is death-like and marble.

Later on, when I had known him a long time, I felt some liking for Bellini. This arose after I had observed that his character was thoroughly n.o.ble and good. His soul was certainly pure and unspotted by any hateful contagion. And he was not wanting in that good-natured, childlike quality which we never miss in men of genius, even if they do not wear it as an outward show.

"Yes, I remember," Maximilian pursued, sinking down on the chair, on the back of which he had been hitherto leaning--"I remember one moment when Bellini appeared in so amiable a light, that I gazed on him with pleasure, and resolved to become more intimately acquainted with him.

But, unhappily, it was the last time I should see him in this life. It was one evening after we had been dining together at the house of a great lady who had the smallest foot in Paris. We were very merry, and the sweetest melodies rang out from the piano. I see him still, the good-natured Bellini, as, at last, exhausted with the mad Bellinism that he chattered, he sank into a seat.... It was a very low one, so that Bellini found himself sitting at the foot, as it were, of a beautiful lady, stretched on a sofa opposite, who gazed down on him with a sweet, malicious delight, as he worked off some French expressions to entertain her, and was compelled, as usual, to communicate what he had said in his Sicilian jargon to show that it was no _sottise_, but, on the contrary, the most delicate flattery. I think the fair lady paid little attention to Bellini's conversation. She had taken from his hand the little Spanish cane with which he often used to a.s.sist his weak rhetoric, and was making use of it for a calm destruction of the elegant curl-edifice on the young _Maestro's_ brows. But this wanton occupation was well repaid by the smile which gave her face an expression which I have seen on no other living human countenance. That face will never leave my memory! It was one of those faces which belong more to the kingdom of poetry than to the crude reality of life, contours which remind one of Da Vinci--that n.o.ble oval, with the nave cheek-dimples and the sentimental pointed chin of the Lombard school. The colouring was more soft and Roman, with the dull gleam of pearls, a distinguished pallor, _morbidezza_. In short, it was one of those faces which can only be found in early Italian portraits, which, perhaps, represent those great ladies with whom the Italian artists of the sixteenth century were in love when they created their masterpieces, of whom the poets of those days thought when they sang themselves immortal, and which kindled German and French heroes with desire when they girded on their swords and started across the Alps in search of great deeds. Yes, it was such a face, and on it played a smile of sweetest, malicious delight and most delicate wantonness, as she, the fair lady, with the point of the little Spanish cane destroyed the blonde curls on the good-natured Bellini's brows. At that moment Bellini seemed to me as if touched by an enchanted wand, as if transformed, and he was at once akin to my heart. His face shone with the reflection of that smile; it was, perhaps, the most joyful moment of his life. I shall never forget it. Fourteen days afterwards I read in the papers that Italy had lost one of her most famous sons!

"Strange! At the same time Paganini's death was announced. About his death I had no doubt, for the old, ash-coloured Paganini always looked like a dying man; but the death of the young, rosy Bellini seemed to me incredible. And yet the news of the death of the first was only a newspaper error; Paganini is safe and sound at Genoa, and Bellini lies in his grave at Paris!"

"Do you like Paganini?" asked Maria. "He is the ornament of his country," answered Maximilian, "and deserves the most distinguished mention in speaking of the musical notabilities of Italy."

"I have never seen him," Maria remarked, "but according to report his outward appearance does not altogether satisfy the sense of beauty. I have seen portraits of him."

"Which are all different," broke in Maximilian; "they either make him uglier or handsomer than he is; they do not give his actual appearance.

I believe that only one man has succeeded in putting Paganini's true physiognomy on to paper--a deaf painter, Lyser by name, who, in a frenzy full of genius, has, with a few strokes of chalk, so well hit Paganini's head that one is at the same time amused and terrified at the truth of the drawing. 'The devil guided my hand,' the deaf painter said to me, chuckling mysteriously, and nodding his head with good-natured irony in the way he generally accompanied his genial witticisms. This painter was, however, a wonderful old fellow; in spite of his deafness he was enthusiastically fond of music, and he knew how, when near enough to the orchestra, to read the music on the musicians' faces, and to judge the more or less skilful execution by the movements of their fingers; indeed, he wrote critiques on the opera for an excellent journal at Hamburg. And is that peculiarly wonderful? In the visible symbols of the performance the deaf painter could see the sounds. There are men to whom the sounds themselves are invisible symbols in which they hear colours and forms."

"You are one of those men!" exclaimed Maria.

