Part 5

He reproduced with great exactness the play in the palace gardens, but he kept the person and character of Mark enshrouded in mystery, allowing him to appear very seldom, and trusting entirely to the singing of the principal performers, and especially of the Signorina, to impress the audience with the idea of his purity and innocence. He surpassed himself in the intense wistful music of the score; never had he produced such pathetic airs, such pleading sustained harmonies, such quivering lingering chords and cadences. At the supreme moment the boy appears, and, after singing with exquisite melody his hapless yet heroic fate, offers his bosom to the sacrificial knife. But a god intervenes. Veiled in cloud and recognised in thunders, a divine and merciful hand is laid upon the child. Death comes to him as a sleep, and over his dead and lovely form the anger of heaven is appeased. Incapable as the Maestro was of feeling much of the pathos and beauty of his own work, still, with that wonderful instinct, or art, or genius, which supplies the place of feeling, he produced, amid much that was grotesque and incongruous, a work of delicate touch and thrilling and entrancing sound. The little theatre near the Kohl market, where the piece was first produced, was crowded nightly, and the narrow thoroughfares through private houses and courtyards, called Durch-haeuser, with which the extraordinary and otherwise impenetrable maze of building which formed old Vienna was pierced through and through, were filled with fine and delicate ladies and gay courtiers seeking admission. So great, indeed, was the success that an arrangement was made with the conductors of the Imperial Theatre for the opera to be performed there. The Empress-Queen and her husband were present, the frigid silence of etiquette was broken more than once by applause, and the Abate Metastasio wrote some lines for the Signorina; indeed, the success of the piece was caused by the girl's singing.

"Mark is better than the canary," the Maestro was continually repeating.

In his hour of triumph the old gentleman presented a quaint and attractive study to the observer of the by-ways of art. Amid the rococo surroundings among which he moved, he was himself a singular example of the power of art to extract from bizarre and unpromising material somewhat at least of pure and lasting fruit. He had attired his withered and lean figure in brilliant hues and the finest lace, and in this attire he trained the girl, also fantastically dressed, to warble the most touching and delicious plaints. The instinctive pathos of inanimate things, of forms and colours, was perceived in sound, and much that hitherto seemed paltry and frivolous was refined and ennobled. Mark's death, and even that of the poor canary, was beginning to bear fruit. Nature and love were feeling out the enigma of existence by the aid of art.

The reference to the canary was not, indeed, made in the presence of Tina, for the Maestro found that it was not acceptable. Nevertheless, a strange fellowship and affection was springing up between these two. The critics complained that the Signorina varied her notes; but, in fact, the score of the opera never remained the same--at least as regarded her parts. As she sang, with the Maestro beside her at the harpsichord, imagination and recollection, instructed by the magic of sound, touched her notes with an unconscious pathos and revealed to her master, with his ready pencil in one hand and the other on the keys, fresh heights and depths of cultured harmony, new combinations of fluttering, melodious notes.

This copartnership, this action and reaction, had something wonderful and charming about it; the power of nature in the girl's voice suggesting possibilities of more melodious, more artistic pathos to the composer, the girl's passionate instinct recognising the touch, and confessing the help, of the master's skill. It seems a strange duet, yet I do not know that we should think it strange.

The girl's nature, pure and loving, was supremely moved by the discovery of this power of realisation and expression which it had obtained; but at times it frightened her.

"I hate all this," she would cry sometimes, starting away from the harpsichord; "they are dead and cold, and I sing!"

"Sing! _mia cara!_" the old man would say, with, for him, a soft and kindly tone; "you cannot help but sing: and when did love and sorrow feel so near and real to you as when, just now, you sang that phrase in F minor?"

"It is wicked!" said the girl; but she sang over again, to the perfect satisfaction of her master, the phrase in F minor.

"It is true," she said, after a pause. "I knew not how to love--I knew not what love was till I learned to sing from you. Every day I learn more what love is; I feel every hour more able to love--I love you more and more for teaching me the art of love."

