Part 50 (1/2)

”_Per Bacco!_ I am quite stunned,” said the Count as he left the house. ”A child dancing on the keyboard would make better music.”

”Certainly mere chance could not more successfully avoid hitting two notes in concord than that possessed creature has done during the past hour,”

said Giardini.

”How is it that the regular beauty of Marianna's features is not spoiled by incessantly hearing such a hideous medley?” said the Count to himself.

”Marianna will certainly grow ugly.”

”Signor, she must be saved from that,” cried Giardini.

”Yes,” said Andrea. ”I have thought of that. Still, to be sure that my plans are not based on error, I must confirm my doubts by another experiment. I will return and examine the instruments he has invented.

To-morrow, after dinner, we will have a little supper. I will send in some wine and little dishes.”

The cook bowed.

Andrea spent the following day in superintending the arrangement of the rooms where he meant to install the artist in a humble home.

In the evening the Count made his appearance, and found the wine, according to his instructions, set out with some care by Marianna and Giardini.

Gambara proudly exhibited the little drums, on which lay the powder by means of which he made his observations on the pitch and quality of the sounds emitted by his instruments.

”You see,” said he, ”by what simple means I can prove the most important propositions. Acoustics thus can show me the a.n.a.logous effects of sound on every object of its impact. All harmonies start from a common centre and preserve the closest relations among themselves; or rather, harmony, like light, is decomposable by our art as a ray is by a prism.”

He then displayed the instruments constructed in accordance with his laws, explaining the changes he had introduced into their const.i.tution. And finally he announced that to conclude this preliminary inspection, which could only satisfy a superficial curiosity, he would perform on an instrument that contained all the elements of a complete orchestra, and which he called a _Panharmonicon_.

”If it is the machine in that huge case, which brings down on us the complaints of the neighborhood whenever you work at it, you will not play on it long,” said Giardini. ”The police will interfere. Remember that!”

”If that poor idiot stays in the room,” said Gambara in a whisper to the Count, ”I cannot possibly play.”

Andrea dismissed the cook, promising a handsome reward if he would keep watch outside and hinder the neighbors or the police from interfering.

Giardini, who had not stinted himself while helping Gambara to wine, was quite willing.

Gambara, without being drunk, was in the condition when every power of the brain is over-wrought; when the walls of the room are transparent; when the garret has no roof, and the soul soars in the empyrean of spirits.

Marianna, with some little difficulty, removed the covers from an instrument as large as a grand piano, but with an upper case added. This strange-looking instrument, besides this second body and its keyboard, supported the openings or bells of various wind instruments and the closed funnels of a few organ pipes.

”Will you play me the prayer you say is so fine at the end of your opera?”

said the Count.

To the great surprise of both Marianna and the Count, Gambara began with a succession of chords that proclaimed him a master; and their astonishment gave way first to amazed admiration and then to perfect rapture, effacing all thought of the place and the performer. The effects of a real orchestra could not have been finer than the voices of the wind instruments, which were like those of an organ and combined wonderfully with the harmonies of the strings. But the unfinished condition of the machine set limits to the composer's execution, and his idea seemed all the greater; for, often, the very perfection of a work of art limits its suggestiveness to the recipient soul. Is not this proved by the preference accorded to a sketch rather than a finished picture when on their trial before those who interpret a work in their own mind rather than accept it rounded off and complete?

The purest and serenest music that Andrea had ever listened to rose up from under Gambara's fingers like the vapor of incense from an altar. The composer's voice grew young again, and, far from marring the n.o.ble melody, it elucidated it, supported it, guided it,--just as the feeble and quavering voice of an accomplished reader, such as Andrieux, for instance, can expand the meaning of some great scene by Corneille or Racine by lending personal and poetical feeling.

This really angelic strain showed what treasures lay hidden in that stupendous opera, which, however, would never find comprehension so long as the musician persisted in trying to explain it in his present demented state. His wife and the Count were equally divided between the music and their surprise at this hundred-voiced instrument, inside which a stranger might have fancied an invisible chorus of girls were hidden, so closely did some of the tones resemble the human voice; and they dared not express their ideas by a look or a word. Marianna's face was lighted up by a radiant beam of hope which revived the glories of her youth. This renascence of beauty, co-existent with the luminous glow of her husband's genius, cast a shade of regret on the Count's exquisite pleasure in this mysterious hour.

”You are our good genius!” whispered Marianna. ”I am tempted to believe that you actually inspire him; for I, who never am away from him, have never heard anything like this.”

”And Kadijah's farewell!” cried Gambara, who sang the _cavatina_ which he had described the day before as sublime, and which now brought tears to the eyes of the lovers, so perfectly did it express the loftiest devotion of love.