arousing certain associations in our souls, or certain images in our
brain; and these memories and images have a color of their own; they are
sad or cheerful. You are battling for a word, that is all. According
to Capraja, each instrument has its task, its mission, and appeals to
certain feelings in our souls. Does a pattern in gold on a blue ground
produce the same sensations in you as a red pattern on black or green?
In these, as in music, there are no figures, no expression of
feeling; they are purely artistic, and yet no one looks at them with
indifference. Has not the oboe the peculiar tone that we associate
with the open country, in common with most wind instruments? The brass
suggests martial ideas, and rouses us to vehement or even somewhat
furious feelings. The strings, for which the material is derived from
the organic world, seem to appeal to the subtlest fibres of our nature;
they go to the very depths of the heart. When I spoke of the gloomy hue,
and the coldness of the tones in the introduction to _Mose_, was I
not fully as much justified as your critics are when they speak of the
‘color’ in a writer’s language? Do you not acknowledge that there is a
nervous style, a pallid style, a lively, and a highly-colored style? Art
can paint with words, sounds, colors, lines, form; the means are many;
the result is one.
“An Italian architect might give us the same sensation that is produced
in us by the introduction to _Mose_, by constructing a walk through
dark, damp avenues of tall, thick trees, and bringing us out suddenly
in a valley full of streams, flowers, and mills, and basking in the
sunshine. In their greatest moments the arts are but the expression of
the grand scenes of nature.
“I am not learned enough to enlarge on the philosophy of music; go and
talk to Capraja; you will be amazed at what he can tell you. He will say
that every instrument that depends on the touch or breath of man for its
expression and length of note, is superior as a vehicle of expression
to color, which remains fixed, or speech, which has its limits. The
language of music is infinite; it includes everything; it can express
all things.
“Now do you see wherein lies the pre-eminence of the work you have just
heard? I can explain it in a few words. There are two kinds of music:
one, petty, poor, second-rate, always the same, based on a hundred or
so of phrases which every musician has at his command, a more or less
agreeable form of babble which most composers live in. We listen to
their strains, their would-be melodies, with more or less satisfaction,
but absolutely nothing is left in our mind; by the end of the century
they are forgotten. But the nations, from the beginning of time till
our own day, have cherished as a precious treasure certain strains which
epitomize their instincts and habits; I might almost say their history.
Listen to one of these primitive tones,--the Gregorian chant,
for instance, is, in sacred song, the inheritance of the earliest
peoples,--and you will lose yourself in deep dreaming. Strange and
immense conceptions will unfold within you, in spite of the extreme
simplicity of these rudimentary relics. And once or twice in a
century--not oftener, there arises a Homer of music, to whom God grants
the gift of being ahead of his age; men who can compact melodies full of
accomplished facts, pregnant with mighty poetry. Think of this; remember
it. The thought, repeated by you, will prove fruitful; it is melody, not
harmony, that can survive the shocks of time.
“The music of this oratorio contains a whole world of great and sacred
things. A work which begins with that introduction and ends with that
prayer is immortal--as immortal as the Easter hymn, _O filii et filioe_,
as the _Dies iroe_ of the dead, as all the songs which in every land
have outlived its splendor, its happiness, and its ruined prosperity.”
The tears the Duchess wiped away as she quitted her box showed plainly
that she was thinking of the Venice that is no more; and Vendramin
kissed her hand.
The performance ended with the most extraordinary chaos of noises: abuse
and hisses hurled at Genovese and a fit of frenzy in praise of la Tinti.
It was a long time since the Venetians had had so lively an evening.
They were warmed and revived by that antagonism which is never lacking
in Italy, where the smallest towns always throve on the antagonistic
interests of two factions: the Geulphs and Ghibellines everywhere; the
Capulets and the Montagues at Verona; the Geremei and the Lomelli at
Bologna; the Fieschi and the Doria at Genoa; the patricians and the
populace, the Senate and tribunes of the Roman republic; the Pazzi and
the Medici at Florence; the Sforza and the Visconti at Milan; the Orsini
and the Colonna at Rome,--in short, everywhere and on every occasion
there has been the same impulse.