"Ah, _mia cara_," said the Maestro, "that was not difficult! You were born with that gift. But it is strange to me, I confess it, how pathetically you sing. It is not in the music--at any rate, not in my music. It is beyond my art and even strange to it, but it touches even me."

And the old man shrugged his shoulders with an odd gesture, in which something like self-contempt struggled with an unaccustomed emotion.

The girl had turned half round, and was looking at him with her bright, yet wistful eyes.

"Never mind, Maestro," she said; "I shall love you always for your music, in spite of your contempt of love, and your miserable, cold----"

And she gave a little shudder. She was forming, indeed, a passionate regard for the old man, solely for the sake of his art.

It was not by any means the first time that such an event had occurred, for unselfish love is much more common than cynical mankind believes.

IV.

THE Prince soon grew tired of Wertheim. Apart from other reasons, of which perhaps we may learn something hereafter, he felt lost without the accustomed _entourage_ which he had attracted to Joyeuse. The death of Mark had made a profound impression upon his delicately strung temperament. It disturbed the lofty serenity of his life, it shocked his taste, it was bad art. That such a thing could have happened to him in the very citadel and arcanum of his carefully designed existence--and should have happened, too, as the result of his own individual purpose and action--arrested him as with an archangel's sword; showed him forcibly that his delicately woven mail was deficient in some important, but as yet unperceived, point; that his fancifully conceived prince-life was liable to sudden catastrophe. He had lived delicately, but the bitterness of death was not passed. He left Wertheim, and, travelling with his children and servants in several carriages and _chaises de poste_, he journeyed to Vienna, whither the Princess had preceded him.

The Prince travelled alone in a _carrosse-coupe_, or travelling chaise, at the head of his party. The Barotin and the children followed him in the second carriage, which was full of toys for their entertainment; now and again one or the other would be promoted for a stage or two to their father's carriage, to remain there as long as they entertained him. After a time they entered upon the flat plains of the Danube and approached Vienna.

As they crossed the flat waste of water meadows, over the long bridges of boats, and through the rows of poplars, a drive usually so dreary to travellers to Vienna, the sun broke out gloriously and the afternoon became very fine. For many miles before him, over the monotonous waste, the great tower of St. Stephen's Church had confronted the Prince, crowned with its gigantic eagle and surrounded by wheeling flocks of birds--cranes and ravens and daws. Herons and storks rose now and again from the ditches and pools by the wayside and flitted across the road. The brilliant light shone upon the mists of the river and upon the distant crags and woods.

The Prince was alone; the children were tired and restless from the long journey, and were sent back to the long-suffering Barotin. He lay back upon the rich furs which filled the carriage, and kept his eyes listlessly fixed upon the distant tower. The descending sun lighted up the weather-stains and the vari-coloured mosses that covered its sides; a rainbow, thrown across the black clouds of the north and east, spanned the heavens with a lofty arch.

The Prince gazed wearily over the striking scene. Existence appeared to him, at the moment, extremely complicated.

"It was a terrible mistake," he said, his thoughts still running on the old disaster; "a terrible mistake! Yet they cannot be right--Isoline and the people with her--who talk of nothing but sacrifice and self-denial, and denounce everything by which life is not only made endurable, but by which, indeed, it is actually maintained in being. What would life be if every one were as they? 'Ah!' she says, 'there is little chance of that! So few think of aught save self! So few deny themselves for the sake of others, you need not grudge us few our self-chosen path.' That is where they make the fatal mistake. Each man should carve out his life, as a whole, as though the lives of all were perfect, not as if it were a broken fragment of a fine statue; each should be a perfect Apollo of the Belvedere Gardens, not a mere torso; not a strong arm only that can strike, not a finger only that can beckon--even though it be to God. Because all cannot enjoy them, does that make assorted colour, and sweet sound, and delicate pottery less perfect, less worthy to be sought? He should aim at the complete life--should love, and feel, and enjoy."

