For answer, Calcraft ironically hummed the Pity motif from "Die Walkuere" and went out of the house, the doors closing gently after him to the familiar rhythm of that sadly duped warrior, Hunding.



THE CORRIDOR OF TIME

Ah! to see behind me no longer on the Lake of Eternity the implacable Wake of Time.—EPHRAIM MIKAEL.

When Cintras was twenty he planned an appeal to eternity. He knew "Emaux et Camees" as pious folk their Bible; he felt that naught endured but art. So he became a pagan, and sought for firmness and delicacy in the texture, while aiming to fill his verse with the fire of Swinburne, the subtlety of Rossetti and the great, clear day-flame of Gautier. A well-nigh impossible ideal; yet he cherished it for twice ten years, and at forty had forsworn poetry for prose....

Then he read the masters of that "other harmony of prose" until he dreamed of long, sweeping phrases, drumming with melody, cadences like the humming of slow, uplifting walls of water tumbling on sullen strands. He knew Sir Thomas Browne, and repeated with unction: "Now since these dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of Methusaleh, and in a yard under ground, and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong and spacious buildings above it; and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests; what prince can promise such diuturnity unto his relicks." ... He wondered if Milton, De Quincey, Walter Pater or even Jeremy Taylor had made such sustained music. He marvelled at the lofty structures of old seventeenth century prose-men, and compared them with the chippy staccato of the modern perky style, its smug smartness, its eternal chattering gallop. He absorbed the quiet prose of Addison and Steele and swore it tasted like dry sherry. Swift, he found brilliantly hard, often mannered; and he loved Dr. Goldsmith, so bland, loquacious, welcoming. In Fielding's sentences he heard the clatter of oaths; and when bored by the pulpy magnificence of Pater's harmonies went back to Bunyan with his stern, straightforward way. For Macaulay and his multitudinous prose, Cintras conceived a special abhorrence, but could quote for you with unfailing diction Sir William Temple's "Use of Poetry and Music," and its sweet coda: "When all is done, human life is at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child that must be played with and humored to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."

Cintras had become enamoured with the English language, and emptied it into his eyes from Chaucer to Stevenson. He most affected Charles Lamb and Laurence Sterne; he also loved the Bible for its canorous prose, and on hot afternoons as the boys lolled about his room, he thundered forth bits of Job and the Psalms. Cintras was greatly beloved by the gang, though it was generally conceded that he had as yet done nothing. This is the way Berkeley put it, down at Cherierre's, where they often met to say obvious things in American-French....

"You see boys, if Cintras had the stuff in him he would have turned out something by this time. He's a bad poet—what, haven't you ever read any of his verse?—and now he's gone daft on artistic prose. Artistic rubbish! Who the devil cares for chiselled prose nowadays? In the days when link-boys and sedan chairs helped home a jag they had the time to speak good English. But now! Good Lord! With typewriters cutting your phrases into angular fragments, with the very soil at your heels saturated with slang, what hope in an age of hurry has a fellow to think of the cadence? I honestly believe Stevenson was having fun when he wrote that essay of his on the technical elements of style. It's a puzzle picture and no more to be deciphered than a Bach fugue."

"When Bill Berkeley gets the flow on, he's worse than Cintras with his variable vowels. Say, Bill, I think you're jealous of old Pop Cintras." It was Sammy Hodson, a newspaper man, who spoke, and as he wrote on space he was usually the cashier of the crowd....

Cherierre's is on University Place, and the spot where the artistic set—Berkeley, Hodson, Pauch, the sculptor, and Cintras—happened to be hanging about just then. The musician of the circle was a tall thin young man named Merville. It was said that he had written a symphony; and one night they all got drunk when the last movement was finished, though not a soul had heard a note. Every one believed Merville would do big things some day.

Cintras entered. He was hopelessly uninteresting looking and wore a beard. Berkeley swore that if he shaved he would be sent to prison; but Cintras pleaded economy, a delicate throat, also the fact that his nose was stubby. But set him to talking about the beauties of English prose, and his eyes blazed with a green fire. The conversation turned on good things to drink; wine at twenty-five cents a litre was ordered, and the chatter began....

"It seems to me, Berkeley," Cintras spoke, "that you modern fellows are too much devoted to the color scheme. I remember when I was a boy, Gautier set us crazy in Paris with his color sense. His pages glowed with all the pigments of the palette; he vied with the jeweller in introducing precious stones of the most ravishing brilliancy within the walls of his paragraph; I sickened of all this splendor, this Ruskin word-painting, and went in for cool grays, took up Baudelaire and finally reached Verlaine, whose music is the echo of music heard in misty mediaeval parks while the peacock dragging by with its twilight tail, utters shrill commentary on such moonshine. After that I reached Chopin and found him too dangerous, too treacherous, too condensed, the art too filled out; and so I finally landed in the arms of Wagner, and I've been there ever since."

"Look here, Cintras, you're prose-mad and you've landed nowhere." Berkeley lighted one of Hodson's cigarettes. "When a new, big fellow comes along you follow him until you find out how he does the trick and then you get bored. Don't you remember the day you rushed into my studio and yelled, 'Newman is the only man who wrote prose in the nineteenth century,' and then persisted in spouting long sentences from the 'Apologia'? First it was Arnold, then it was Edmund Burke." "It will always be Burke," interrupted Cintras. "Then it was Maurice de Guerin, and I suppose it will be Flaubert forever and ever." They all laughed.

"Yes, Billy, it will always be Gustave Flaubert, and I worship him more and more every day. It took him forty years to write four books and three stories, and, as Henry James says, he deliberately planned masterpieces."

Hodson broke in: "You literary men make me tired. Why, if I turned out copy at the rate of Slobsbert—what's his name?—I'd starve. What's all the fuss about, anyhow? Write natural English and any one will understand you"—"Ah, natural English, that's what one man writes in a generation," sighed Cintras. "And when you want something great," continued the young man, "why, read a good 'thriller' about the great Cemetery Syndicate, and how it robbed the dead for gold fillings in teeth. The author just slings it out—and such words!"

"Yes, with a whitewash brush." Berkeley scowled.

"Why," pursued Hodson, unmoved, "why don't you get married, Cintras, and work for your living? Then you'll have to write syndicate stuff and that will knock the nonsense out of you. Or, fall in love and be miserable like me." Hodson paused to drink.

"O triste, triste etait mon ame, A cause, a cause d'une femme."

"That's Verlaine; Hoddy, my boy, when you grow up, quit newspapering and become cultured, you may appreciate its meaning and beauty."

"When I am cultured I'll be a night city editor; that's my ideal," said the youth, stoutly.

"Let's go over to Merville's room and make him play Chopin," suggested Pauch, the sculptor, who seldom spoke, but could eat more than four men.... They drank their coffee and went across into Twelfth street, and at the top of the house they found the musician's room. It was large, but poorly fitted out. An old square-piano, a stove, a bed, three chairs, a big lounge and a washstand completed the catalogue. Merville made them comfortable and sat down to the piano. Its tone, as his fingers crept over the keys, was of faded richness and there were reverberations of lost splendors in the bass. Merville started with a Chopin nocturne, but Hodson hurt the cat as it brushed against him, and the noise displeased the pianist. He stopped.

"I don't feel like Chopin, it's too early in the day. Chopin should be heard only in the early evening or after midnight. I'll give you some Brahms instead. Brahms suits the afternoon, this gray, dull day." All were too lazy to reply and the pianist began, with hesitating touch, an Intermezzo in A minor. It sounded like music heard in a dream, a dream anterior to this existence. It seemed as if life, tired of the external blaze of the sun, sought for the secret of hidden spaces; searched for the message in the sinuous murmuring shell. It was an art of an art, the penumbra of an art. Its faint outlines melted into one's soul and refused to be turned away. The recollection of other music seemed gross after this curiously introspective, this almost whorl-like, music. It was the return to the invertebrate, the shadow of a shadow, and the hearts of Merville's guests were downcast and purified....

When he had finished, Cintras asked: "If that is Brahms, why then he has solved the secret of the age's end. He has written the song of humanity absorbed in the slime of a dying planet."

"Very morbid, very perverse in rhythms, I should say," broke in Berkeley; they all shivered. Merville arose, his face glum and drawn, and brought whiskey and glasses.

Cintras was the first to speak:

"Hodson, you are a very young fellow and I wish to give you good advice. Yours to me was better than you supposed. Now don't you ever bother with art, music or artistic prose. Just marry a nice girl who goes to comic operas. You stick to her and avoid Balzac. He is too strong meat for you—" "Yes, but he's great; I read him!" "And no more understand him than you do Chopin. Because he is great he is readable, but his secret is the secret of the sphinx; it may only be unravelled by a few strong souls. So go your road and be happy in your plush way, read your historical hog-wash, and believe me when I swear that the most miserable men are those who have caught a glimpse of the eternal beauty of art, who pursue her ideal face, who have the vision but not the voice. I once wrote a little prose poem about this desire of beauty; I will see if I can remember it for you."

"Go ahead, old man; I'll stand anything to-day," sang out Hodson.

"Here it is:" and Cintras recited his legend of

THE RECURRING STAIRCASE

I first saw her on the Recurring Staircase. I had turned sharply the angle of the hall and placed my foot upon the bottom step and then I saw her. She was motionless; her back I saw, and O! the grace of her neck and the glory of her arrested attitude. I feared to move, but some portent, silent, inflexibly eloquent, haled me to the staircase. That was years ago. I called to her, strange calls, beautiful sounding names; I besought her to bend her head, to make some sign to my signals of urgency; but her glance was aloft, where, illumined by the scarlet music of a setting sun, I saw in a rich, heavy mullioned embrazure, multi-colored glass shot through with drunken despairing daylight. Again I prayed my Lady of the Recurring Staircase to give me hope by a single dropped glance. At last I conjured her in Love's fatal name, and she moved languorously up the steep slope of stairs. As if the spell had been thwarted, I followed the melodious adagio of her footsteps. That was many years ago. She never mounted to the heavy mullioned embrazure with the multi-colored glass shot through with drunken, despairing daylight. I never touched the hand of the Lady of the Recurring Staircase; for the stairs were endless and I stood ever upon the bottom step; and the others below slipped into eternity; and all this was many years ago. I never have seen the glorious glance of My Lady on the Recurring Staircase.

