Part 2

"And did you know her?" asked Gesa, still absorbed in staring at the romantically costumed lady.

"She was my wife," answered Delileo with emphasis, and an eloquent gesture.

"Ah! then she must have loved you very much," observed Gesa, seriously, wishing to say something pleasant. But Delileo shrank and turned away his head.

Beneath this portrait, day after day, on a shabby black marble-top table, stood fresh flowers in a crumbling blue delft pitcher.

V

Immediately upon the beginning of their life together, Delileo made a correct estimate of his protege's musical gifts, and thanks to some artist connections that still remained to him, he procured instruction for Gesa from one of the most famous violinists at that time established in the Brussels Conservatory. He cared for the rest of Gesa's education himself. A curious education, truly! "Correct spelling and an extensive knowledge of literature," he would assert, "are two absolute necessities of a gentleman's culture, further than that he needs nothing." Gesa's orthography, in spite of his instructor's praiseworthy efforts, remained somewhat uncertain, his knowledge of literature on the contrary made astonishing progress, and soon reached from the "Essais de Montaigne," Delileo's first hobby, to Delileo's own romance--his second hobby.

This romance, which was called "The Twilight of the Gods," and had been waiting ten years in vain for a publisher, formed a striking counterpart to Delileo's Carbonari cloak. Like that romantic article of apparel it smelled of mould, and the breath of superannuated philanthropic theories hovered about it. It began with a legend and ended with an ode. Many an evening the elder spent in reading this nondescript production to his protege, Gesa always attending with the devout fervor which believing natures bring to mysteries they do not understand.

An odd couple they made, the broken man with his nervous restlessness, the restlessness of one who has accomplished nothing, and who sees the grave before him--and the vigorous young fellow, with his healthy laziness, the self-confident laziness of one who feels a great talent within him and to whom life seems as if it could never end. The weary spirit of one strayed constantly back, from the hopeless insipidity of his present, to an Utopia of the year thirty: the other's imagination, meanwhile, crippled by no sort of experience, galloped confidently out into the future, behind a double team of fresh young chimeras! Enthusiasts were they both,--Delileo the more unpractical of the two.

Poor Gaston Delileo! He belonged in the category of universal geniuses; for which reason he had brought his genius to the attainment of absolutely nothing in the universe! Music, painting, literature, political economy,--he had pursued them all, one after the other or simultaneously, just as it happened, and all with the greatest zeal. He had believed with devout idealism in the capacity of society for improvement. He had adopted the theories of St. Simon, and had worn with enthusiasm the vest laced up behind of that brotherhood, and a headband on which his name was embroidered. History relates that the St. Simonian Brotherhood, with their practical division of labor, limited his activity in the beginning to the contribution of money and the brushing of boots! Later they enrolled him the memorable "Three hundred," who set forth to seek the mother of the sect in foreign lands, after Madame de Stael had declined that post of honor.

His money was gone, his illusion had changed to disgust. He had withdrawn in melancholy from the world, seeking to hide himself and his disappointment. He wished nothing but to forget and be forgotten:--that is in the present; from the future, a far-off, misty future, he still hoped something--for his romance. Meanwhile he supported existence by copying notes,--like Rousseau. Two, three years passed by, Gesa became as handsome as a youth in a picture. At Delileo's side he could not fail to gain cultivation of mind and heart, but associated with the eccentric St. Simonian he remained a stranger to all discipline of character. More and more there was revealed a want of concentration, and a vague dreaminess in his nature which to a practiced observer, would have boded no good for his future. He could never maintain a medium between relaxed indolence and exhausting ardor: in tough, persistent capacity for work he failed altogether, and whatever did not come to him by inspiration, he acquired with greater difficulty than did the most commonplace pupil of the conservatory.

Upon all this, however, his violin-professor made no reflections. Gesa not only played his instrument with a skill unheard of for his years, but he also improvised with wonderful originality, at least, so said the professor--who marked nothing but the gigantic strides of the boy's progress, was proud of his pupil and presented him to one amateur after another.