Out in the streets there were already _Genovists_ and _Tintists_.
The Prince escorted the Duchess, more depressed than ever by the loves
of Osiride; she feared some similar disaster to her own, and could only
cling to Emilio, as if to keep him next her heart.
“Remember your promise,” said Vendramin. “I will wait for you in the
square.”
Vendramin took the Frenchman’s arm, proposing that they should walk
together on the Piazza San Marco while awaiting the Prince.
“I shall be only too glad if he should not come,” he added.
This was the text for a conversation between the two, Vendramin
regarding it as a favorable opportunity for consulting the physician,
and telling him the singular position Emilio had placed himself in.
The Frenchman did as every Frenchman does on all occasions: he laughed.
Vendramin, who took the matter very seriously, was angry; but he was
mollified when the disciple of Majendie, of Cuvier, of Dupuytren, and
of Brossais assured him that he believed he could cure the Prince of his
high-flown raptures, and dispel the heavenly poetry in which he shrouded
Massimilla as in a cloud.
“A happy form of misfortune!” said he. “The ancients, who were not such
fools as might be inferred from their crystal heaven and their ideas on
physics, symbolized in the fable of Ixion the power which nullifies the
body and makes the spirit lord of all.”
Vendramin and the doctor presently met Genovese, and with him the
fantastic Capraja. The melomaniac was anxious to learn the real cause
of the tenor’s _fiasco_. Genovese, the question being put to him, talked
fast, like all men who can intoxicate themselves by the ebullition of
ideas suggested to them by a passion.
“Yes, signori, I love her, I worship her with a frenzy of which I never
believed myself capable, now that I am tired of women. Women play the
mischief with art. Pleasure and work cannot be carried on together.
Clara fancies that I was jealous of her success, that I wanted to
hinder her triumph at Venice; but I was clapping in the side-scenes, and
shouted _Diva_ louder than any one in the house.”
“But even that,” said Cataneo, joining them, “does not explain why, from
being a divine singer, you should have become one of the most execrable
performers who ever piped air through his larynx, giving none of the
charm even which enchants and bewitches us.”
“I!” said the singer. “I a bad singer! I who am the equal of the
greatest performers!”
By this time, the doctor and Vendramin, Capraja, Cataneo, and Genovese
had made their way to the piazzetta. It was midnight. The glittering
bay, outlined by the churches of San Giorgio and San Paulo at the end
of the Giudecca, and the beginning of the Grand Canal, that opens so
mysteriously under the _Dogana_ and the church of Santa Maria della
Salute, lay glorious and still. The moon shone on the barques along the
Riva de’ Schiavoni. The waters of Venice, where there is no tide, looked
as if they were alive, dancing with a myriad spangles. Never had a
singer a more splendid stage.
Genovese, with an emphatic flourish, seemed to call Heaven and Earth to
witness; and then, with no accompaniment but the lapping waves, he sang
_Ombra adorata_, Crescentini’s great air. The song, rising up between
the statues of San Teodoro and San Giorgio, in the heart of sleeping
Venice lighted by the moon, the words, in such strange harmony with the
scene, and the melancholy passion of the singer, held the Italians and
the Frenchman spellbound.
At the very first notes, Vendramin’s face was wet with tears. Capraja
stood as motionless as one of the statues in the ducal palace. Cataneo
seemed moved to some feeling. The Frenchman, taken by surprise, was
meditative, like a man of science in the presence of a phenomenon that
upsets all his fundamental axioms. These four minds, all so different,
whose hopes were so small, who believed in nothing for themselves
or after themselves, who regarded their own existence as that of a
transient and a fortuitous being,--like the little life of a plant or a
beetle,--had a glimpse of Heaven. Never did music more truly merit the
epithet divine. The consoling notes, as they were poured out, enveloped
their souls in soft and soothing airs. On these vapors, almost visible,
as it seemed to the listeners, like the marble shapes about them in the
silver moonlight, angels sat whose wings, devoutly waving, expressed
adoration and love. The simple, artless melody penetrated to the soul as
with a beam of light. It was a holy passion!