They all applauded, Hodson violently. "I say, old chap, what would you have gained by overtaking the lady?" Cintras sniffed; Berkeley laughingly remarked that the staircase reminded him of the sort you see at a harvest with a horse on the treadmill.

"Don't, fellows!" begged Merville. "Cintras is giving one ideas to-day for a symphonic poem. Go on, Cintras, with more, but in a different vein. Something in the classical style."

"I can't do that," responded Cintras, trying not to look flattered, "but I will show you my soul when overtaken by doubt." "Cintras, your soul, like Huysmans's, is a cork one." They were aghast, for Hodson the uncultured one had spoken.

"And where, Hoddy, my brave lad, did you ever in the world hear of Huysmans?" he was asked. "I read that; I thought it fitted Cintras. His soul is like a cork ball that is always rebounding from one idea to another." "Bravo! you will be the literary, not the night city editor, before you die, Hoddy." ... Then Cintras read another prose-poem which he had named

THE MIRROR OF UNFAITH

I looked into my mirror the next morning. With scared cry I again looked into my mirror. With brutish, trembling fingers I tried to cleanse the mist from my eyes, and once more I looked into my mirror, scraped its surface tenderly, but it availed not. There was no reflection of my features in its polished depths; naught but vacancy, steely and profound. There is no God, I had proclaimed; no God in high heaven, no God with the world, no spirit ever moved upon the vasty waters, no spirit ever travailed in the womb of time and conceived the cosmos. There is no God and man is not made in his image; eternity is an eyeless socket—a socket that never beheld the burning splendors of the Deity. There is no God, O my God! And my cries are futile, for have I not gazed into my mirror, gazed with clear ironic frantic gaze and missed my own image! There is no God; yet has my denial been heard in blackest Eblis, and has it not reverberated unto the very edges of Time? There is no God, and from that moment my face was blotted out. I may never see it in the moving waters, in mirrors, in the burnished hearts of things, or in the liquid eyes of woman. I denied God. I mocked His omnipotence. I dared him to mortal combat, and my mirror tells me there is no Me, no image of the man called by my name. I denied God and God denies me!

"If I were in such a mental condition," Hodson eagerly commented, "I'd call a doctor or join the Salvation Army." "Why haven't you written more short stories?" inquired Merville. "Because I've never had the time," Cintras sadly answered. "Once I tried to condense what novelists usually spread over hundreds of pages, and say it in a couple of paragraphs. Every word must illuminate the past, in every sentence may be found the sequel."

"Cintras, I vow your case is hopeless. You are a regular cherry-stone carver. Here you've shown us the skeletons of two stories and yet given none of them flesh enough to live upon." "Berkeley you belong to a past full of novelistic monsters. You are the three volume man with the happy ending tacked on willy-nilly. It is the tact of omission—" "Hang your art-for-art theories. I'll make more money than Cintras ever did when I publish my "Art of Anonymous Letter Writing!" cut in Hodson. Cintras calmly continued, "Here is my title and see if you can follow me."

INELUCTABLE

The light waned as with tense fingers he turned the round, bevelled-edge screw of the lamp. Darkness, immitigable, profound, and soft, must soon succeed yellow radiance. To face this gloom, to live in it and breathe of it, set his heart harshly beating. Yet he slowly turned with tense fingers the bevelled-edge screw of the lamp. He would presently be forced to a criticism of the day, that day, which must brilliantly flame when night closed upon him. As in the vivid agony endured between two bell-strokes of a clock, he strove to answer the oppressing shape threatening him. And his fingers lingeringly revolved the lamp-screw with its brass and bevelled-edge. If only some gust of resolution would arise like the sudden scud of the squall that whitens far-away level summer seas, and drive forth pampered procrastinations! Then might his fingers become flexile, his mind untied. Poor, drab seconds that fooled with eternity and supped on vain courage as they went trooping by. Could not one keen point of consciousness abide? Why must all go humming into oblivion like untuned values? He grasped at a single strand of recollection; he saw her parted lips, the passionate reproach of her eyes and felt her strenuous tacit acquiescence; he sensed the richness of her love. So he stood, unstable, vacillating and a treacherous groper amidst cruel shards of an ineluctable memory, powerless to stay the fair phantom and fearful of looking night squarely in the front. And he remained a dweller in the shadows, as he faintly fingered the bevelled-edge screw of the lamp....

"If Maeterlinck would feed on Henry James and write a dream fugue on your affected title, this might be the result," muttered Berkeley. "Hush!" whispered Merville; "can't you see that it is his own life he is unconsciously relating in this sequence of short stories; the tale of his own pampered procrastinations? If he had only made up his mind perhaps he could have kept her by his side and been happy but"—"But instead," said Berkeley sourly "he wrote queer impossible things about bevelled-edge lamp screws and she couldn't stand it. I don't blame her. I say, nature before art every time." ... Then Hodson shouted, dispelling dangerous reveries:

"Cintras, why don't you finish that book of yours? Ten years ago you told me that you had finished it nearly one-half." "Yes, and in ten years more he will finish the other," remarked Berkeley.

"If you knew how I worked you would not ask why I work slowly." "Flaubert again!" interjected Berkeley.

"The title cost me much pain, and the first two lines infinite travail. I really write with great facility. I once wrote a novel in three weeks for a sensation monger of a publisher; but because of this ease I suspect every sentence, every word, aye, every letter that drops from my pen."

"Hire a typewriter and you'll suspect nobody," suggested Hodson....

The party began to break up; Cintras pressed hands and went first. There was some desultory conversation, during which Berkeley endeavored to persuade Hodson to buy him his dinner. Then they left Merville and Pauch alone. The musician looked at the sculptor.

"And these makers of words think they have the secret of art; as if form, as if music, is not infinitely greater and nearer the core of life." Pauch grunted.

"There's a man, that Brahms, you played, Merville; his is great art which will girdle the centuries. The man built solidly for the future. He reminds me of Rodin's Calais group: harsh but eternal; secret and sweetly harsh. Brahms is the Bonze of his art; his music has often the immobility of the Orient—I think the 'Vibrationists' would describe it as 'kinetic stability.' ... Cintras is done. He never did anything; he never will. He theorizes too much. If you talk too often of the beautiful things you are going to execute they will go sailing into the air for some other fellow to catch. Mark my words! No man may play tag with his soul and win the game. He is a study in temperament, or, rather the need of one, is Cintras. He must have received a black eye some time. Was he ever in love?"

"Yes, but she went off with another fellow."

"That explains all." Pauch stolidly asked for beer, and getting none strolled home....

Cintras died. Among his effects was found a bulky mass of manuscript; almost trembling with joy and expectation Berkeley carried the treasure to Merville's room. On the title-page was read: "The Corridor of Time: A Novel. By George Cintras."

Frantic with curiosity the friends found on the next page the following lines:

"And the insistent clamor of her name at my heart is like the sonorous roll of the sea on a savage shore."

The other pages were virginal of ink....



AVATAR

Somewhere; in desolate wind-swept space, In Twilight-land—in No-man's land— Two hurrying shapes met face to face And bade each other stand.

"And who are you?" cried one agape Shuddering in the gloaming light; "I know not," said the second shape, "I only died last night!"

—ALDRICH.

Mychowski was considered by grave critical authorities, the best living interpreter of Chopin. He was a Pole—any one could tell that by the way he spelt his name—and a perfect foil to Paderewski, being short, thick-set and with hair as black as a kitchen beetle. His fat amiable face, flat and corpulent fingers, his swarthy skin and upturned nose, were called comical by the women who thronged his recitals; but Mychowski at the keyboard was a different man from the Mychowski who sat all night at a table eating macaroni and drinking Apollinaris water. Then the funny profile vanished and the fat fingers literally dripped melody. His readings of the Polish master's music were distinguished by grace, dexterity, finesse, pathos and subtilty. The only pupils of Chopin alive—there were only six now—hobbled to Mychowski's concerts and declared that at last their dead idol was reincarnated, at last the miracle had taken place: a genuine interpreter of Chopin had appeared—then severe coughing, superinduced by emotion, and the rest of the sentence would finish in tears....

The Chopin pupils also wrote to the papers letters always beginning, "Honored Sir,—Your numerous and intelligent readers would perhaps like to know in what manner Chopin's performance of the F minor Ballade resembled Mychowski's. It was in the year 1842 that—" A sextuple flood of recollections was then let loose, and Mychowski the gainer thereby. Still he obstinately refused to be lionized, cut his hair perilously near the prizefighter's line, and never went into society, except for money. He was a model business man; the impresarios worshipped him. Such business ability, such frugality, such absence of eccentricity, such temperance, were voted extraordinary.

"Why, the man never gambles," said a manager, "drinks only at his meals"—"which are many," interrupted some one—"and always sends his money home to his wife and family in Poland. Yet he plays like a god. It is unheard of." ...

The Polish servant Mychowski brought with him from home sickened in Paris and died. Although the pianist was playing the Erard, he went often to the Pleyel piano warerooms and there told a friend that he was without a valet.

"We have some one here who will suit you. His father was Chopin's body-servant, who, as you must have read, was an Irish-Frenchman named Daniel Dubois. We call the son Daniel Chopin; he looks so much like some of the pictures of your great countryman. Best of all, he doesn't know one note of music from another."

"Just the man," cried Mychowski; "my last valet always insisted on waking me in the morning with a Bach Invention. It was awful." Mychowski shuddered.