The phlegmatic Brusselers were enchanted by his musical extravagances, because he was named Gesa, had a handsome brunette face, and was said to have sprung from Hungarian origin. Their enthusiasm at his performance always culminated in the same words--"how gipsy-like! _Comme c'est tsigane!_"

At last came a day when Gesa was to play for the first time at a public concert. With the colossal conceit of youth, he rejoiced at the thought of his debut The apprehensive Gaston Delileo on the contrary, lost appetite and sleep.

Anxiously anticipating a disappointment for the boy, he spent most of his time in exhorting Gesa not to care much for a fiasco; an exhortation which the young musician took very impatiently, and ran away from it. With his hat dragged down self-assertingly over his ears, he stamped fuming up and down the Rue Ravestein, while the sad elder crept back and forth in his chamber above, and foreboded.

On the concert evening, Delileo could not be moved to enter the music hall. Breathless and panting, he stood before the performer's entrance, and held his fingers in his ears. Suddenly, in spite of his efforts to exclude every sound, he heard a strange tumult. He let his hands fall. Was it a fire alarm? No, it was clapping from hundreds of hands and shouting from hundreds of throats. The next moment he had burst sobbing into the green-room, and held his nurseling in his arms.

All the other performers pressed the young fellow's hands, praised him, and promised him a brilliant future. With that naive arrogance which one so easily pardons in young gods, even while it provokes a pitying smile, he received all these compliments as if they were his proper tribute; but even his unabashed self-possession gave way when the door opened and an elegant young man entered holding out both hands--Alphonse de Sterny.

"My dear young friend," he cried, "I could not let the evening pass without knowing you--without congratulating you." Then the young violinist's head sank, he trembled from head to foot, and his hands grew ice cold in those of the great virtuoso.

VI

Alphonse de Sterny! The name in those days exercised an enchantment that was mingled with awe upon the ears of every one, be he artist or amateur, who cared for music. In our coldly critical times we can form no idea of the insane idolatry that was addressed, during the decade of the fifties to one or two piano virtuosos. De Sterny was among the most famous of these. The Sterny craze appeared like an epidemic in every town where he gave his concerts. At the same time the riddle of his power was hard to solve. His envious contemporaries asserted bluntly that he owed his triumphs not so much to the artistic excellence of his playing as to his agreeable person and gracious manners. He was the perfection of a _homme a succes_. Gloved and cravated with just precision enough for elegance, sufficiently careless to appear distinguished, ready and malicious enough to pass for witty, dissipated and extravagant enough to be credited with genius, he was also very handsome, wore his hair parted low in the middle of his forehead, and always dressed with quiet correctness in the latest fashion but one, as became a person of the best gentility, avoiding all artist eccentricities. His conversation was amusing, his manners unimpeachable. He was the natural son of a French diplomat, called himself de Sterny after his birthplace, and had inherited an income of twenty-five thousand francs, as the world knew; from an Italian princess--as the world did not know. His piano playing was beautifully finished, a shower of pearls, a chain of flowers, with a masterly balanced technique, carried out in a dignified execution, never one false note, never any vulgar pounding.

Certainly the great Hungarian pianist, to whose performance a handful of false notes belonged as part of the effect, was wont to remark bitingly that "de Sterny played like a countess." But de Sterny, to whom the speech was brought by kind friends, only smiled amiably, and continued, at least in the beginning of his career, to delicately caress an instrument which the other pianists maltreated, and electrified a public satiated with musical orgies, by his moderation. He moved almost exclusively in the best social circles, yet he always showed himself ready to do a service for a fellow artist.

Altogether he was, when Gesa first became acquainted with him, a perfectly shallow, perfectly selfish, uncommonly talented, very good-humored, very vain man who loved to hear himself talked about. Charlatan he only became later, in order to maintain himself upon the pedestal whither public adulation had driven him. The pedestal was too high! Many another might have found himself growing dizzy up there.