"I am sorry that I no longer possess Lyser's little drawing; it would perhaps have given you an idea of Paganini's outward appearance. Only with black and glaring strokes could those mysterious features be seized, features, which seemed to belong more to the sulphurous kingdom of shades than to the sunny world of life. 'Indeed, the devil guided my hand,' the deaf painter a.s.sured me, as we stood before the Alster pavilion at Hamburg on the day when Paganini gave his first concert there. 'Yes, my friend,' he pursued, 'it is true, as everyone believes, that he has sold himself to the devil, body and soul, in order to become the best violinist, to fiddle millions of money, and princ.i.p.ally to escape the d.a.m.nable galley where he had already languished many years.

For, you see, my friend, when he was chapel-master at Lucca he fell in love with a princess of the theatre, was jealous of some little _abbate_, was perhaps deceived by the faithless _Amata_, stabbed her in approved Italian fashion, came in the galley to Genoa, and, as I said, sold himself to the devil to escape from it, become the best violin-player, and impose upon us this evening a contribution of two thalers each. But, you see, all good spirits praise G.o.d; there in the avenue he comes himself, with his suspicious Famulus!'

"It was indeed Paganini himself, whom I then saw for the first time. He wore a dark grey overcoat, which reached to his feet, and made his figure seem very tall. His long black hair fell in neglected curls on his shoulders, and formed a dark frame round the pale, cadaverous face, on which sorrow, genius, and h.e.l.l had engraved their indestructible lines. Near him danced along a little pleasing figure, elegantly prosaic--with rosy, wrinkled face, bright grey little coat with steel b.u.t.tons, distributing greetings on all sides in an insupportably friendly way, leering up, nevertheless, with apprehensive air at the gloomy figure who walked earnest and thoughtful at his side. It reminded one of Retzsch's representation of Faust and Wagner walking before the gates of Leipsic. The deaf painter made comments to me in his mad way, and bade me observe especially the broad, measured walk of Paganini.

'Does it not seem,' said he, 'as if he had the iron cross-pole still between his legs? He has accustomed himself to that walk for ever. See, too, in what a contemptuous, ironical way he sometimes looks at his guide when the latter wearies him with his prosaic questions. But he cannot separate himself from him; a b.l.o.o.d.y contract binds him to that companion, who is no other than Satan. The ignorant mult.i.tude, indeed, believe that this guide is the writer of comedies and anecdotes, Harris from Hanover, whom Paganini has taken with him to manage the financial business of his concerts. But they do not know that the devil has only borrowed Herr George Harris's form, and that meanwhile the poor soul of this poor man is shut up with other rubbish in a trunk at Hanover, until the devil returns its flesh-envelope, while he perhaps will guide his master through the world in a worthier form--namely, as a black poodle.'

"But if Paganini seemed mysterious and strange enough when I saw him walking in bright mid-day under the green trees of the Hamburg Jungfernstieg, how his awful bizarre appearance startled me at the concert in the evening! The Hamburg Opera House was the scene of this concert, and the art-loving public had flocked thither so early, and in such numbers, that I only just succeeded in obtaining a little place in the orchestra. Although it was post-day, I saw in the first row of boxes the whole educated commercial world, a whole Olympus of bankers and other millionaires, the G.o.ds of coffee and sugar by the side of their fat G.o.ddesses, Junos of Wandrahm and Aphrodites of Dreckwall. A religious silence reigned through the a.s.sembly. Every eye was directed towards the stage. Every ear was making ready to listen. My neighbour, an old furrier, took the dirty cotton out of his ears in order to drink in better the costly sounds for which he had paid two thalers. At last a dark figure, which seemed to have arisen from the under-world, appeared upon the stage. It was Paganini in his black costume--the black dress-coat and the black waistcoat of a horrible cut, such as is perhaps prescribed by infernal etiquette at the court of Proserpina; the black trousers anxiously hanging around the thin legs. The long arms appeared to grow still longer, as, holding the violin in one hand and the bow in the other, he almost touched the ground with them while displaying to the public his unprecedented obeisances. In the angular curves of his body there was a horrible woodenness, and also something absurdly animal-like, that during these bows one could not help feeling a strange desire to laugh; but his face, that appeared still more cadaverously pale in the glare of the orchestra lights, had about it something so imploring, so simply humble, that a sorrowful compa.s.sion repressed one's desire to laugh. Had he learnt these complimentary bows from an automaton or a dog? Is that the entreating gaze of one sick unto death, or is there lurking behind it the mockery of a crafty miser? Is that a man brought into the arena at the moment of death, like a dying gladiator, to delight the public with his convulsions? Or is it one risen from the dead, a vampire with a violin, who, if not the blood out of our hearts, at any rate sucks the gold out of our pockets?