The great tower rose higher and higher above the Prince as he thought these last words aloud; the screaming kites and daws wheeled above his head; the great eagle loomed larger and larger in the evening light. They passed over the wide glacis, threaded the drawbridges and barriers, and entered the tortuous narrow streets. A golden haze lighted the crowded thoroughfares and beautified the carving and gables of the lofty houses. A motley crowd of people, from east and west alike, in strange variety of costume, thronged the causeways, and hardly escaped the carriage-wheels in their reckless course. The sight roused the Prince from his melancholy, and he gazed with an amused and even delighted air from his carriage-windows. His nature, pleasure-loving and imaginative, found this moving life a source of never-tiring interest and suggestiveness. The fate, the interests, the aims, and sorrows of every human figure that passed across his vision, even for a second, formed itself in some infinitely slight, yet perfectly real and tangible, degree in his mind; and he conceived the stir and tremor of a great city's life with a perfect grasp of all the little details that make up the dramatic, the graphic whole.

The carriage swept through the Place St. Michael, past the Imperial Palace, and, pursuing its course through the winding streets to the imminent peril of the populace of Croats, Servians, Germans, and a mixed people of no nation under heaven, reached the _Hotel_ which had been selected for the Prince in the Tein quarter.

Though this quiet quarter is in close neighbourhood to the most busy and noisy parts of the city, the contrast was striking. The Prince saw nothing here but quaint palaces crowded together within a space of a few hundred yards. Here were the palaces of the Lichtensteins, the Festetics, the Esterhazys, the Schoenbornes. Antique escutcheons were hanging before the houses, and strange devices of the golden fleece, and other crests and bearings were erected on the gables and roofs. Vienna was emphatically the city of heraldry, and a tendency towards Oriental taste in noble and burgher produced a fantastic architecture of gables and minarets, breaking the massive lines of fortress-like mediaeval palace and _hotel_. Here and there a carriage was standing in the quiet street, and servants in gaudy liveries stood in the sunshine about the steps and gates.

The next morning the Prince was seated at his toilette, in the hands of his dresser, who was frizzling and powdering his hair. By his side was standing his valet or body-servant, as he would be called in England--_Chasseur_ or _Jager_, as he was called in North or South Germany. This man was one of the most competent of his order, and devoted to his master.

"Well, Karl," the Prince was saying, with his kindly air, "thou breathest again here, I doubt not. This place is more to thy mind than Joyeuse--_n'est ce pas_? There is life here and intrigue. It is better even than Rome? Is it so?"

"Wherever the Serene Highness is," replied Karl graciously, "I am content and happy. I was happy in Rome, in Joyeuse, at Wertheim; but I confess that I like Wien. There is colour here, and quaintness, and _esprit_."

Karl had picked up many art terms with the rest of the princely household.

"Ah! Wertheim!" said the Prince, rather sadly as it seemed. "I like Wertheim, ah! so much--for a day or two. One is so great a man there. I know every one, and every one knows me. I feel almost like a beneficent Providence, and as though I had discovered the perfection of art in life. When I walk in the garden avenue after dinner, between the statues, and every one has right of audience and petition, and one old woman begs that her only son may be excused from military service, and another that her stall in the market may not be taken away; and one old man's house is burnt down, and he wants help to rebuild it, and another craves right of wood-gathering in the princely forests, and another begs that his son may be enrolled among the under-keepers and beaters of the game, with right of snaring a hare,--and all these things are so easy to grant, and seem to these poor folks so gracious, and like the gifts of heaven, that one thinks for the moment that this must be the perfection of life. But it palls, Karl; in a day or two it palls! The wants and sufferings of the poor are so much alike; they want variety, they are so deficient in shade, they are such poor art!" and the Prince sighed wearily.