But the singer’s vanity roused them from their emotion with a terrible
shock.
“Now, am I a bad singer?” he exclaimed, as he ended.
His audience only regretted that the instrument was not a thing of
Heaven. This angelic song was then no more than the outcome of a man’s
offended vanity! The singer felt nothing, thought nothing, of the pious
sentiments and divine images he could create in others,--no more, in
fact, than Paganini’s violin knows what the player makes it utter. What
they had seen in fancy was Venice lifting its shroud and singing--and it
was merely the result of a tenor’s _fiasco_!
“Can you guess the meaning of such a phenomenon?” the Frenchman asked of
Capraja, wishing to make him talk, as the Duchess had spoken of him as a
profound thinker.
“What phenomenon?” said Capraja.
“Genovese--who is admirable in the absence of la Tinti, and when he
sings with her is a braying ass.”
“He obeys an occult law of which one of your chemists might perhaps give
you the mathematical formula, and which the next century will no doubt
express in a statement full of _x_, _a_, and _b_, mixed up with little
algebraic signs, bars, and quirks that give me the colic; for the finest
conceptions of mathematics do not add much to the sum total of our
enjoyment.
“When an artist is so unfortunate as to be full of the passion he wishes
to express, he cannot depict it because he is the thing itself instead
of its image. Art is the work of the brain, not of the heart. When you
are possessed by a subject you are a slave, not a master; you are like a
king besieged by his people. Too keen a feeling, at the moment when you
want to represent that feeling, causes an insurrection of the senses
against the governing faculty.”
“Might we not convince ourselves of this by some further experiment?”
said the doctor.
“Cataneo, you might bring your tenor and the prima donna together
again,” said Capraja to his friend.
“Well, gentlemen,” said the Duke, “come to sup with me. We ought to
reconcile the tenor and la Clarina; otherwise the season will be ruined
in Venice.”
The invitation was accepted.
“Gondoliers!” called Cataneo.
“One minute,” said Vendramin. “Memmi is waiting for me at Florian’s; I
cannot leave him to himself. We must make him tipsy to-night, or he will
kill himself to-morrow.”
“_Corpo santo!_” exclaimed the Duke. “I must keep that young fellow
alive, for the happiness and future prospects of my race. I will invite
him, too.”
They all went back to Florian’s, where the assembled crowd were holding
an eager and stormy discussion to which the tenor’s arrival put an end.
In one corner, near a window looking out on the colonnade, gloomy, with
a fixed gaze and rigid attitude, Emilio was a dismal image of despair.
“That crazy fellow,” said the physician, in French, to Vendramin, “does
not know what he wants. Here is a man who can make of a Massimilla Doni
a being apart from the rest of creation, possessing her in heaven, amid
ideal splendor such as no power on earth can make real. He can behold
his mistress for ever sublime and pure, can always hear within him what
we have just heard on the seashore; can always live in the light of
a pair of eyes which create for him the warm and golden glow that
surrounds the Virgin in Titian’s Assumption,--after Raphael had invented
it or had it revealed to him for the Transfiguration,--and this man only
longs to smirch the poem.
“By my advice he must needs combine his sensual joys and his heavenly
adoration in one woman. In short, like all the rest of us, he will have
a mistress. He had a divinity, and the wretched creature insists on her
being a female! I assure you, monsieur, he is resigning heaven. I will
not answer for it that he may not ultimately die of despair.
