V.

Now he sits alone in the desolate hotel parlor. He who usually flees

solitude, who keeps his guests always until his eyes close, has to-day

given them to understand before ten o'clock that they bore him. But now

he would fain call them back, however indifferent all, however

unsympathetic most of them are to him. At least they could dissipate

the troop of recollections which pass through his mind in a confused

throng. Involuntarily he compares his heart to a caravansary through

which thousands of men have gone in and out, without a single one

settling there, or leaving a trace.

He did not believe in friendship; he remained faithful to his old

acquaintances even if they became burdensome to him, from a

characteristic or from obstinacy; but he felt drawn to no one. His

passions were of such a fleeting nature, left his heart so completely

untouched, that the impression of women to whom he had stood in near

relations was quite summarily a mixture of scorn, compassion, and

disgust.

He had forgotten the names of the most. The pressure of every

restraint, every discipline, every check, had been unbearable to him;

he had given rein to all his instincts, had been moderate in nothing,

had submitted to nothing, had always preached that one must forget

one's self, and yet could never quite forget himself. No; during this

mad bacchanal, in which the last fifteen years of his existence had

been spent, something which he could not satisfy had remained within

him.

He denied every religion, even that of duty. He only lived for

enjoyment; but enjoyment died when he touched it, pleasure was in his

arms a cold, stiff corpse.

The only thing which could still rouse him was his art; and he was

about to lose his power in this. His compositions--that of his art

which really was dear to his heart--had more and more become a group of

contrasts seeking after effect. The inner voice which had formerly sung

him such sweet songs was--not strong enough to be heard in the noisy

confusion of his life--wearily silent. His creative power was

paralyzed, and his playing--the Parisians might clap as loud as they

wished; he knew best of all that it went downward.

For more than forty years he had given concerts, and for twenty years

he had played over the same _repertoire_--an immense one, but, with a

few little exceptions, still the same. It bored him. He no longer

listened to himself when he played, only sometimes, half unconsciously,

all that wounded head and heart slipped into his fingers, and then he

sobbed himself out in tones; and what so powerfully moved his listeners

was not what they suspected--it was compassion for a great man who

despairingly tries to find in art what he has wasted in life.

How slowly time passes! He had not suspected that it would be so

unpleasant for him to stay alone.

More, yet more, of those strange faces! There are princesses of blood

royal among them; then, again, beauties for whose favor potentates have

sued in vain; famous artists, and, finally, pale, poor girls whom a

moment of morbid enthusiasm had robbed of their senses. They nodded to

him, smiled confidentially, all the same smile of secret understanding.

"One just like the others," he calls out, and stamps on the floor, as

if he would stamp upon the whole crowd. "One just like the other----"

Then one form separated itself from the throng, and stepped up to him.

He stretches out his arms to her. "Natalie," he calls. She vanishes. It

was his wife; how plainly he had seen her!

She was not like the others. How had he ventured to name this angel in

the same breath with the others? He had loved her passionately, however

immoderately he had offended against her.

Her name was Natalie--yes, Natalie. And when he led her to the altar

she was a charming, petted young girl, a Princess Assanow, who had

married him against the wishes of her family. He had worshipped her,

and strewn flowers at her feet, and she had been happy, and he with

her. The children had come--how delightful all that was! Those were the

golden years in his life--five, six years. Then--then the demon had

begun to weary of Paradise. His gipsy nature had demanded its rights.

He had left home, only for a time, and to let his passions have their

sway; then oftener, ever oftener.

At first she had pardoned him only too easily, so easily that it had

almost vexed him, so easily that he had thought she would bear

anything.

But at last even she could endure it no longer--had separated from him.

That was terrible, so terrible that he had thought he could not bear

it. She also could not bear it, he imagined, but would recall him. He

waited for that every day, and she called him back--when she lay dying.

That was now four years ago; but it seemed to him that she had died

yesterday. He saw it all so plainly before him--the large room in Rome,

the half-emptied medicine bottles on the invalid's night-table, and the

ticking watch, a watch which he had given her years before at Colia's

birth; the dim night-lamp in the corner, her white morning-dress that

hung over a chair, the little slippers--the dear, tiny little slippers!

There in the white bed, she, so long, so thin, with her poor wasted

body, whose outline was so plainly visible under the covers, a white

flannel covering with red stripes on the edge--he even remembered that.

But, best of all, he remembered her, her wonderfully beautiful face.

She raised herself from the pillows at his entrance, and greeted him

with a smile that forgave him all; no, not only forgave, but begged his

forgiveness that she--she, the poor angel--had been too weak to save

him from himself, to redeem him. Then he had taken her in his arms and

kissed her. He would not believe that all was over. Then, suddenly, the

sun had risen, there, over the Spanish place, behind the church of

Trinita de' Monti; a broad, golden ray stretched out to the dying

woman.

It was like the shining arm of God who had come to take her soul. She

had raised her weary hand to point upward--the hand sank, sank.