"That is natural for the Serene Highness," said Karl, with a sympathising pity which was amusing; "that is natural to the Serene Highness, who does not see below the surface, and to whom all speak with bated breath. There is plenty of light and shade in the lives of the poor, if you go deep enough."

"Ah!" said the Prince with interest, "is it so? Doubtless now, within a few yards of us, there are art-scenes enacted, tragedies and comedies going on, of which you know the different _roles_--one of which, maybe, you fill yourself. Eh, Karl?"

"It is a great city, Highness," said Karl. "They are all alike, good and ill, love and hatred, the knave and the fool. All the world over, it is much the same."

At this moment, the hair-powdering being over, the Prince rose.

"Well," he said, "to-night the Signorina sings at the Imperial Theatre. She and the Maestro sup with me afterwards. The Princess sups at the Palace."

V.

IT is difficult at the present day to realise such scenes as that presented by the Imperial Theatre during the performance that evening. The comparative smallness of the interior and dimness of the lights, combined with the incomparable splendour and richness in the appearance of the audience which filled every portion of the theatre, even to the gallery of the servants, with undiminished brilliancy, produced an effect of subdued splendour and of a mystic glow of colour which we should look for in vain in any theatre in Europe now.

The Empress-Queen and her husband occupied a central box, and the Court, graduated according to rank, and radiating from this centre, filled boxes, pit, and gallery. The Prince's box was on the royal tier, not far from the Empress. He was accompanied by the Princess and his sister.

"I am delighted with Isoline," the Princess said; "that poor child's death has worked wonders upon her in a way no one would have expected. She seems to have thrown off her singular fancies, and behaves as other people do."

"Isoline never was very easy to understand," said the Prince.

Whether or not she were inspired by the presence of the Prince, the Signorina had never sung so wonderfully as she did that night. The frigid silence of Imperial etiquette, so discouraging and chilling to southern artists, gave place, now and again, to an irrepressible murmur of emotion and applause. The passionate yearning of the purest love, the pathos of unselfish grief, found a fit utterance in notes of an inimitable sweetness, and in melodies whose dainty phrases were ennobled and mellowed at once by delicate art and loftiest feeling. The house gave way at last to an uncontrollable enthusiasm, and, regardless of Court etiquette, the entire assembly rose to its feet amid a tumult of applause.

Not far from the Maestro, who was conducting the music from the centre of the orchestra, was seated Carricchio. He had, of course, discarded his professional dress, and had attired himself, according to the genius of his countrymen, in rich but dark and plain attire. Any one who could have watched his face--that face which the little Schoolmaster was used to wonder at--and could have marked the quaint mingling, on the large worn features, of the old humorous movement with the new emotions of wonder and of love, would not have spent his moments in vain.

But the success was too complete. The Empress-Queen was shocked at the breach of decorum. She was not in the least touched by the Signorina's singing, and the story of the opera was unintelligible to her. It was suggested by those who were offended and injured by the success of the piece, and by the displacement of other operas, that this arrangement entailed increased expense upon the royal treasury, and, amid the penurious and pettifogging instincts of the Court of Vienna in those days, this was a fatal thrust. The theatre, it was said, was required for other pieces, notably for a new opera by Metastasio himself.

"It was very beautiful, Ferdinand," said the Princess, as they left the box; and, struck by her tone and by the unaccustomed use of his name, the Prince looked at her with surprise, for it was years since he had seen the sweet, softened, well-remembered look in her eyes. "I liked that boy!"

"I will convey your approbation to the Signorina," replied the Prince; "it will complete the triumph of the night."

"Where do you sup to-night, Ferdinand?" said the Princess.

"I--I sup in private with the Maestro and Tina," said the Prince.

"Ah!" said the Princess, still with the same wistful, unaccustomed look. "There is a cover laid for me at the Imperial table--I must go."

It is absurd to talk of what would have happened had the threads of our lives been woven into different tissues, else we might say that but for that Imperial cover the issues of this story would have had a different close.