He loved to patronize, and for that reason did not content himself with pressing Gesa's hands, but gave him his address, and invited him to call upon him next morning at the Hotel de Flandres, "so that we can talk over your future," said he, cheeringly. Then he was very amiable to the other artists assembled in the green-room, then he held out his hand to Delileo, over whose cheeks the tears were running down, then he clapped the debutant on the shoulder, wished him "good luck!" and disappeared.

At the little artist supper, which the manager had arranged for the performers, Gesa sat, ate not a mouthful, and spoke not a word. With pale cheeks and fixed eyes he gazed before him into the future,--a future in which the trees bore golden leaves, and their fruit sparkled like diamonds--a future in which dust and mold were unknown things, where forms of radiant beauty wandered among thickets of thornless roses, and the laurel trees bowed before him.

In those days Gesa von Zuylen's eyes were not contracted like the eyes of a wild beast that shuns the light; they were wide open, like a young eagle's whom the sun itself does not blind.

VII

No one could take up a gifted but obscure beginner more cordially than did the great de Sterny the little Von Zuylen. He invited the boy to breakfast, two, three times in succession, and Gesa became a familiar part of the furniture, perhaps rather a favorite ornament in the virtuoso's elegant hotel apartments. He was always obliged to bring his violin, and to improvise for de Sterny, who accompanied him on the piano, with the ready skill in following another's feeling, which was his peculiar gift. Then he would draw Gesa into conversation and laugh immoderately at the boy's original notions. Soon he could not meet an acquaintance without crying out to him, "Have you seen my little Gipsy? I must make you acquainted with my Gipsy. He improvises like Chopin, only quite otherwise. Yesterday he quoted Shakespeare to me, and to-day he discovered that Marsala is not so good as Tokay. And he is handsome,--'_a croquer_.'"

In Brussels society the rumor of an "Eighth Wonder of the World" began to spread, and at last the Princess L---- arranged a musical soiree for his benefit, on which occasion truly the "eighth wonder" came very near losing his prestige altogether. De Sterny took charge with amiable pedantry, of all the details of his protege's appearance, had him measured for a pair of patent leather shoes, and on the eventful evening tied the boy's white cravat with his own hands, and brought him in his own carriage to the L---- palace. But already in the brilliant vestibule, adorned with old weapons, and two mysterious black suits of armor, Gesa's robust self-conceit vanished completely. He who had faced the public at a concert with a lion's courage now clung with almost childish anxiety to de Sterny.

"Have you brought the 'eighth wonder'?" cried the princess to de Sterny, as he entered. She was a blonde lady, uncommonly good-natured, very lively, and very short-sighted, for which reason she always held her glass to her eyes. "Have you brought the 'eighth wonder'?" cried she, in a tone as if that were something comic.

"Of course--here it is,--it is named Gesa von Zuylen--Gesa von Zuylen, _c'est droll_--is it not, princess? May I beg that you will deal a little carefully with my 'eighth wonder'--it is a little sensitive!"

"So--really! That is charming. I am glad when a young artist displays a certain pride, it is always becoming. What eyes he has,"--staring at Gesa through her glass--"my husband told me about his eyes. A real true gipsy.--They say he quoted Shakespeare of late--I laughed so at that!"-- Then, as other guests entered, "pray, endeavor to make the 'eighth wonder' comfortable, de Sterny, you are entirely at home here." This was the princess's manner of dealing carefully with a sensitive "eighth wonder."