"Such questions crossed our minds while Paganini was performing his strange bows, but all those thoughts were at once still when the wonderful master placed his violin under his chin and began to play. As for me, you already know my musical second-sight, my gift of seeing at each tone a figure equivalent to the sound, and so Paganini with each stroke of his bow brought visible forms and situations before my eyes; he told me in melodious hieroglyphics all kinds of brilliant tales; he, as it were, made a magic-lantern play its coloured antics before me, he himself being chief actor. At the first stroke of his bow the stage scenery around him had changed; he suddenly stood with his music-desk in a cheerful room, decorated in a gay, irregular way after the Pompadour style; everywhere little mirrors, gilded Cupids, Chinese porcelain, a delightful chaos of ribbons, garlands of flowers, white gloves, torn lace, false pearls, diadems of gold leaf and spangles--such tinsel as one finds in the room of a prima-donna. Paganini's outward appearance had also changed, and certainly most advantageously; he wore short breeches of lily-coloured satin, a white waistcoat embroidered with silver, and a coat of bright blue velvet with gold b.u.t.tons; the hair in little carefully curled locks bordered his face, which was young and rosy, and gleamed with sweet tenderness as he ogled the pretty little lady who stood near him at the music-desk, while he played the violin.

"Yes, I saw at his side a pretty young creature, in antique costume, the white satin swelled out below the waist, making the figure still more charmingly slender; the high raised hair was powdered and curled, and the pretty round face shone out all the more openly with it glancing eyes, its little rouged cheeks, its little beauty-patches, and the sweet impertinent little nose. In her hand was a roll of white paper, and by the movements of her lips as well as by the coquettish waving to and fro of her little upper lip she seemed to be singing; but none of her trills were audible to me, and only from the violin with which the young Paganini led the lovely child could I discover what she sang, and what he himself during her song felt in his soul. O, what melodies were those! Like the nightingale's notes, when the fragrance of the rose intoxicates her yearning young heart with desire, they floated in the evening twilight. O, what melting, languid delight was that! The sounds kissed each other, then fled away pouting, and then, laughing, clasped each other and became one, and died away in intoxicated harmony. Yes, the sounds carried on their merry game like b.u.t.terflies, when one, in playful provocation, will escape from another, hide behind a flower, be overtaken at last, and then, wantonly joying with the other, fly away into the golden sunlight. But a spider, a spider can prepare a sudden tragical fate for such enamoured b.u.t.terflies. Did the young heart antic.i.p.ate this? A melancholy sighing tone, a foreboding of some slowly approaching misfortune, glided softly through the enrapturing melodies that were streaming from Paganini's violin. His eyes became moist.

Adoringly he knelt down before his _Amata_. But, alas! as he bowed down to kiss her feet, he saw under the bed a little _abbate_! I do not know what he had against the poor man, but the Genoese became pale as death, he seized the little fellow with furious hands, gave him sundry boxes on the ear, as well as a considerable number of kicks, flung him outside, drew a stiletto from its sheath, and buried it in the young beauty's breast.

"At this moment, however, a shout of 'Bravo! Bravo!' broke out from all sides. Hamburg's enthusiastic sons and daughters were paying the tribute of their uproarious applause to the great artist, who had just ended the first part of his concert, and was now bowing with even more angles and contortions than before. And on his face the abject humility seemed to me to have become more intense. From his eyes stared a sorrowful anxiety like that of a poor malefactor. 'Divine!' cried my neighbour, the furrier, as he scratched his ears; 'that piece alone was worth two thalers.'

"When Paganini began to play again a gloom came before my eyes. The sounds were not transformed into bright forms and colours; the master's form was clothed in gloomy shades, out of the darkness of which his music moaned in the most piercing tones of lamentation. Only at times, when a little lamp that hung above cast its sorrowful light over him, could I catch a glimpse of his pale countenance, on which the youth was not yet extinguished. His costume was singular, in two colours, yellow and red. Heavy chains weighed upon his feet. Behind him moved a face whose physiognomy indicated a l.u.s.ty goat-nature. And I saw at times long hairy hands seize a.s.sistingly the strings of the violin on which Paganini was playing. They often guided the hand which held the bow, and then a bleating laugh of applause accompanied the melody, which gushed from the violin ever more full of sorrow and anguish. They were melodies which were like the song of the fallen angels who had loved the daughters of earth, and, being exiled from the kingdom of the blessed, sank into the under-world with faces red with shame. They were melodies in whose bottomless shallowness glimmered neither consolation nor hope.