"Wait, then; I'll send upstairs for him," said the amiable representative of the Maison Pleyel, and soon there appeared, dressed after the fashion fifty years ago, a man of about thirty, whose face and expression caused Mychowski to bound out of his seat and exclaim in his native tongue:

"Slawa Bohu! but he looks like Frederic."

The man started a little, then became impassive. "My father was Daniel Dubois, in whose arms the great master died. May he keep company with the angels! When my mother bore me she wore a medallion containing a portrait of the great master, and my father, who was his pupil, played the nocturnes for her."

The speaker's voice was slightly muffled in timbre, its accent was languid, yet it was indubitably the voice of a cultivated man. Mychowski regarded him curiously. A slim frame of middle height; fragile but wonderfully flexible limbs; delicately formed hands; very small feet; an oval, softly-outlined head; a pale, transparent complexion; long silken hair of a light chestnut color parted on one side; tender brown eyes, intelligent rather than dreamy; a finely-curved aquiline nose, a sweet, subtle smile; graceful and varied gestures—such was the outward presence of Daniel Dubois.

"He looks just like the description given by Niecks," murmured the pianist. "Even the eyes are piwne, as we say in Poland, couleur de biere.

"Yet you do not play the piano?" he continued. The man smiled and shook his head. Terms were arranged, and the valet sent to Mychowski's rooms.

"And the mother, who was she?" Mychowski asked later.

"Pst!" enjoined his friend discreetly. Mychowski smiled, sighed, shook his head, settled himself before a new piano and plunged into the preludes, playing the entire twenty-five without pause, while business was suspended in the ancient and honorable Maison Pleyel, so captivating, so miraculous, was the poetic performance of this commonplace and kind-hearted virtuoso....

Mychowski discovered in Daniel an agreeable servant. He was noiseless, ubiquitous. He could make an omelette or sew on a button with woman's skill. His small, well-kept hands knew no fatigue, and his master often watched them, almost transparent, fragile and aristocratic, as they shaved his rotund oily face. Daniel was admirable in his management of the musical library, seeming to know where the music of every composer had to be placed. Mychowski wondered how he contrived to find time to learn so much and yet keep his hands from the keyboard. After the first month Mychowski began to envy his servant the possession of such a poetic personality.

"Now if I had such a face and figure how much better an effect I should produce. I see the women laugh when I sit down to play, and if it wasn't for my fat fingers where would I be?" Mychowski sighed. He had conquered the musical world, but not his reflection in the mirror. He had made some charming conquests, but his better guides had whispered to him that it was his music, not his face, that had won the women. He was vain, sensitive and without the courage of his nose, unlike Cyrano de Bergerac. Nothing was lacking; talent, wealth, health, a capital digestion and success! Had they not poured in upon him? From his twentieth year he enjoyed the sunshine of popular favor and after ten years was enamoured of it as ever. He almost felt bitter when he saw Daniel's high-bred and delicate figure. He questioned him a hundred times, but could find out nothing. Where had he been raised? Who was his mother, and why did he select a servant's life? Daniel replied with repose and managed to parry or evade all inquiries. He confessed, however, to one weakness—insatiable love for music—and begged his master to be allowed the privilege of sitting in the room during the practising hours. When a concert was given Daniel went to the hall and arranged all that was necessary for the pianist's comfort. Mychowski caught him at a recital one night with a score of the F minor Ballade of Chopin, and warm and irritable as he was, for he had just played the work, he could not refrain from asking his servant how it had pleased him. Daniel shook his head gently. Mychowski stared at him curiously, with chagrin. Then a lot of women rushed in to congratulate the artist, but stopped to stare aghast at Daniel.

"Ah, M. Mychowski!"—it was the beautiful Countess d'Angers—"We know now why you play Chopin so wonderfully, for have you not his ghost here to tell you everything? Naughty magician, why have you not come to me on my evenings? You surely received cards!" Mychowski looked so annoyed at the jest that Daniel slipped out of the room and did not appear until the carriage was ready....

At the cafe where Mychowski invariably went for his macaroni Daniel usually had a place at the table. The pianist was easy in his manners, and not finding his man presumptuous he made him a companion. They had both eaten in silence, Mychowski gluttonously. Looking at Daniel and drinking a glass of chianti, he said in his most jocular manner:

"Eh bien, mon brave! now tell me why you didn't like my F minor Ballade." Daniel lifted his eyes slowly to the other's face and smiled faint protestation. Mychowski would take no refusal. He swore in Polish and called out in lusty tones, "Come now, Daniel Chopin, what didn't you like, the tempo, the conception, the coda, or my touch?"

"Your playing, cher maitre, was yourself. No one can do what you can," answered Daniel evasively.

"Hoity-toity! What have we here, a critic in disguise?" said Mychowski good humoredly, yet at heart greatly troubled. "Do you know what the pupils of Chopin say of my interpretation?" Daniel again shook his head.

"They know nothing about Chopin or his music," he calmly replied. A thunderbolt had fallen at Mychowski's feet and he was affrighted. Know nothing of Chopin or his music? Here was a pretty presumption. "Pray, Daniel," he managed to gasp out, "pray how does your lordship happen to know so much about Chopin and his music?" Mychowski was becoming angry. In a stifled voice Daniel replied:

"Dear master, only what my father told me. But do let me go home and get your bed ready. I feel faint and I ask pardon for my impertinence. I am indeed no critic, nor shall I ever presume again." "You may go," said his master in gruff accents, and regretted his rudeness as soon as Daniel was out of sight. If any one of the managers who so ardently praised Mychowski's temperate habits had seen him guzzling wine, beer and brandy that night, they might have been shocked. He seldom went to excess, but was out of sorts and nettled at criticism from such a quarter. Yet—had he played as well as usual? Was not overpraise undermining his artistic constitution? He thought hard and vainly endeavored to recapture the mood in which he had interpreted the Ballade, and then he fell to laughing at his spleen. A great artist to be annoyed by the first adverse feather that happened to tickle him in an awkward way. What folly! What vanity! Mychowski laughed and ordered a big glass of brandy to steady his nerves.

All fat men, he thought, are nervous and sensitive. I must really go to Marienbad and drink the waters and I think I'll leave Daniel Chopin behind in Paris. Chopin—Chopin, I wonder how much Chopin is in him? Pooh! what nonsense. Chopin only loved Sand and before that Constantia Gladowska. He never stooped to commonplace intrigue. But the resemblance, the extraordinary resemblance! After all, nature plays queer pranks. A thunderstorm may alarm a Mozart into existence, and why not a second Chopin? Ah, if I had that fellow's face and figure or he had my fingers what couldn't we do? If he were not too old to study—no, I won't give him lessons, I'll be damned if I will! He might walk away with me, piano and all. Chopin face, Chopin fingers.

Mychowski was rapidly becoming helpless and at two o'clock the patron of the cafe sent a message to Daniel, who was hard by, that he had better fetch his master away. The pianist was lifted into a carriage, though he lived just around the corner, and with the aid of the concierge, a cynical man of years, was helped into his apartment and put to bed. It was a trying night for Daniel, whose nature revolted at any suggestion of the grosser vices....

From dull, muddy unconsciousness the soul of Mychowski struggled up into thin light. He fought with bands of villainous appearing men holding tuning forks; he was rolled down terrific gulfs a-top of pianos; while accompanying him in his vertiginous flight were other pianos, square, upright and grand; pianos of sinister and menacing expression; pianos with cruel grinning teeth; pianos of obsolete and anonymous shapes; pianos that leered at him, sneered at him with screaming dissonances. The din was infernal, the clangor terrific; and as the pianist, hemmed in and riding this whirlwind of splintered sounding-boards, jangling wires and crunching lyres, closed his eyes expecting the last awful plunge into the ghastly abyss, a sudden, piercing tone penetrated the thick of the storm; as if by sorcery, the turmoil faded away, and, looking about him, Mychowski's disordered senses took note of an exquisite valley in which rapidly flowed a tiny silvery stream. Carpeted with green and fragrant with flowers, the landscape was magical, and most melancholy was the music made by the running waters. Never had the artist heard such music, and in the luminous haze of his mind it seemed familiar. Three tones, three Gs in the treble and in octaves, sounded clear to him; and again and once more they were heard in doubled rhythm. A rippling prelude rained upon the meadows and Mychowski lay perfectly entranced. He knew what was coming and knew not the music. Then a melody fell from the trees as they whispered over the banks of the brook and it was in the key of F minor. A nocturne; yet the day was young. Its mournful reiterations darkened the sky; but about all, enchantment lay. In G flat, so the sensitive ear of the pianist warned him, was his life being borne; but only for a time. Back came the first persistent theme, bringing with it overpowering richness of hue and scent, and then it melted away in prismatic vapors....

"What is all this melodic madness?" asked Mychowski. He knew the music made by the little river and trees, yet he groped as if in the toils of a nightmare to name it. That solemn narrative in six-eight time in B flat, where had he heard it? The glowing, glittering arabesques, the trilling as if from the throats of a thousand larks, the cunning imitations as if leaf mocked leaf in the sunshine! Again the first theme in F minor, but amplified and enlarged with a spray of basses and under a clouded sky. Without knowing why, the unhappy man felt the impending catastrophe and hastened to escape it. But in vain. His feet were as lead, and suddenly the heavens opened, fiercely lightened, the savage thunder leaping upon him in chromatic dissonances; then a great stillness in C major, and with solemn, silent steps he descended in modulated chords until he reached an awful crevasse. With a howl the tempest again unloosed, and in screeching accents the end came, came in F minor. For many octaves Mychowski fell as a stone from a star, and as he crashed into the very cellarage of hell he heard four snapping chords and found himself on the floor of his bedroom....

"The F minor Ballade, of course," he cried; "and a nice ass I made of myself last night. Oh, what a head! But I wonder how I came to dream of the Ballade? Oh, yes, talking about it with Daniel, of course. What a vivid dream! I heard every note, and thought the trees and the brook were enjoying a duo, and—Bon Dieu! what's that?"

Mychowski, his face swollen and hair in disorder, slowly lifted himself and sat on the edge of the bed as he listened.