De Sterny placed the boy temporarily in a corner, out of which he soon drew him forth to be presented to several ladies and gentlemen. Gesa assumed a haughty bearing. The ladies especially were very friendly, and very patronizing, only it scarcely occurred to one of them to address a word to the boy himself. They all talked about him, in his presence, as if he were a picture, or as if he could not understand French. They wondered, and praised and then forgot him while he stood before them, and talked among themselves of other things. It grew more and more uncomfortable for him, and as his embarrassment increased he felt as if he were walking painfully upon smooth thin ice. He shivered a little. Everything around him was so bright and cold. The soft, fine, flute-like voices of good society hurt him. Light and stinging as snowflakes, their words flew against his burning cheeks. He would have liked to weep. He was an "eighth world-wonder"--they stared at him through a lorgnette, discussed him,--and cared for him no further. Listening he heard the words "comes from the Rue Ravestein."--"What is that, the Rue Ravestein?" "What is it? That is difficult to explain to a lady,"--"_vraiment_?" "But he gives a perfectly amazing impression of good breeding." "_Il n'a pas du tout e' air peuple!_" "But since he is a gipsy,"--Gesa felt his throat tighten.

"Shall we not hear you to-day?" asked the ladies who crowded around de Sterny.

"Me?" he replied, with a laugh, "me? I am only manager to-day--and besides I suffer horribly from stage fright."

The moment had come! Gesa must play: his heart beat to suffocation. It was not he, but a stolid clod stiffened with bashfulness who stood up and laid his fingers on the strings. In the middle of Mendelssohn's G minor Concerto he stuck fast, stumbled over himself, picked up, and scrambled painfully through to the end. The composition was never worse played. De Sterny was beside himself. Gesa would have liked to sink through the floor.

A few people applauded because they did not know any better, and a few others because they had not been listening at all. But the greater part shrugged their shoulders, and said "de Sterny is an enthusiast."

And when the virtuoso tried to say a word in excuse for his protege and declared he had never heard him play so ill, they answered "Bah! we don't blame you for anything, de Sterny. We know you are an enthusiast."

The company chatted and laughed, and nibbled a little refreshment in their careless fashion. Then came a deputation of the handsomest women and begged de Sterny to play, whereupon he seated himself at the piano with his usual good-humored readiness, and smiling consciousness of success. After he had played he went to Gesa and said:

"My dear boy, collect yourself! Could you not forget that any one heard you but me, and improvise something? Try to remember the theme you last played to me. Your future depends upon it. And I would so like to be proud of you!"

These last words worked a miracle.

"I will play--only--only--that I may not shame you!" murmured Gesa.

The boy was deathly pale, and trembled all over as he raised his violin, his eyes lighted up--and then hid themselves behind their dark lashes.

A rain of fire fell before his vision, a whirl of emotion filled his breast, wild passionate melodies sounded in his ears. Had he dreamed them, or had a complaining autumn storm driven them hither from the land of his father? Were they echoes of the songs his mother had listened to from her lover, and later had hushed her child to sleep with them, as she rocked him on the threshold of the house in the shabby little street, where the sad Saviour looked hopelessly down from the Crucifix on the grey church wall? Who knows! His violin sang and sobbed as only a Hungarian gipsy-violin can; harsh modulations, piercing melodies, a mad tempest of passion,--then one last burst of wild, reckless hilarity--and he broke off, breathless, and gazing fixedly before him. He knew he had done his best. His ears listened greedily. If they expected a storm of applause as at his public debut, they were disappointed. Only a little hum, like the dry leaves that an east wind is rustling, buzzed through the room, and as if afar off he heard the words "_Charmant, magnifique_, original, tsigane"--His head sank, a black cloud floated before his eyes. De Sterny came up and clapped him on the shoulder. "Bravo! Bravo!" he cried, "we are rehabilitated!" and turning to the company with a triumphant smile,

"Now did I exaggerate?"

But Gesa listened no longer for the answer of the salon. He pressed de Sterny's hand to his hot lips, and burst into tears. The virtuoso was his heaven, his God. "Mais voyons! grand enfant!" said his patron soothingly. And the "world" was enchanted, even more of course by the generosity of the great pianist than by the talent of his protege!

* * * * *

"What is a chimera?" asked the little Gipsy of his great friend one day.