When the saints in heaven hear such melodies, the praise of G.o.d dies upon their paled lips, and they cover their heads weeping. At times when the _obligato_ goat's laugh bleated in among the melodious pangs, I caught a glimpse in the background of a crowd of small women-figures who nodded their odious heads with wicked wantonness. Then a rush of agonising sounds came from the violin, and a fearful groan and a sob, such as was never heard upon earth before, nor will be perhaps heard upon earth again; unless in the valley of Jehoshaphat, when the colossal trumpets of doom shall ring out, and the naked corpses shall crawl forth from the grave to abide their fate. But the agonised violinist suddenly made one stroke of the bow, such a mad despairing stroke, that his chains fell rattling from him, and his mysterious a.s.sistant and the other foul mocking forms vanished.

"At this moment my neighbour, the furrier, said, 'A pity, a pity; a string has snapped--that comes from the constant _pizzicato_.'

"Had a string of the violin really snapped? I do not know. I only observed the alteration in the sounds, and Paganini and his surroundings seemed to me again suddenly changed. I could scarcely recognise him in the monk's brown dress, which concealed rather than clothed him. With savage countenance half hid by the cowl, waist girt with a cord, and bare feet, Paganini stood, a solitary defiant figure, on a rocky prominence by the sea, and played his violin. But the sea became red and redder, and the sky grew paler, till at last the surging water looked like bright scarlet blood, and the sky above became of a ghastly, corpse-like pallor, and the stars came out large and threatening; and those stars were black, black as glooming coal. But the tones of the violin grew ever more stormy and defiant, and the eyes of the terrible player sparkled with such a scornful l.u.s.t of destruction, and his thin lips moved with such a horrible haste, that it seemed as if he murmured some old accursed charms to conjure the storm and loose the evil spirits that lie imprisoned in the abysses of the sea. Often, when he stretched his long thin arm from the broad monk's sleeve, and swept the air with his bow, he seemed like some sorcerer who commands the elements with his magic wand; and then there was a wild wailing from the depth of the sea, and the horrible waves of blood sprang up so fiercely that they almost besprinkled the pale sky and the black stars with their red foam. There was a wailing and a shrieking and a crashing, as if the world was falling into fragments, and ever more stubbornly the monk played his violin. He seemed as if by the power of violent will he wished to break the seven seals wherewith Solomon sealed the iron vessels in which he had shut up the vanquished demons. The wise king sank those vessels in the sea, and I seemed to hear the voices of the imprisoned spirits while Paganini's violin growled its most wrathful ba.s.s. But at last I thought I heard the jubilee of deliverance, and out of the red billows of blood emerged the heads of the fettered demons: monsters of legendary horror, crocodiles with bats' wings, snakes with stags' horns, monkeys with sh.e.l.ls on their heads, seals with long patriarchal beards, women's faces with b.r.e.a.s.t.s in place of cheeks, green camels' heads, hermaphrodites of incomprehensible combination--all staring with cold, crafty eyes, and with long fin-like claws grasping at the fiddling monk. From the latter, however, in the furious zeal of his conjuration, the cowl fell back, and the curly hair, fluttering in the wind, fell round his head in ringlets, like black snakes.

"So maddening was this vision that, to keep my senses, I closed my ears and shut my eyes. When I again looked up the spectre had vanished, and I saw the poor Genoese in his ordinary form, making his ordinary bows, while the public applauded in the most rapturous manner.

"'That is the famous performance upon G,' remarked my neighbour; 'I myself play the violin, and I know what it is to master that instrument.' Fortunately, the pause was not considerable, or else the musical furrier would certainly have engaged me in a long conversation upon art. Paganini again quietly set his violin to his chin, and with the first stroke of his bow the wonderful transformation of melodies again also began. They no longer fashioned themselves so brightly and corporeally. The melody gently developed itself, majestically billowing and swelling like an organ chorale in a cathedral, and everything around, stretching larger and higher, had extended into a colossal s.p.a.ce which, not the bodily eye, but only the eye of the spirit could seize.