"Who the devil is playing at this hour? But what's this? Am I dreaming again? There goes that damnable Ballade." Mychowski rushed out of his room, down the short hall and pushed open the door of the music-room. The music stopped. Daniel was dusting some music at the end of the piano as he came in.

"Ah! dear master, I hope you are not sick," said the faithful fellow, dropping his feather-duster and running to Mychowski, who stood still and only stared.

"Who was playing the piano?" he demanded. "The piano?" quoth Daniel. "Yes, the piano. Was any one here?"

"No one has called this morning," answered Daniel, "except M. Dufour, the patron of the cafe, who came to inquire after your health." "It's none of his business," snapped Mychowski, whose nerves were on edge. "I heard piano playing and I wasn't dreaming. Come, no nonsense, Daniel, who was it?"

Just then his eyes fell on the desk; he strode to it and snatched the music. "There," he hoarsely said, "there is damning proof that you have lied to me; there is the Ballade in F minor by Chopin, and who, in the name of Beelzebub, was playing it? Not you?"

Daniel turned white, then pink, and trembled like a cat. Mychowski, his own face white, with cold shivers playing zither-wise up and down his back, looked at the servant and, in a feeble voice, asked him, "Who are you, man?" Daniel recovered himself and said in soothing tones, "Cher maitre, you were up too late last night and you are nervous, agitated. I ask your pardon, but I never did tell you that I drum a little on the piano, and thinking you fast asleep I ventured on the liberty, and—"

"Drum a little! You call that drumming?" said Mychowski slowly. The two men looked into each other's eyes and Daniel's drooped. "Don't do it again; that's all. You woke me up," said Mychowski roughly, and he went out of the room without hearing Daniel reply:

"No, Monsieur Mychowski, I will not do it again." ...

From that time on Mychowski was obsessed. He weighed the evidence and questioned again and again the validity of his dream, in the margin between sleep and waking. During the daytime he was inclined to think that it had been an odd trance, music and all; but when he had drunk brandy he grew superstitious and swore to himself that he really had heard Daniel play; and he became so nervous that he never took his man about with him. He drank too much, and kept such late hours that Daniel gently scolded him; finally he played badly in public and then the critical press fairly pounced upon him. Too long had he been King Pianist, and his place was coveted by the pounding throng below. He drank more, and presently there was talk of a decadence in the marvellous art of M. Mychowski, the celebrated interpreter of Chopin.

All this time Mychowski watched Daniel, watched him in the day, watched him in the night. He would prowl about his apartment after midnight, listening for the tone of a piano, and, after telling Daniel that he would be gone for the day, he would sneak back anxious and expectant. But he never heard any music, and this, instead of calming his nerves, made him sicker. "Why," he would ask himself, "if the fellow can play as he does, why in the name of Chopin does he remain my servant? Is it because his servant blood rules, or—His servant blood? Why, he may have Polish blood in his veins, and such Polish!" Mychowski grew white at the idea. He could not sleep at night for he felt lonely, and drank so much that his manager declined to do business with him. Daniel prayed, expostulated and even threatened to leave; but Mychowski kept on the broad, downward path that leads to the mirage called Thirst.

One afternoon Mychowski sat at his accustomed table in the cafe. He was sick and sullen after a hard night of drinking, and as he saw himself in the mirror he bitterly thought, "He has the face, he has the figure, and, by God, he plays like Chopin." A voice interrupted him.

"Bon jour, Monsieur Mychowski; but how can you duplicate yourself, for just a minute ago I passed your apartment and heard such delicious piano playing?"

"The devil!" cried Mychowski, jumping up, and meeting the gaze of one of the six original Chopin pupils. "No, not the devil," said the other; "but Chopin. Surely you could not have been playing the F minor Ballade so marvellously and so early in the day? Now, Chopin always asserted that the F minor Ballade was for the dusk—"

"No," interrupted Mychowski, "it was not I; it was only Daniel, my valet, and my pupil. The lazy scamp! If I catch him at the piano instead of at his work I'll break every bone in his body." Mychowski's eyes were evil.

"But I assure you, cher monsieur, this was no servant, no pupil; this sounded as if the master had come back." "You once said that of me," returned the pianist moodily, and as he got up, his face ugly with passion, he reiterated:

"I tell you it was Daniel Chopin. But I'll answer for his silence after I've finished with him."

Mychowski hurried home....



THE WEGSTAFFES GIVE A MUSICALE

I had promised Mrs. Wegstaffe and so there was no escape; not that my word was as good as my bond—in the matter of invitations it was not—but I liked Edith Wegstaffe, who was pretty, even if she did murder Bach. Hence the secret of my acceptance of Mrs. Wegstaffe's rather frigid inquiry as to whether I was engaged for the fourteenth. I am a bachelor, and next to cats, hate music heartily. Almost any other form of art appeals to my aestheticism, which must feed upon form, color, substance, but not upon impalpabilities. Silly sound waves, that are said to possess color, form, rhythm—in fact, all attributes of the plastic arts. "Pooh! What nonsense," I cried on the evening of the fourteenth, as I cursed a wretched collar that would not be coerced.... When I reached the Wegstaffe mansion I found my progress retarded by half a hundred guests, who fought, but politely, mind you, for precedence. At last, rumpled and red, I reached the men's dressing room, and the first person I encountered was Tompkins, Percy Tompkins, a man I hated for his cocksure manner of speech and know-it-all style on the subject of music. Often had he crushed my callow musical knowledge by an apt phrase, and thinking well of myself—at least Miss Edith says I do—I disliked Tompkins heartily. "Hello!" with a perceptible raising of his eyebrows, "what are you doing here?" "The same as yourself," I tartly answered, for he was not l'ami de la maison any more than I, and I didn't purpose being sat upon, that night at least. "My good fellow, I'm here to listen and—to be bored," he replied in his wittiest way.

"Indeed! well I'm in the same boat about the music, but I hope I sha'n't be bored."

"But good heavens, man, it's an amateur affair—musicale, as the Wegstaffes call it in true barbarous American jargon—and I fear Edith Wegstaffe will play Chopin!"

This angered me; I had long suspected Tompkins of entertaining a sneaking admiration for Edith, and resolved to tell her of this slur at the first opportunity. I didn't have a chance to answer him; a dozen men rushed into the room, threw their hats and coats on the bed and rushed out again.

"They're in a hurry for a drink before the music begins," said Tompkins....

Going slowly down the long staircase we found a little room on the second floor crowded with men puffing cigarettes and drinking brandy and soda. Old Wegstaffe was a generous host, and knew what men liked best at a musicale. On the top floor four or five half-grown boys were playing billiards, and the ground floor fairly surged with women of all ages, degrees and ugliness. To me there was only one pretty girl in the house, Edith Wegstaffe; but of course I was prejudiced.

It was nine o'clock before Mrs. Wegstaffe gave the signal to begin. The three long drawing-rooms were jammed with smart looking people, a fair sprinkling of Bohemians, and a few professionals, whose hair, hands and glasses betrayed them. The latter stood in groups, eying each other suspiciously, while regarding the rest of the world with that indulgent air they assume at musicales. Everything to my unpractised eye seemed in hopeless disorder; a frightful buzz filled the air, and a blond girl at the big piano was trying to disentangle a lot of music. Near her stood a long-haired young man who perspired incessantly. "Ah!" I gloated. "Nervous! serves him right; he should have stayed at home!"

Just then Mrs. Wegstaffe saw me. "You're just the man I'm looking for," said she hurriedly. "Now be a good fellow; do go and tell all those people in the other room to stop talking. It's nine o'clock, and we're a half hour behind time." Before I could expostulate she had gone, leaving me in the same condition as the long-haired young man I had just derided.

"How tell them to stop talking?" I madly asked myself. Should I go to each group and politely say: "Please stop, for the music is about to begin," or should I stand in a doorway and shout:

"Say, quit gabbling, will you? the parties in the other room are going to spiel." My embarrassment was so hideous that the latter course would probably have been adopted, but Miss Edith touched me on the arm and I followed her to the hall.

"Oh, Mr. Trybill!" she gasped; "I'm so nervous that I shall surely faint when it comes my turn. Won't you please turn the music for me? I shall really feel better if some one is near me."

I looked at the sweet girl. There was not a particle of coquetry in her request. Dark shadows were under her eyes, two pink spots burnt in her pretty cheeks and her hands shook like a cigarette-smoker's.

"But think, think of your technique, your mamma, your guests," I blurted out desperately. She shook her head sadly and I shuddered. Are all amateur musicales such torturing things?...

The house was packed. A strong odor of flowers, perfumes and cooking mingled in the air; one stout woman fought her way to a window and put her head out gasping. It was Madame Bujoli, the famous vocal teacher, three of whose crack pupils were on the programme. Not far from her sat Frau Makart, the great instructor in the art of German Lieder interpretation, a hard-featured woman who sneered at Italians, Italian methods and Italian music. Two of her pupils were to appear, and I saw trouble ahead in the superheated atmosphere.

Crash! went the piano. "They're off!" hoarsely chuckled a sporting man next to me, with a wilted collar, and Moszkowski's "Nations" welled up from the vicinity of the piano, two young women exploiting their fingers in its delivery. The talking in the back drawing-rooms went on furiously, and I saw the hostess coming toward me. I escape her by edging into the back hall, despite the smothered complaints of my displaced neighbors.

I got into the doorway, or rather into the angle of a door leading into the back room. The piano had stopped; while wondering what to do next my attention was suddenly attracted by a conversation to which I had to listen; it was impossible to move away. "So she is going to sing, is she? Well, we will see if this great and only true Italian method will put brains into a fool's head or voice into her chest." This was said in a guttural voice, the accent being quite Teutonic. A soprano voice was heard, and I listened as critically as I could. The voice sang the Jewel Song from "Faust," and it seemed to me that its owner knew something about singing. I understood the words. She sang in English, and what more do you want in singing?