The Maestro waited at the theatre till the Signorina had changed her dress. When she appeared she was radiant with triumph and delight, but the old man was sad and depressed. Some intimation of the fatal resolution had been conveyed to him in the interval.

"What is the matter with you, Maestro?" said the girl; "you ought to be delighted, and you look as gloomy as a ghost. What is it?"

"It is nothing," said the Maestro. "I am an old man, _mia cara_, and the performance tires me. Let us go to the Prince."

They entered a fiacre, and were driven to the courtyard of the Prince's _Hotel_.

The supper, though private, was luxurious, and was attended by all the servants of the Prince. Inspired by the success of the night, the Prince exerted himself to please; but, apart from all other circumstances, the Signorina would have delighted any man. She was at that delightful age when the girl is passing into the woman; she was increasing daily in beauty, she was perfectly dressed, she was radiant that night with happiness, and with the consciousness of success; she was touched by the recollection of the past, and profoundly affected by the power of expression which she had found in song; more than this--much more--she was drawn irresistibly by a feeling of pity and sympathy towards the old man; she could not understand his depression and gloom; she paid little attention to the Prince, but lavished a thousand pretty arts and delicate attentions on the vain endeavour to rouse her friend. No other conduct could have rendered her so attractive in the eyes of the Prince. To his refined and really high-toned taste, this pretty devotedness, this manifestly pure affection and gratitude, as of a daughter, commended by such loveliness and vivacity, were irresistible. It was exactly that combination of pathos and grace and art that suited his cultured fancy and the long habit of his trained life. He was inexpressibly delighted and happy. Forgetful of past mistake and misfortune, he congratulated himself on his success in attaching to his person and family so lively and dulcet a creature. His scheme of life seemed complete and authorised to his conscience by success.

Once more he uttered the fatal words, "_I will have_ this girl."

"You are the happiest man I know, Maestro," he said; "you are truly a creative artist, for you not only create melodious sounds and spirit-stirring ideas, but you actually create flesh and blood sirens and human creatures as lovely as your sounds, and far more real. The Signorina is your work, and see, as is natural, how devoted she is to her maker."

"Every one thinks others happier than himself, Prince," said the old man, still gloomy. "As for the Signorina, she has much more made me than I her. I shall only injure and cripple her."

The girl looked at him with tears in her eyes.

"The Maestro is not well," she said to the Prince; "he will be more cheerful to-morrow. Success frightens him. It is often more terrible than failure."

"He fears that you will forsake him, when you are courted and praised so much," said the Prince in a low voice, for the old man seemed scarcely to notice what passed; "he fears you will forsake him," and as he spoke the Prince kept his eyes fixed inquiringly on the girl's face.

The Signorina said nothing. She turned her dark great eyes full on the old man, and the Prince wanted no more than what the eyes told him.

"She is a glorious creature," he said to himself.

VI.

THE next morning the crash came. The Maestro was informed that only one more performance could be allowed at the Imperial Theatre, and that, further, there were difficulties in the way of the performance being permitted in any theatre in Vienna. The old man was crushed: he came to the Signorina with the notice in his hand.

"_Mia cara_," he said, making great efforts to be calm, "this is the end. I am a broken and a ruined man. I have been all my life waiting for this chance--this gift of inspiration. I thought that it would never come; it tarried so long, and I grew so old. At last it came, but only just in time. I have never written anything like this music, and never shall again. Now it is stopped. I must go. I cannot stay where it must not be played; I must go somewhere, and take my music with me. It will not be for long. The Prince will not leave Vienna. He is pleased with the city and with his reception. I must leave you all."

The girl was on her feet before him, with flashing eyes which were full of tears.

"Maestro!" she said; "what mean you to talk in this way? Do you suppose that I will ever leave you, that I will stay if you go? I owe everything to you. I cannot sing without you. I will follow you to Paris--anywhere. Whatever fortune awaits you shall await us both."