In the midst of this s.p.a.ce hovered a shining sphere, upon which, gigantic and sublimely haughty, stood a man who played the violin. Was that sphere the sun? I do not know. But in the man's features I recognised Paganini, only ideally lovely, divinely glorious, with a reconciling smile. His body was in the bloom of powerful manhood, a bright blue garment enclosed his n.o.ble limbs, his shoulders were covered by gleaming locks of black hair; and as he stood there, sure and secure, a sublime divinity, and played the violin, it seemed as if the whole creation obeyed his melodies. He was the man-planet about which the universe moved with measured solemnity and ringing out beatific rhythms.

Those great lights, which so quietly gleaming swept around, were they the stars of heaven, and that melodious harmony which arose from their movements, was it the song of the spheres, of which poets and seers have reported so many ravishing things? At times, when I endeavoured to gaze out into the misty distance, I thought I saw pure white garments floating around, in which colossal pilgrims pa.s.sed m.u.f.fled along with white staves in their hands, and, singular to relate, the golden k.n.o.b of each staff was even one of those great lights which I had taken for stars. These pilgrims moved in large orbit around the great performer, the golden k.n.o.bs of their staves shone even brighter at the tones of the violin, and the chorale which resounded from their lips, and which I had taken for the song of the spheres, was only the dying echo of those violin tones. A holy, ineffable ardour dwelt in those sounds, which often trembled, scarce audibly, in mysterious whisper on the water, then swelled out again with a shuddering sweetness, like a bugle's notes heard by moonlight, and then finally poured forth in unrestrained jubilee, as if a thousand bards had struck their harps and raised their voices in a song of victory. These were sounds which the ear never hears, which only the heart can dream when it rests at night on a beloved breast. Perhaps also the heart can grasp them in the bright light of day, when it loses itself with joy in the curves of beauty in a Grecian work of art...."

"Or when one has drunk one too many bottles of champagne!" broke in suddenly a laughing voice, which woke our story-teller as from a dream.

Turning round, he saw the doctor, who, under the guidance of black Deborah, had gently entered the room to inform himself of the effect of his medicine on the patient.

"That sleep does not please me," he said, pointing to the sofa.

Maximilian, who, absorbed in the fancies of his own discourse, had not observed that Maria had long since fallen asleep, bit his lip with vexation.

"That sleep," the doctor pursued, "gives to her countenance already the appearance of death. Does it not look like those white masks, those plaster casts, in which we seek to preserve the features of the dead?"

"I should like," Maximilian whispered in his ear, "to have such a cast of our friend's face. Even as a corpse she would be very lovely."

"I do not advise you to do so," answered the doctor. "Such masks spoil the recollection of those we love. We think that in the plaster we have procured something of their life, but it is only death that we have caught. Beautiful regular features get something horribly rigid, mocking, fatal, with which they terrify rather than delight us; but the casts of those faces whose charm was of a more spiritual kind, whose features were less regular than interesting, are absolute caricature; for as soon as the graces of life are extinguished, the real declinations from the line of ideal beauty are no longer compensated by the spiritual charm. A certain enigmatic expression is common to all these casts, which, after long contemplation, send an intolerable chill through our souls; they look as if on the point of going a long journey."

"Whither?" asked Maximilian, as the doctor took his arm and led him from the room.

SECOND NIGHT.

"And why will you torment me with this horrible medicine, since I must die so soon?"

It was Maria who, as Maximilian entered, spoke these words. The doctor was standing before her with a medicine bottle in one hand and in the other a little gla.s.s in which a brownish liquor frothed nauseously. "My dear fellow," he exclaimed, turning to the new-comer, "you have just come at the right time; try and persuade Signora to swallow these few drops; I am in a hurry."

"I entreat you, Maria!" whispered Maximilian, in that tender voice which one did not often observe in him, and which seemed to come from so wounded a heart that the patient, singularly touched, took the gla.s.s in her hand. Before she put it to her mouth, she said, smiling, "Will you reward me with the story of Laurence?"

"All that you wish shall be done," nodded Maximilian.

The pale lady then drank the contents of the gla.s.s, half smiling, half shuddering.

"I am in a hurry," said the doctor, drawing on his black gloves. "Lie down quietly, Signora, and move as little as possible."

Led by black Deborah, who lighted him, he left the room. When the two friends were left alone, they looked at each other for a long time in silence. In the souls of both thoughts were clamorous which each strove to hide from the other. The woman, however, suddenly seized the man's hand and covered it with glowing kisses.