But the buzz at my left went on fiercely. "So the Bujoli calls that voice-production, does she? Humph! In Germany we wouldn't call the cows home with such singing." It was surely Frau Makart who spoke. There was a huge clapping of hands, fans waved, and I heard whispers, "Yes, rather pretty; but dresses in bad taste; good eyes; walks stiffly. Who is she? What was it she sang?"

More chatter. I wriggled away to my first position near the piano, but not without much personal discomfort. I was allowed to pass because, for some reason or other, I was supposed to be running the function. Upon reaching the piano Edith beckoned to me rapidly, and I slid across the polished floor, where she was talking to that hated Tompkins, and asked what I could do for her.

"Hold my music until I play; that's a good fellow." I hate to be considered a "good fellow," but what could I do? Edith, who seemed to have recovered her aplomb, continued her conversation with Percy Tompkins.

"You know, Mr. Tompkins, Chopin is for me the only composer. You know, his nocturnes fill me with a sense of nothingness—the divine neant, nirvana, you call it. Now, Gruenfeld—"

Tompkins interrupted rudely: "Gruenfeld can't play Chopin. Give me the 'Chopinzee.' He plays Chopin. As Schumann says: 'The Chopin polonaises are cannon buried in flowers,' Now, Gruenfeld is a—"

"No poet!" said I, indignantly, for I never could admire the chubby Viennese pianist. Tompkins turned and looked at me, but never noticed my correction.

"Oh, Miss Wegstaffe," he continued vivaciously—how I hated that vivacity—"did you hear that new story about a wit and the young man who asked him to define George Meredith's position in literature? 'Meredith,' said the other, pompously, 'Meredith is a prose Browning,' and the young man thanked the great man for this side light thrown on English letters, when the poet added with a twinkle in his eye, 'Browning himself was a prose Browning.' Now, isn't that delicious, Miss Wegstaffe; isn't that—"

A volley of hists-hists and hushes came over the room as I vainly tried to see the point of Tompkins' story. Every one laughed at his jokes, but to me they seemed superficial and flippant.

The piano by this time was being manipulated by a practical hand. Herr Wunderheim, a Bulgarian pianist, was playing what the programme called a sonata in X dur, by Tschaikowsky, op. 47, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. I listened: I didn't understand it all, but I was sitting next to Edith and would have endured the remainder of the alphabet rather than let Tompkins gain one point.

The piano thundered and roared; lightning flew over the keys, and we were of course electrified. Herr Wunderheim jammed the notes in an astounding manner, and when he reached the letter G the sporting man said to me in a pious whisper, "Thank God! we didn't go to H—— altogether, but near it, my boy, near it!" I shrugged my shoulders and longed for my club.

Mighty was the applause. Herr Wunderheim looked delighted. Mrs. Wegstaffe, sailing up to the distinguished Bulgarian pianist, said loudly:

"Dear Herr Wunderheim, charmed, I assure you! We are all charmed; dear Tschaikowsky, charming man, charming composer. Dear Walter Damrosch assured me that he was quite the gentleman; charming music altogether!"

The pianist grew red in the face. Then, straightening himself quite suddenly, he said in tones that sounded like a dog barking:

"Dot vasn't Schykufski I blayed, lieber madame; dot vas a koprice by me, myself."

Even the second drawing-room people stopped talking for a minute....

The musicale merrily proceeded. We heard the amateur tenor with the cravat voice. We heard the society pianist, who had a graceful bow and an amiable technic; then two of Frau Makart's pupils sang. I couldn't get near the Italian contingent, but they chattered loudly. One of the girls sang Dvořak's "Gute Nacht," and her German made me shiver. The other tried a Brahms song and everybody talked. I turned to ask Edith the girl's name but she had gone—so had Tompkins.

This angered me but I couldn't get up then. Opposite me was a Yankee college professor—an expert on golfing poetry—who had become famous by an essay in which he proved that Poe should not have written Poe; next to me sat a fat lady who said to her daughter as she fanned herself vigorously, "Horrid music, that Brahms. He wrote 'The Rustic Cavalier,' didn't he? And some nasty critics said it was written by De——"

"No, mamma. He wrote—" more buzzing and I fled upstairs.

The men's room was crowded to suffocation. Everybody was drinking hard, and old Wegstaffe was telling a story to a group of young men among whom I recognized the fat author of that affected book "How to play Chopin though Happy." He was pretty far gone.

"Shee here, bhoys; thish bloody music—thish classhic music—makesh me shick—I mean tired. I played Bluebottle for plashe to-day—50 to 1 shot—whoop!"

Another bottle was opened.

In a corner they were telling the story of Herr Schwillmun, the famous pianist who was found crazy with wine in a Fourth Avenue undertaker's shop trying to play the Dvořak Concerto on the lid of a highly polished coffin. The Finnish virtuoso thought he was in a piano wareroom. Another lie, I knew, for Schwillmun was most poetic in appearance and surely not an intemperate man!

Wherever I went I heard nothing but malicious remarks, slurring accusations and tittle-tattle. Finally I joined a crowd in the upper hall attracted by the appearance of a white-haired man of intelligent aspect, who, with kindly smile and abundant gesture was making much merriment about him. I got close enough to hear what he was saying.

"Music in New York! There is none. You fellows ought to work for your grub, as I do, on a daily, and write up the bosh concerts that advertise. Humbug, boys; rank humbug! Modern music is gone to the devil. Brahms was a fraud who patched up a compound of Beethoven and Schumann, put in a lot of mystifying harmonic progressions, and thought he was new. Verdi, the later Verdi was helped out by Boito: Just compare 'Otello' and 'Falstaff' with 'Mefistofele'! Dvořak, old 'Borax' as they call him, went in for 'nigger' music and says there's no future for American music unless it is founded on plantation tunes. Hence the 'coon' song and its long reign. Tschaikowsky! Well, that tartar with his tom-tom orchestra makes me tired; he should have been locked up in the 'Ha-Ha House.' Rubinstein never could do ten bars of decent counterpoint. Saint-Saens, with his symphonic poems, his Omphalic Roues, is a Gallic echo of Bach and Liszt—a Bach of the Boulevards. The English have no composers; the Americans never will have, and, begad, sir, we're all going to the dogs. Music—rot!"

I was shocked. Here was a great critic abusing the gods of modern music and not a dissenting voice was raised. I determined to do my duty. I would ask this cynical old man why he belittled his profession. "Sir!" said I, raising my voice, but got no further, for a household servant, whose breath reeked, caught me by the arm and in a whisper explained:

"Oh, Mr. Trybill, Miss Edith is a-lookin' for you everywheres and sent me to tell you as how you're wanted in the music-room. It's her turn next."

My heart sank below my boots but I waded downstairs, spoiling many a tete-a-tete by my haste, for which I was duly and audibly execrated. Why do people at musicales flirt on the stairs?

Upon reaching the front drawing-room I found Edith taking her seat at the demon piano. Tompkins was nowhere visible, and I felt relieved. The guests looked worn out, and knots of men were hanging suspiciously about the closed doors of the supper room.

The musical part of the entertainment was about over, Edith's solo being the very last. Suddenly all became still; every one had to listen to the daughter of the hostess.

She looked positively radiant. Her eyes sparkled, and of her early nervousness not a trace remained.

"Do turn over the leaves nicely, that's a good fellow, Mr. Trybill"—again that odious phrase—"I feel so happy I'm sure I'll play well." Naturally, I was flattered at the inference. I was near her—the darling of my wildest dreams. Of course she would play well, and of course I would turn over the music nobly.

She began. The piece was Liszt's Polonaise in E. My brave girl, how proud I felt of her as she began. How she rushed on! I could scarcely turn the leaves fast enough for my little girl, my wife that was to be. How sweet her face seemed. I was ravished. I must tell her all to-night, and she will put her plump little hand in mine and say, "Yes"; the sweet little—

Bang! Smash, crash-bang! "Stupid fellow, I hate you!" I awoke as from a dream. Edith was standing up and in tears. Alas! Fatal dreamer that I am, I had turned over two pages at once, and trouble ensued, for Edith never memorized....

As I stood in horrid silence Mrs. Wegstaffe swooped down on Edith and took her away, saying in a harsh voice, "The young man knows nothing of the divine art!" Then the supper signal was sounded, and a cyclone's fury was not comparable to the rush and crush.

Old Wegstaffe, in a very shaky condition, led a gallant band of unsteady men in a gallop to the supper room, crying, "Bluebottle's the horsh for me." I lost heart. All my brilliant visions fled. As I stood alone in the hall Mrs. Wegstaffe triumphantly passed me on the arm of Herr Wunderheim. She looked at me a moment, then, seeming to pity my loneliness, leaned toward me, saying in acidulously sweet accents:

"Ah, no partner yet, Mr. Trybill? Your first partner is engaged, and to Mr. Tompkins. Do go in and congratulate him, that's a good fellow."

She swam away in the bedlam of shrieks and clattering of dishes and knives. I walked firmly upstairs, found my coat and hat, and left the house forever. It was my first and last experience at that occidental version of the Hara-Kiri, called a musicale.



THE IRON VIRGIN

For there is order in the streets, but in the soul—confusion.

—MAXIM GORKY.

The carriage stood awaiting them in the Place Boieldieu. Chardon told the coachman to drive rapidly; then closed the door upon Madame Patel and himself. Cautiously traversing the crowded boulevards they reached the Madeleine; a sharp turn to the left, down the Rue Royale, they were soon crossing the vast windy spaces of the Place de la Concorde and there he spoke to his companion.

"It was a glorious victory! The Opera Comique looked like a battlefield after the conflict." Chardon's voice trembled as if with timidity. Madame Patel turned from the half-opened window.

"Yes, a glorious triumph. And he is not here to enjoy it, to exult over his detractors." Her tone was bitter as winter.

