Part 10 (2/2)

He seated himself on a bench. Shrill children's voices, in whose strident tones could already be heard the curse of the factory hand, and the coa.r.s.e laugh of the paissarde surrounded him. He was deadly tired. In other times he had not even noticed the little journey from Brussels to Paris. His head sank on his breast. He dreamed that he was walking under the sleepy rustling trees of the park in Brussels, Annette Delileo was on his arm. The blue sky mirrored itself in an enormous pool, whereon some red poppy leaves were floating, and he told Annette how that ”he was a genius, and was going to do something great.”

He felt the tender nestling of her warm young form against him.

Suddenly he started up. Little cold fingers touched his, a small girl in a white cap and large blue ap.r.o.n stood beside him, and said--”Monsieur, they are closing the garden.”

The Angelus was tinkling through the air as Gesa descended. Damp odors pervaded the slippery hill; great ragged streaks of fog settled slowly down on the wretchedness of Montmartre.

Once more in his apartment, Gesa made a light, and looked around him, s.h.i.+vering a little at the comfortless room. In the grey marble chimney-place, stood an iron stove. The orange and blue flowers of the carpet had long taken on a uniform covering of dirt. Two offensive terra-cotta images stood on the mantelpiece. The tenor who was well acquainted in the Rue Steinkerque, and had mounted to the lodging with Gesa before, had explained that these were the work of a certain Vaudreuil, a second Michael Angelo, whose genius was broken in pieces against the hard stupidity of the public.

”Genius!” How the misuse of the word angered him! ”Genius! The man has no trace even of talent,” Gesa had cried, looking at the disgusting figures.

”Si! Si!” rejoined the tenor. ”He spent all his means in trying to convert the world to 'high art,' chiseled and ecce h.o.m.o--but what will you have? Marble is dear--he grew melancholy, took to drink--and then--_il a fini par faire cela_.”

Whereat Gesa asked shuddering, ”What became of him, did he kill himself?”

”No, but he works no longer--his daughter supports him, _vous savez!

Les filles d'artistes! cela a quelquechose dans le sang_. At one time he cursed her and turned her out of doors. But he does not remember that any more, he doesn't remember anything any more. So long as he has his warm room, his game of billiards and his gla.s.s of absynthe, he is contented. He lives in the Hotel de Nancy, here on the corner. You can make his acquaintance to-morrow if you like. The young artists treat him sometimes, to hear him spout about art,--it is very funny!”

The Michael Angelo of the Hotel de Nancy was the first thing that occurred to Gesa when he returned to his miserable room. His look sought the two terra-cotta statuettes. He examined them with a morbid curiosity. He took one of them and held it close to his dimly burning lamp in order to see it more distinctly. His artist eye recognized in the figure the traces of very great powers gone astray.

A terrible sob unmanned him, the figure shook in his trembling hand. He let it fall and it broke into a thousand pieces. But they did not charge it in his weekly reckoning. It had no value for any one.

He drank no longer. A nameless dread clutched his heart; red clouds floated before his vision, a fearful la.s.situde enervated him--but he drank no more and he worked.

And at first it seemed as if the completion of his opera would be accomplished with perfect ease. He covered piles of music paper with great celerity, and when his power of invention suddenly ceased it did not frighten him, for he remembered that, even in his best days, the inspiration had suffered such moments. He proposed while waiting for a fresh impulse, to polish that which was already written; but when he came to examine it, it was a chaos, which even he himself could not understand. Whole bars were wanting, the accompaniment was perfectly incoherent. Here and there certainly, were places of striking beauty, quite isolated however, like splendid ruins in heaps of rubbish.

Another thing disquieted him. Many of the technical signs of orchestration had escaped him, he could no longer write a regular score. He spent the whole night in looking over a work on composition.

Next morning he began his work anew.

To carry out with perfect clearness one miserable little phrase caused him the most painful effort. The faculty of concentration seemed lost to him. But he s.h.i.+rked no pains, no fatigue--”Patience! Patience! It will all come!” he said to himself, and at the same time his tears fell on the paper.

He imposed the most fearful privations upon himself in order to eke out his means to the farthest possible extent. He moved from the orange-yellow room to an attic--he ate once a day.

He grew grey, his hands trembled and he stammered in his speech. The children on the hill, whither he crept, of an afternoon, for air, all knew him and tripped in a friendly way up to the bench where he cowered, muttering to himself, a note-book on his knees, a pencil in his hand, and wished him good-day. He stroked their cheeks, took them on his lap and rejoiced that they were not afraid of him. He would gladly have told them stories--but the words would not come.

One day he brought his violin up to the b.u.t.tes Montmartre. Anxious to please the children's taste, he played them little dances. His fingers had grown stiff since he had so suddenly renounced the inspiring indulgence of drink. The bow wavered in his trembling hand. He was ashamed before the children. But for them his playing was exactly right. Soon a large audience had a.s.sembled around him. Some of the little people gazed at him with earnest attention, their heads slightly thrown back, their hands clasped behind them--others danced gaily with one another.

This pleased him. He held up his head before the children. He felt as if he would like to improvise; then it seemed to him as if the tune that sprung from under his fingers was strangely familiar--it was the same which he had played nearly thirty years before in the circus on the ”Sablon.”

And now every day he shuffled with his violin up to the shabby garden.

The poor children's applause had become a necessity.

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