It was in the forenoon. Gesa had been turning over the leaves of a French book which he did not understand, "Les Fleurs du Mal," by Baudelaire. De Sterny meanwhile had been writing letters. He wore a yellow dressing gown of Japanese silk, in which he looked like a large mullein. He yawned and stretched himself, looked pale and used up. That he had not slept regularly for fifteen years was very evident from his appearance.

"What is a chimera?" asked Gesa.

"A chimera--a chimera--it is a siren with wings," defined the virtuoso, turning round.

"H'm!" Gesa lowered his eyes thoughtfully, then raised them inquiringly. "An ennobled siren then?"

"Yes,--as one takes it."

De Sterny sat down by the chimney to warm his feet. "Deuced cold!--hand me the chartreuse, so--Yes, a refined siren if you like," he continued. "The siren has soft human arms with which she draws us into destructive pleasures, the chimera has claws with which she tears our heart. The siren entices us into the mire, the chimera lures us toward heaven,--only we don't reach the heaven, and we often find ourselves very well off in the mire,--deucedly well off! But _saperment_! you don't understand that yet." And he pulled Gesa's ear.

The boy looked rather confused: he certainly had not understood a word of his patron's tirade. "But some of us reach heaven, the heaven of Art, the Walhalla, the Pantheon," cried he, eagerly, with the bombast of a very young person who has read more than he has understood, and likes to display his little knowledge--"If only one sets out early enough on the way."

"Oh yes, a few!" murmured the virtuoso with a queer smile.

"Michael Angelo, Raphael, Beethoven," cried the boy.

"Shakespeare, Milton, Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci," de Sterny laughed aloud as he continued the litany. "But I assure you a man must have quite astounding powers to reach that heaven, and lungs constructed expressly for the purpose in order to feel comfortable after he gets there." The pianist yawned slightly. He belonged among those who amuse themselves with the sirens without permitting them to acquire too much power, and who avoid chimeras on principle. But Gesa was not yet satisfied.

"Have all chimeras wings?" he asked, thoughtfully.

"God forbid!" cried de Sterny.

"But"--

"My dear," cried his patron, laughingly, "if you have any more questions to ask, say so, and I will ring for the waiter to bring up an encyclop[oe]dia--I am at the end of my Latin!"

VIII

Eleven years later, in the middle of May, Gesa came back to Brussels after a long absence. Alphonse de Sterny had known how to make practical use of the enthusiasm in Brussels society. Gesa had been sent on a government pension and supported, moreover, by the favor of several eminent persons, to study under one of the most famous violinists of the time, then settled in Paris.

He had studied a little, dissipated a great deal, then studied again; had been much admired, much envied; had learned to empty his champagne glass, and to distinguish in women between a coquette and one who will repel an impertinence. He had made his first professional tour, with a famous Italian staccato singer, and a still more famous Moravian impressario, had earned many laurels, had finally quarreled at Nice with the violincellist of the troupe on the singer's account, had challenged the cellist, and insulted the manager. The latter was a reasonable being, however, who did not stand on trifles of that sort, and two months later in Paris, when he was engaging a company for his American tour he made Gesa a brilliant offer. But the young violinist was rich in the possession of a few thousand francs that remained to him from his last enterprise, and he curtly declined the great Marinsky's proposal, saying "the career of a soloist bored him, he wished to devote himself to composition." He was twenty-four years old. At that age many musicians have produced their greatest works. He had published nothing as yet, except a "Reverie" that appeared nearly seven years before, with a handsome vignette of the young composer on the title page, in all the pomp of a dilettante production, was bought by the whole Faubourg St. Germaine, and by hardly any one else. Since that time he had scribbled a great deal, but had finished nothing,--and yet he felt so rich! He had only not willed it as yet. He needed quiet for composing. But quiet in Paris is an article of luxury that none but very great gentlemen can compel. Brussels rose in his memory, Brussels with her Gothic churches and crooked streets, her zealous Catholicism, her luxuriant vegetation and stagnant life. A sort of homesickness overcame him,--he started for Brussels.