"My poor friend," the other answered as he laid his hand gently on her arm. She shuddered. "Are you cold? Shall I close the window?" "Thanks, no; it is too warm. How long this ride seems! Yet he always delighted in it after conducting." Chardon was silently polite. They were riding now at high speed along the Avenue Montaigne which the carriage had entered after leaving the Champs Elysees. From the Quai de Billy to the Quai de Passy their horses galloped over naked well-lighted avenues. The cool of the river penetrated them and the woman drew herself back into the corner absorbed in depressing memories. Along Mirabeau and Molitor, after passing the Avenue de Versailles; and when the street called Boileau appeared the carriage, its lanterns shooting tiny shafts of light on the road, headed for the Hameau, named after the old poet of Auteuil. There it stopped. Madame Patel and Chardon, a moment later, were walking slowly down the broad avenue of trees through which drawled the bourdon of the breeze this night in early May.

It was one o'clock when they entered the pretty little house, formerly the summer retreat of the dead composer Patel. A winner of the Prix de Rome he had produced many operas and oratorios until his death, just a year previous to the premiere of "The Iron Virgin." Of its immense success widow and librettist were in no doubt. Had they not witnessed it an hour earlier! Such furore did not often occur at the Comique. All recollection of Patel's mediocre work was wiped away in the swelter and glow of this passionate music, more modern than Wagner, more brutal than Richard Strauss. "Who would have believed that the old dried-up mummy had such a volcano in his brain?"—this the bereaved woman had overheard as she descended the marble stairway of the theatre, and Chardon hurried her to the carriage fearing that the emotions of the evening—the souvenirs of the dead, the shouting of the audience and the blaring of the band as it had saluted her trembling, bowing figure in the box—finally would prove too strong for her. He, too, had come in for some of the applause, a sort of inverted glory which like a frosty nimbus envelopes the head of the librettist. Now he recalled all this and rejoiced that his charge was safely within doors.

Madame Patel retained only one servant in her dignified, miniature household, for she was not rich; but the lamps were burning brightly, and on the table stood cold food, wine and fruit. The music-room was familiar to her late husband's associate. Patel's portrait hung over the fireplace. It represented in hard, shallow tones the face of a white-haired, white-bearded man whose thin lips, narrow nose and high forehead proclaimed him an ascetic of art. The deep-set eyes alone told of talent—their gaze inscrutable and calculating; a disappointed life could be read in every seam of the brow.

Near the piano, where Chardon turned as he waited Madame Patel's return from her dressing-room, there swung a picture whose violence was not dissipated by the gloom of the half-hidden corner. He approached it with a lamp. Staring eyes saluted him, eyes saturated with the immitigable horror of life; eyes set in grotesque faces and smothered in a sinister Northern landscape. It was one of Edvard Munch's ferocious and ironic travesties of existence. And on the white margin of the lithograph the artist had pencilled: "I stopped and leaned against the balustrade almost dead with fatigue. Over the blue-black fjord hung clouds red as blood—as tongues of flame. My friends passed on, and alone, trembling with anguish, I listened to the great infinite cry of Nature."

She tapped him on the shoulder. "Come," she said gravely, "leave that awful picture and eat. You must be dead—you poor man!" Chardon blushed happily until he saw her cold eyes. "I was trying to catch the color of that painter's mind—that Norwegian, Munch. Disordered, farouche as is his style its spiritual note enchains me. The title of the picture means nothing, yet everything—'Les Curieux,' is it not?" "Yes, you know it well enough by this time. What M. Patel could see in it I can't say." As she sat down to the table—not at the head: that was significantly empty—he admired her figure, maidenly still despite her majestic bearing; admired the terse contour of her head and noticed, not without a sigh, her small selfish ear. Madame Patel was nearing forty and her November hair had begun to whiten, but in her long gray eyes was invincible youth, poised, self-centred youth. She was deliberate in her movements and her complexion a clear brown. Chardon followed her example, eating and drinking, for they were exhausted by the ordeal of hearing under the most painful conditions, a posthumous opera.

"The great, infinite cry of Nature,"—he returned to the picture. "How difficult that is to get into one's art." "Yes, mon ami; but our dead one succeeded, did he not?" She was plainly obsessed by the theme. "His enemies—ah! the fools, fools. What a joy to see their astonished faces! Did you notice the critics, did you notice Mille in particular? He was in despair; for years that man pursued with his rancorous pen every opera by M. Patel." She paused. "But now he is conquered at last. Ah! Chardon, ah! Robert, Patel loved you, trusted you—and you helped him so much with your experience, your superior dramatic knowledge, your poetic gifts. You have been a noble friend indeed." She pressed his hand while he sat beside her in a stupor. "The great, infinite cry of Nature," he muttered. "And think of his kindness to me, a poor singer, so many years younger than himself! No father could have treated a daughter with such delicacy!" ...

Chardon looked up. "Yes," he assented, "he was very, very old—too old for such a beautiful young wife." She started. "Not too old, M. Chardon," she said, slightly raising her contralto voice: "What if he was thirty years my senior! He married me to spare me the peril and fatigue of a singer's life; few women can stand them—I least of all. He loved me with a pure, narrow affection. I was his daughter, his staff. You, he often called 'Son.'" She grazed the hem of tears. Chardon was touched; he seized her large, shapely hand, firm and cold as iron, and spoke rapidly.

"Listen, Madame Patel, listen Olivie—you were like a daughter to him, I know it, he told me. I was his adopted son. I tried to repay him for his interest in a young, unknown poet and composer—well, I compose a bit, you know—and I feel that I pleased him in my libretto of 'The Iron Virgin.' You remember the summer I spent at Nuremberg digging up the old legend, and the numberless times I visited the torture chamber where stands the real Iron Virgin, her interior studded with horrid spikes that cruelly stabbed the wretches consigned to her diabolical embraces? You recall all this?" he went on, his vivacity increasing. "Now on the night of the successful termination of our artistic enterprise, the night when all Paris is ringing with the name of Patel, with 'The Iron Virgin'"—he did not dare to add his own name—"let me tell you what you know already: I love you, Olivie. I have always loved you and I offer you my love, knowing that our dear one—" She dragged her hand from his too exultant grasp and sat down breathless on a low couch. Her eye never left his and he wavered at the thought of following her.

"So this is the true reason for your friendship!" she protested in sorrowful accents. "For this you cultivated the good graces of an unsuspecting old man." "Olivie!" he exclaimed. "For this," she sternly pursued, "you sought my company after his death. Oh, Chardon! Robert! How could you be so soon unfaithful to the memory of a man who loved you? He loved you, Robert, he made you! Without him what would you be?" "What am I?" She did not reply for she was gazing at the portrait over the fireplace. "A neglected genius," she mused. "He was forced to conduct operas to support his life—and mine. Yet he composed a masterpiece. He composed 'The Iron Virgin.'" "Could he have done it without me?" Madame Patel turned upon him: "You ask such a question, you?" Chardon paced between table and piano. He stopped to look at the Munch picture and bit his lips: "The great, infinite cry of Nature! Much Patel knew of music, of nature and her infinite cries." His excitement increased with every step.

"Olivie Patel, we must come to an understanding. You wonder at that picture, wonder what dread thing is happening. Perhaps the eyes are looking into this room, peering into our souls, into my soul which is black with sin and music." Like some timid men aroused he had begun to shout. The woman half rose in alarm but he waved her back. His forehead, full of power, an obstinate forehead, wrinkled with pain; his hands—the true index of the soul—were clasped, the fingers interlocked, wiry fingers agile with pen and piano. "Hear me out, Olivie," he commanded. "I've been too good a friend to dismiss because I've offended your sense of propriety"—she made an indignant gesture—"well, your idea of fidelity. But there is the other side of the slate: I've been a faithful slave, I've worked long years for my reward; and disciple of Nietzsche as I am, I have never attempted to assert my claims." "Your claims!" she uttered scornfully. "Yes, my claims, the claims of a man who sees his love sacrificed to miserable deception. Sit still! You must hear all now. I loved poetry but I loved you better. It was for that I endured everything. I spoke of my black soul—it is black, I've poisoned it with music, slowly poisoned it until now it must be deadened. Like the opium eater I began with small doses of innocent music: I absorbed Haydn, Mozart. When Mozart became too mild I turned to Beethoven; from Beethoven to the mad stuff of Schubert, Schumann, Chopin—sick souls all of them. They sustained me until even they failed to intoxicate. My nerves needed music that would bite—I found it in Liszt, Wagner and Tschaikowsky; and like absinthe-drinkers I was wretched without my daily draughts." "You drink absinthe also, do you not?" she asked in her coldest manner. He did not notice her. "My soul gradually took on the color of the evil I sucked from all this music. Why? I can't say; perhaps because a poet has nothing in common with music—it usually kills the poetry in him. That is why I wonder what music Edvard Munch hears when he paints such pictures. It must be dire! Then Richard Strauss swept the torrid earth and my thirsty soul slaked itself in his tumultuous seas. At last I felt sure I had met my match. Your husband was like a child in my hands." She listened eagerly. "I did with him what I wished—but to please you I wrote 'The Iron Virgin.'" ...

"The book," she calmly corrected. "As I wrote 'The Iron Virgin' I thought of you: You were my iron virgin, you, the wife of Patel. Will you hear the truth at last, the truth about a soul damned by music? Patel knew it. He promised me on his death-bed—" Olivie pushed by him and stood in the doorway. He only stared at her. "You are an Oread," he mumbled, "you still pine for your lost Narcissus till nothing is left of you but a voice—a voice which echoes him, echoes Ambroise Patel."

She watched him until his color began to return. "Robert," she said almost kindly, "Robert, the excitement of to-night has upset your nerves. Drink some brandy, and sit down." He eyed her piteously, then covered his face with nervous hands, his hair falling over them. She felt surer of him. "You called me an echo a moment ago, Robert," she resumed, her voice deepening. "I can never forget Patel. And it was because of this and because of my last promise to him that your offer shocked me; I ask your pardon for my rudeness. You have been so like a brother for the past years that marriage seems sacrilegious. Come, let us be friends—we have been trusty comrades. 'The Iron Virgin' is a success"—"Yes," he whispered, "the iron virgin is always a success." "—and why should our friendship merely be an echo of the past? Come, let us be more united than ever, Patel, you and I." Her smooth voice became vibrant as she pointed triumphantly at the portrait. He followed her with dull eyes from which all fire had fled.