What a horrible time! He, to whom the thought of dying caused a terror

that could not be overcome; he, who, if he met a funeral procession on

the street, turned away his head, and could not bear the sight of a

corpse, he had watched near her coffin for two nights long without

moving, without eating. In the second night he had fallen asleep from

unvanquishable weariness. He had dreamed of old times, of dead

happiness. It seemed to him that he sat with her on the terrace

of the country-house near St. Petersburg, where they had passed the

mid-summer, the short northern summer. It was a bright August night;

they sat together hand in hand, and her voice fell softly and

caressingly on his ear. Sometimes she laughed, then he laughed also,

only because she laughed, and pressed a kiss on her lips. Ah, how

warmly her thirsty young lips met his!

Suddenly he awoke; an insect had flown across his face. Around him all

was black--the walls, the floor, the ceiling--and there, near him,

surrounded by tall, red flickering candles by a blooming wall of

flowers--ah! how beautiful she still was! He bent over the coffin and

raised her from the white satin cushions and kissed her. The chill of

this touch penetrated to his marrow; for the first time he understood

what a terrible gulf had opened between her and him.

When Colia had come to relieve his father from his watch over the

corpse, he had found him lying senseless on his face near the coffin.

Yes, the one, the only one whom he had passionately loved; but she had

not been able to protect him from himself, either by her life or by her

death.

At first, really, in the first few days after her burial, he had

thought the fever had left his veins. He no longer felt it. Miserable

and weary, at that time, he had shut himself up for hours, for days in

her room, in the room in which all had been left as it was before she

had been carried out, in which all looked as if she must come back. And

when he had at length resolved to leave Rome, he had passed a few

months quietly and soberly with his children. He had even tried to work

again, to compose--but he had accomplished nothing. Then despair at his

wasted genius had come over him, and with despair the fever. He could

not bear quiet, he simply could not. He needed noise, incessant change,

excitement and stunning.

He sent Mascha to relatives--Maschenka, his charming little daughter,

whom he adored, and whom he now pushed out of his way with a violent

haste, as if she were merely an inconvenient burden for him. And then--

then he took up life again exactly at the point where he had left it

before Natalie died.

From city to city, from concert hall to concert hall, from hotel to

hotel he rushed, always the same, restless, joyless, without peace,

always idolized, raved over, only still madder in the waste of his life

than formerly, because sadness was greater in him, and it needed more

excitement to kill it.

Now all that was to some degree bearable, but how would it be in a

couple of years? Involuntarily his glance wandered to a pile of papers

which lay on the table in the centre of the room--thirty, forty copies

of that number of _Figaro_ which contained the fable. He laughed at the

people who had sent him this absurdity to flatter him.

"'I will lay a charm in your art which no one can resist,'" he murmured

to himself. "Bah! how long could that yet last?" He did not deceive

himself; things were going rapidly down with him, his violin playing,

his health, all.

"The devil will no longer be able to use me," murmured he. "One will

know nothing more of me; I am growing old!" he gasped out. Suddenly he

seized his head and called: "But what does a man like me do when he is

old?"

For the first time in his life he asked himself the question. "To grow

old without the courage to calmly submit, to be like a languishing

spendthrift who drinks repulsive sediment from emptied goblets."

How hateful, how horrible! Would it not be better to break with all, to

devote himself to his children, to lead a prudent existence?

He laughed bitterly. A prudent existence--he, whom two hours of

solitude brought almost to the boundaries of insanity! There could be

no more talk of that; it was too late. To grow old! Vain spectre of

fear! People like him never grow old--they die!

Yes, that was the end. To die, to leave nothing behind him, no name in

art, no enduring work; to be forgotten, wiped out of the world. A

little while longer, sunshine and air, and motion, color, and sound,

and then all dark, a great black blur, nothing more--death. Yes, it was

that. Perhaps it would come to-morrow, perhaps in a few years. Come it

must; he also would not fight against it. But meanwhile--meanwhile he

would live with every fibre, live with every drop of blood--live!

Then--around the window crept something like a sad, sighing, ghostly

voice. His face took on a strained, listening, thirstily longing

expression. It was like the sob of a tormented soul which has forgotten

to take the way to heaven because a great love holds her back to

earth--a great love and unrest at an unfulfilled task, an unlifted

treasure.

Was it an over-excitement of his nerves of hearing, or the beginning of

that mysticism to which, at a certain period of life, quite all great

Russian minds fall victim? However this may be, he would have sworn

that he heard her voice compassionately and tenderly. There, once more.

"Boris! Boris!"

He feels something strange, the calming of a loving presence. A

passionate, indescribable longing takes possession of him. He stretches

out his arms--it is gone! He shakes as with frost, sweat stands upon

his brow. He thought of the repellant coldness which had met his lips

when he had raised the corpse from the lace-edged pillows of the

coffin.

No; death took all, it lets nothing return. Weak-headed nervousness to

believe in such a thing! There is nothing but life! And while the

longing for the unattainable heavenly still consumes his heart, he

murmurs hoarsely: "Yes, to live, to live!"