Yes, he would take counsel. It was harder than he thought. By the
necessary inquiry into his affairs, it turned out that nothing more of
his fortune was left to him. Where had it gone? He had lived so simply
these last years, quite like a beggar. Where was the money?
The great sympathy which he had always felt for every living being, for
everything that feels pain, had latterly become morbid and exaggerated
in character. He gave and gave to every one who turned to him; gave
without reckoning, without thinking, assisted every need, every
weakness, every burden, in order to alleviate a grief, were it only for
an hour. He gave until he had nothing more to give. The only thing that
was left him to procure relief for his unhappy child was to again
appear before the public. So he took up anew the wanderer's staff.
This time also he allowed his former manager, Herr Braun, to plan his
foreign tour. He gave his first concert beyond the frontier in
Koenigsberg. He did not feel anxious about the audience. With the
thundering applause which had everywhere fallen to his share at his
last concert tour still ringing in his ears, he quite did not
comprehend the possibility of a fiasco. Another kind of discomfort
tormented him.
In the recently flown years, which he had earnestly and solitarily
passed in the effort to listen once more to the inner voices, which had
been silenced in the mad whirl of his virtuoso life, but which anew, at
first hesitatingly, but then ever more powerfully, more
enthusiastically, vibrated through his mind--in these four years of
exclusively creative activity, virtuosity had lost its nimbus for him.
This kind of triumph seemed to him small, quite degrading. He was
really ashamed to appear before the public with his old arts. But--he
did it for his child.
But not the slightest doubt that he would be received with rejoicings
occurred to him. He was mistaken. When early in February he gave his
first concert in Koenigsberg, the hall was half empty, the audience
remained cold. How was that possible?
He thought that the critics would revenge him for the pitiable
indifference of the throng, that his colleagues would bring him
ovations, would rebuild for him his old pedestal of subjection and
flattery. But no. The critics were lukewarm, and the artist world
showed itself quite adverse.
How was it, then, that he, by his boundless generosity could win no
enduring gratitude, by his astonishing genius could not win respect
which should secure him, at his age, from the severity of an objective
judgment? How was it that he, a few years after his disappearance from
the arena, already was accounted with those to be judged? He had never
believed in friendship, and now, as it appeared, he really had no
friends.
In his time he had been raved over, adored, flattered, and secretly
envied; he had not been loved, and people were not inclined to spare
him. He had always been too rough, too ruthless, too arrogant. Always
ready to give to every one, he would never accept anything, even
thanks. In spite of his outward benevolence, his winning kindness in
superficial intercourse, he was at heart very reserved and
inaccessible. Except to his wife and children, he had never been
intimate with a single being, however much painful compassion he might
feel for every misery.
This repellent arrogance of feeling, which always showed upon nearer
acquaintance, had something paining and humiliating. People were
ashamed to be dependent upon a man who made so little of it.
A number of new, clever virtuosos, who formerly could have won no
recognition, had appeared in the foreground, and the public had grown
accustomed to them. Indeed none of these new artists equalled Lensky in
the might of his talent, but the magnificent splendor which had
characterized his art in its zenith was no longer remembered. The
faults, on the contrary, which disfigured his performance still more
significantly at his last appearances, were remembered only too well.
People asked themselves how they could have been so pleased by such
arbitrariness, and every form of musical failing. They were happy to
have escaped this fame carrying all before it, and near which no other
genius could expand.
His reappearance on the musical horizon had the same effect as the
sudden apparition among the living of one for years believed dead. The
chasm which his retirement had made was closed; there was no longer a
place for him. Instead of defending him, his colleagues triumphantly
gave reasons for the repellent bearing of the public.
He felt as if annihilated. It was not possible that his old power had
really left him, he told himself. If he had, a short time ago, thought
poorly of his virtuoso success, he now longed for it. A consuming,
morbid ambition overcame him, a thirst for triumph. He who had formerly
hated all exaggerated figures of speech, all flowery phrases, now
hungered for great, enthusiastic demonstrations. He rejoiced at every
flattery, however tasteless it might be. That fatal giddiness which
overcomes great men when they must descend, overcame him.
He clung to everything to win a support. He who had once so roughly
held aloof from all advertising, only tolerating about him those
journalists who might afford him a passing diversion, or who suited his
humor, now stooped for the favor of the most subordinate reporters. He
crowded concert-halls, which else would have remained half empty, with
free tickets, in order to secure himself a receptive audience. It was
all in vain.
A wild defiance overcame him. He everywhere suspected cabals, grew
quite foolish and childish in his fancies. They were unfavorable to
Russians in Germany. The indifference of the public was a political
demonstration.
Before the public he purposely exhibited a haughty, rough manner, but
when he knew himself unobserved, then he hid his head in his hands and
wept like a little child.
The old pact with the devil was broken. He sought something else which
he could not find--a musical expression for the new, elevating charm
which had recently enthralled him and for which he forgot his old art.