"The echo," he said, drinking a tumbler of brandy. "The echo! I have it now: they see the echo in that picture back of me. Munch is the first man who painted tone; put on canvas that ape of music, of our souls, the ape which mocks us, leaps out after our voice, is always ready to follow us and show its leering shape when we pass under dark, vaulted bridges or stand in the secret shadow of churches. The echo! What is the echo, Olivie, you discoursed of so sweetly? It is the sound of our souls escaping from some fissure of the brain. It has color, is a living thing, the thin wraith that pursues man ever to his grave. Patel was an echo. When his soul leans naked against the chill bar of heaven and bears false witness, then his echo will tell the truth about his music—this damnable reverberating Doppelgaenger which sneaks into corners and lies in wait for our guilty gliding footsteps." She began to retreat again; she feared him, feared the hypnotism of his sad voice. "Robert, I firmly believe that picture has bewitched you—you, a believer in the brave philosophy of Nietzsche!" He moved toward her. "Madame Patel, it is you who are the cruel follower of Nietzsche. So was the original iron virgin; so is the new 'Iron Virgin' which I had the honor to surround with—" "You mean instrumentation," she faltered. "Ah! you acknowledge so much?"

"Patel told me."

"He did not tell you enough."

Chardon laughed, shook her hand, put on his top-coat and descended the steps that led into the garden.

"Where are you going?" she asked affrightedly, regret stirring within her. "To Nuremberg to see the real iron virgin," he answered without sarcasm. They looked hard into each other's eyes—his were glowing like restless red coals—and then he plunged down the path leaving her strained and shaken to the very centre of her virginal soul. Had he spoken the truth! Ambroise Patel, upon whose grave would be strown flowers that belonged to the living! It was vile, the idea. "Robert!" she cried.

A smoky, yellow morning mist hung over Auteuil. A long, slow rain fell softly. Chardon pulled the chord at the gate of the Hameau roughly summoning the concierge. He soon found himself under the viaduct on the Boulevard Exelmans, where he walked until he reached Point-du-Jour. There a few workingmen about to take the circular railway to Batignolles regarded him cynically. He seemed like a man in the depths of a crazy debauch. He blundered on toward the Seine. "The echo! god of thunders, the echo!" he moaned as he heard his steps resound in the hollow arches. Near the water's edge he found a cafe and sat before a damp tin table. He pounded it with his walking stick. "The iron virgin," he roared; and laughed at the joke until the tears rolled over his tremulous chin. Lifting his inflamed eyes to the dirty little waiter he again brought his cane heavily upon the table. "Garcon," he clamored "the iron virgin!" The waiter brought absinthe; Chardon drank five. Doggedly he began his long journey.



DUSK OF THE GODS

A MASQUE OF MUSIC

Stannum invited the pianist to his apartment several times, but concert engagements intervened, and when Herr Bech actually appeared his host did not attempt to conceal his pleasure. He admired the playing of the distinguished virtuoso, and said so privately and in print. Bech was a rare specimen of that rapidly disappearing order—the artist who knows all composers equally well. Not poetic, nor yet a pedantic classicist, he played Bach and Brahms with intellectual clearness and romantic fervor. All these things Stannum noted, and the heart of him grew elate as Bech sat down to the big concert piano that stood in the middle of his studio. It was a room of few lights and lofty, soft shadows; and the air was as free from sound as a diving bell. Stannum leaned back on his wicker couch smoking a cigar, while the pianist made broad preludes in many keys....

The music, from misty weavings, tentative gropings in remote tonalities, soon resolved itself into the fluid affirmations of Bach's Chromatic Fantasia. Stannum noticed the burnished, argent surface of an old-fashioned Egyptian mirror of solid tin hanging in front of him, and saw in leaden shadows his features, dim and distorted. Being a man of astrological lore he mused, and presently mumbled, "Tin is the sign of Jupiter in alchemy and stands for the god of Juno and Thunders," and immediately begged Bech's pardon for having interrupted him. The pianist made no sign, having reached the fugue following the prelude. Stannum again speculated, his head supported by his hands. He stared into the tinny surface, and it seemed to take on new echoes of light and shade, following the chromatic changes of the music.... Presently rose many-colored smoke, as if exhaled from the enchantments of some oriental mage, and Stannum's eyes strove to penetrate the vaporous thickness. He plunged his gaze into its tinted steamy volutes, and struggled with it until it parted and fell away from him like the sound of falling waters. He could not see the source of the great roaring—the roaring of some cosmical cataract. He pushed boldly through the dense thunder-world into the shadow land, still knew that he lived. A few feet away was his chamber wherein Bech played Bach. Faintly the air cleared, yet never stopped the terrifying hum that attracted his attention. And now Stannum stood on the Cliff of the World, saw and heard the travailing and groaning of light and sound in the epochal and reverberating Void. A pedal bass, a diapasonic tone, that came from the bowels of the firmament struck fear to his heart; the tone was of such magnitude as might be overheard by the gods. No mortal ear could have held it without cracking and dying. This gigantic flood, this overwhelming and cataclysmic roar, filled every pore of Stannum's body. It blew him as a blade of grass is blown in a boreal blast; yet he sensed the pitch. Unorganized nature, the unrestrained cry of the rocks and their buried secrets; crushed aspirations, and the hidden worlds of plant, mineral, animal, and human, became vocal. It was the voice of the monstrous abortions of nature, the groan of the incomplete, experimental types, born for a day and shattered forever. All God's mud made moan for recognition; and Stannum was sorrowful....

Light, its vibrations screeching into thin and acid flame-music, transposed his soul. He saw the battle of the molecules, the partitioning asunder of the elements; saw sound falling far behind its lighter-winged, fleeter-footed brother; saw the inequality of this race, "swifter than the weaver's shuttle," and felt that he was present at the very beginnings of Time and Space. Like unto some majestic comet that in passing had blazed out "Be not light; be sound!" the fire-god mounted to the blue basin of Heaven and left time behind, but not space; for in space sound abides not and cycles may be cancelled in a tone. Thus sound was born, and of it rhythm, the planets portioning it; and from rhythm came music, primordial, mad, yet music, and Stannum heard it as a single tone that never ceased, a tone that jarred the sun with mighty concussions, ruled the moon, and made rise etheric waves upon the rim of the interstellar milky way. Then quired the morning stars, and at their concordance Stannum was affrighted....

His ear was become a monstrous labyrinth, a cortical lute of three thousand strings, and upon it impacted the early music at the dawn of things. In the planetary slime he heard the screaming struggles of fishy beasts; in the tanglewood of hot, aspiring forests were muffled roarings of gigantic mastodons, of tapirs that humped at the sky, beetles big as camels, and crocodiles with wings. Wicked creatures snarled crepitantly, and their crackling noises were echoed by lizard and dragon, ululating snouted birds and hissing leagues of snaky lengths. Stannum fled from these disturbing dreams seeking safety in the mountains. The tone pursued him, but he felt that it had a less bestial quality. Casting his eyes upon the vague plateau below he witnessed two-legged creatures pursuing game with stone hatchets; while in the tropical-colored tree-tops nudging apes eyed the contest with malicious regard. The cry of the pursuers had a suggestive sound; occasionally as one fell the shriek that reached Stannum plucked at his heart, for it was a cry of human distress. He went down the mountain, but lost his way, his only clue in the obscurity of the woods being the tone....

And now he heard a strange noise, a noise of harsh stones bruised together and punctuated with shouts and sobbings. There was rhythmic rise and fall in the savage music, and soon he came upon a sudden secret glade of burial. Male and female slowly postured before a fire, scraping flints as they solemnly circled their dead one. Stannum, fascinated at this revelation of primeval music, watched until the tone penetrated his being and haled him to it, as is haled the ship to the whirlpool. It was night. The strong fair sky of the south was sown with dartings of silver and starry dust. He walked under the great wind-bowl with its few balancing clouds and listened to the whirrings of the infinite. A dreamer ever, he knew that he was near the core of existence; and while light was more vibratile than sound, sound touched Earth, embraced it and was content with its eld and homely face. Light, a mischievous Loge: Sound, the All-Mother Erda. He walked on. His way seemed clearer....

Reaching a mighty and fabulous plain, half buried in sand he came upon a great Sphinx, looming in the starlight. He watched her face and knew that the tone enveloped him no longer. Why it had ceased set him to wondering not unmixed with fear. The dawn filtered over the head of the Sphinx, and there were stirrings in the sky. From afar a fluttering of thin tones sounded; as the sun shone rosy on the vast stone the tone came back like a clear-colored wind from the sea. And in the music-filled air he fell down and worshipped the Sphinx; for music is a window that looks upon eternity....

Then followed a strange musical rout of the nations. Stannum saw defile before him Silence, "eldest of all things"; Brahma's consort Saraswati fingered her Vina; and following, Siva and his hideous mate Devi, who is sometimes called Durga; and the brazen heavens turned to a typhoon that showered appalling evils upon mankind. All the gods of Egypt and Assyria, dog-faced, moon-breasted and menacing, passed, playing upon dreams, making choric music black and fuliginous. The sacred Ibis stalked to the silvery steps of the Houris; the Graces held hands. Phoebus Apollo appeared; his face was as a silver shield, so shining was it. He improvised upon a many-stringed lyre made of tortoise shell, and his music was shimmering and symphonious. Hermes and his Syrinx wooed the shy Euterpe; the maidens went in woven paces: a medley of masques flamed by; and the great god Pan breathed into his pipes. Stannum saw Bacchus pursued by the ravening Maenads; saw Lamia and her ophidian flute; and sorrowfully sped Orpheus searching for his Eurydice. Neptune blew his wreathed horn, the Tritons gambolled in the waves, Cybele clanged her cymbals; and with his music Amphion summoned rocks to Thebes. Jephtha's daughter danced to her death before the Ark of the Covenant, praising the Lord God of Israel. Behind her leered unabashed the rhythmic Herodias; while were heard the praiseful songs of Deborah and Barak, as Caecilia smote her keys. Miriam with her timbrel sang songs of triumph. Abyssinian girls swayed alluringly before the Persian Satrap in his purple litter; the air was filled with the crisp tinklings of tiny bells at wrist and anklet as the Kabaros drummed; and hard by, in the brake, brown nymphs, their little breasts pointing to the zenith, moved in languorous rhythms, droning hoarse sacrificial chaunts. The colossus Memnon hymned; priests of Baal screamed as they lacerated themselves with knives; Druid priestesses crooned sybillic incantations. And over this pageant of woman and music the proud sun of old Egypt scattered splendid burning rays....

From distant strands and hillsides came the noise of strange and unholy instruments with sweet-sounding and clashing names. Nofres from the Nile, Ravanastrons of Ceylon, Javanese gongs, Pavilions from China, Tambourahs, Sackbuts, Shawms, Psalteries, Dulcimers, Salpinxes, Keras, Timbrels, Sistras, Crotalas, double flutes, twenty-two stringed harps, Kerrenas, the Indian flute called Yo and the quaint Yamato-Koto. Then followed the Biwa, the Gekkin and its cousin the Genkwan; the Ku, named after the hideous god; the Shunga and its cluttering strings; the Samasien, the Kokyu, the Yamato Fuye—which breathed moon-eyed melodies—the Hichi-Riki and the Shaku-Hachi. The Sho was mouthed by slant-haired yellow boys; while the sharp roll of drums covered with goat-skins never ceased. From this bedlam there occasionally emerged a splinter of tune, like a plank thrown up by the sea. Stannum could discern no melody, though he grasped its beginnings; double flutes gave him the modes, Dorian, Phrygian, AEolian, Lydian and Ionian; after Sappho and her Mixolydian mode, he longed for a modern accord....

The choir went whirling by with Citharas, Rebecs, Citoles, Domras, Goules, Serpents, Crwths, Pentachords, Rebabs, Pantalons, Conches, Flageolets made of Pelicon bones, Tam-Tams, Carillons, Xylophones, Crescents of beating bells, Mandoras, Whistling Vases of Clay, Zampognas, Zithers, Bugles, Octochords, Naccaras or Turkish castanets and Quinternas. He heard blare the two hundred thousand curved trumpets which Solomon had made for his temple, and the forty thousand which accompanied the Psalms of David. Jubal played his Magrepha; Pythagoras came with his Monochord; Plato listened to the music of the spheres; the priests of Joshua blew seven times upon their Shofars or Rams-Horns. And the walls of Jericho fell.

To this came a challenging blast from the terrible horn of Roland—he of Roncesvalles. The air had the resonance of hell, as the Guatemalan Indians worshipped their black Christ upon the plaza; and naked Istar, Daughter of Sin, stood shivering before the Seventh Gate. Then a great silence fell upon Stannum. He saw a green star drop over Judea, and thought music itself slain. The pilgrims with their Jews-harps dispersed into sorrowful groups; blackness usurped the sonorous sun: there was no music upon all the earth and this tonal eclipse lasted long. Stannum heard in his magic mirror the submerged music of Dufay, Ockeghem, Josquin Depres and Orlando di Lasso, Goudimel and Luther; the cathedral tones of Palestrina; the frozen sweetness of Arezzo, Frescobaldi, Monteverde, Carissimi, Tartini, Corelli, Scarlatti, Jomelli, Pergolas, Lulli, Rameau, Couperin, Buxtehude, Sweelinck, Byrd, Gibbons, Purcell, Bach: with their Lutes, Monochords, Virginals, Harpsichords, Clavicytheriums, Clavichords, Cembalos, Spinets, Theorbos, Organs and Pianofortes and accompanying them was an army, vast and formidable, of all the immemorial virtuosi, singers, castrati, the night moths and midgets of music. Like wraiths they waved desperate ineffectual hands and made sad mimickings of their dead and dusty triumphs.... Stannum again heard the Bach Chromatic Fantasia which seemed old yet very new. In its weaving sonant patterns were the detonations of the primeval world he had left; and something strangely disquieting and feminine. But the man in Bach predominates, subtle, magnetic and nervous as he is.

A mincing, courtly old woman bows low. It is Haydn, and there is sprightly malice in his music. The glorious periwigged giant of Halle conducts a chorus of millions; Handel's hailstones rattle upon the pate of the Sphinx. "A man!" cries Stannum, as the heavens storm out their cadenced hallelujahs. The divine youth approaches. His mien is excellent and his voice of rare sweetness. His band discourses ravishing music. The tone is there, feminized and graceful; troupes of stage players in paint and furbelows give startling pictures of rakes and fantastics. An orchestra mimes as Mozart disappears....

Behold, the great one approaches and the earth trembles at his tread—Beethoven, the sublime, the conqueror, the demi-god! All that has gone before, all that is to be, is globed in his symphonies, is divined by the seer: a man, the first since Handel. And the eagles triumphantly jostle the scarred face of the Sphinx.... Then appear Von Weber and Meyerbeer, player folk; Schubert, a pan-pipe through which the wind discourses exquisite melodies; Gluck, whose lyre is stringed Greek fashion, but bedecked with Paris gauds and ribbons; Mendelssohn, a charming girlish echo, Hebraic of profile; Schumann and Chopin, romantic wrestlers with muted dreams, strugglers against ineffable madness and stricken sore at the end; Berlioz, a primitive Roc, half monster, half human, a Minotaur who dragged to his Crete all the music of the masters; and then comes the Turk of the keyboard, Franz Liszt, with cymbalom, čzardas and crazy Kalamaikas. But now Stannum notices a shriller accent, the accent of a sun that has lost its sex and is stricken with soft moon-sickness. A Hybrid appears, followed by a vast cohort of players. The orchestra begins playing, and straightway the Sphinx smiles....

Stannum saw what man had never seen before—the tone-color of each instrument. Some malign enchanter had seduced and diverted from its natural uses the noble instrumental army. He saw strings of rainbow hues, red trumpets, blue flutes, green oboes, garnet clarinets, golden yellow horns, dark-brown bassoons, scarlet trombones, carmilion ophecleides while the drums punctured space with ebon holes. That the triangle had always been silver he never questioned; but this new chromatic blaze, this new tinting of tones—what did it portend? Was it a symbol of the further degradation and effeminization of music? Was art a woman's sigh? A new, selfish goddess was about to be placed upon high and worshipped—soon the rustling of silk would betray her sex. Released from the wise bonds imposed upon her by Mother Church, music is a novel parasite of the emotions, a modern Circe whose feet "take hold on hell," whose wand transforms men into listening swine. Gigantic as antediluvian ferns, as evil-smelling and as dangerous, music in the hands of this magician is dowered with ambiguous attitudes, with anonymous gestures, is color become sound, sensuality in the mask of Beauty. This Klingsor tears down, evirates, effeminates and disintegrates. He is the great denier of all things natural, and his revengeful, theatric music is in the guise of a woman. The art nears its end; its spiritual suicide is at hand. Stannum lifted his gaze. Surely he recognized that little dominating figure directing the orchestra. Was it the tragic-comedian Richard Wagner? Were those his ardent, mocking eyes fading in the mist? A fat cowled monk marches stealthily after Wagner. He shades his eyes from the fierce rays of the noonday sun; more grateful to him are moon-rays and the reflected light of lonely pools. He is the Arch-Hypocrite of Tone who speaks in divers tongues. It is Johannes Brahms, and he wears the mask of a musical masker.... Then swirled near a band of gypsies and moors, with guitars, tambourines, mandolins and castanets, led by Bizet; Africa seemed familiar land. Gounod and his simpering "Faust" went on tiptoe; a horde of Calmucks and Cossacks stampeded them, Tschaikowsky and Rimski-Korsakoff at their head. These yelled and played upon resounding Svirelis, Balalaikas, and Kobzas dancing the Ziganka all the while; and as a still more horrible uproar fell upon Stannum's ears, he was aware of a change in the face of the Sphinx: streaked with gray, it seemed to be crumbling. As the clatter increased Stannum diverted his regard from the great stone and beheld an orgiastic mob of men and women howling and playing upon instruments of fulgurating colors and vile shapes. Their skins were of white, their hair yellow, and their eyes of victorious blue. "Nietzsche's Great Blond Barbarians, the Apes of Wagner!" exclaimed Stannum, and he felt the earth falling away from him. The naked music, pulsatile and drowsy, turned hysterical as Zarathustra-Strauss waved on his Uebermensch with an iron hammer and in frenzied, philosophic motions. Music was become vertiginous; a mad vortex, wherein whirled mad atoms, madly embracing. Dancing, the dissonant corybantes of the Dionysian evangel flitted by, scarce touching earth in their efforts to outvie the Bacchantes. With peals of thunderous and ironical laughter the Sphinx sank into the murmuring sand, yawning, "Music is Woman." ...

And then the tone grew higher and ultra-violet; the air darkened with vapors; the shrillness was so exceeding that it modulated into Hertzian waves and merged into light; this vibratile, argent light pierced Stannum's eyes. He found himself staring into the Egyptian mirror while about him beat the torrential harmonies of Richard Strauss.... Herr Bech had just finished his playing, and, as he struck the last chord of "Death and Transfiguration," acidly remarked:

"Tin must be a great hypnotizer, lieber Stannum!"

"In alchemy, my dear Bech, tin is the sign of Jove, and Jove, you know, hath power to evoke apocalyptic visions!"

"Both you and your Jove are fakirs!" The pianist then went away in a rage because Stannum had slept while he played.