“O ye women’s faces, delicately outlined in a pure and radiant oval,
reminding us of those creations of art where it has most successfully
competed with nature! Divine feet that cannot walk, slender forms
that an earthly breeze would break, shapes too frail ever to conceive,
virgins that we dreamed of as we grew out of childhood, admired in
secret, and adored without hope, veiled in the beams of some unwearying
desire,--maids whom we may never see again, but whose smile remains
supreme in our life, what hog of Epicurus could insist on dragging you
down to the mire of this earth!
“The sun, monsieur, gives light and heat to the world, only because it
is at a distance of thirty-three millions of leagues. Get nearer to
it, and science warns you that it is not really hot or luminous,--for
science is of some use,” he added, looking at Capraja.
“Not so bad for a Frenchman and a doctor,” said Capraja, patting the
foreigner on the shoulder. “You have in those words explained the
thing which Europeans least understand in all Dante: his Beatrice. Yes,
Beatrice, that ideal figure, the queen of the poet’s fancies, chosen
above all the elect, consecrated with tears, deified by memory, and for
ever young in the presence of ineffectual desire!”
“Prince,” said the Duke to Emilio, “come and sup with me. You cannot
refuse the poor Neapolitan whom you have robbed both of his wife and of
his mistress.”
This broad Neapolitan jest, spoken with an aristocratic good manner,
made Emilio smile; he allowed the Duke to take his arm and lead him
away.
Cataneo had already sent a messenger to his house from the cafe.
As the Palazzo Memmi was on the Grand Canal, not far from Santa Maria
della Salute, the way thither on foot was round by the Rialto, or it
could be reached in a gondola. The four guests would not separate and
preferred to walk; the Duke’s infirmities obliged him to get into his
gondola.
At about two in the morning anybody passing the Memmi palace would have
seen light pouring out of every window across the Grand Canal, and have
heard the delightful overture to _Semiramide_ performed at the foot of
the steps by the orchestra of the _Fenice_, as a serenade to la Tinti.
The company were at supper in the second floor gallery. From the balcony
la Tinti in return sang Almavida’s _Buona sera_ from _Il Barbiere_,
while the Duke’s steward distributed payment from his master to the
poor artists and bid them to dinner the next day, such civilities as are
expected of grand signors who protect singers, and of fine ladies who
protect tenors and basses. In these cases there is nothing for it but to
marry all the _corps de theatre_.
Cataneo did things handsomely; he was the manager’s banker, and this
season was costing him two thousand crowns.
He had had all the palace furnished, had imported a French cook, and
wines of all lands. So the supper was a regal entertainment.
The Prince, seated next la Tinti, was keenly alive, all through the
meal, to what poets in every language call the darts of love. The
transcendental vision of Massimilla was eclipsed, just as the idea
of God is sometimes hidden by clouds of doubt in the consciousness of
solitary thinkers. Clarina thought herself the happiest woman in
the world as she perceived Emilio was in love with her. Confident of
retaining him, her joy was reflected in her features, her beauty was so
dazzling that the men, as they lifted their glasses, could not resist
bowing to her with instinctive admiration.
“The Duchess is not to compare with la Tinti,” said the Frenchman,
forgetting his theory under the fire of the Sicilian’s eyes.
The tenor ate and drank languidly; he seemed to care only to identify
himself with the prima donna’s life, and had lost the hearty sense of
enjoyment which is characteristic of Italian men singers.
“Come, signorina,” said the Duke, with an imploring glance at Clarina,
“and you, _caro prima uomo_,” he added to Genovese, “unite your voices
in one perfect sound. Let us have the C of _Qual portento_, when light
appears in the oratorio we have just heard, to convince my old friend
Capraja of the superiority of unison to any embellishment.”
“I will carry her off from that Prince she is in love with; for she
adores him--it stares me in the face!” said Genovese to himself.
What was the amazement of the guests who had heard Genovese out of
doors, when he began to bray, to coo, mew, squeal, gargle, bellow,
thunder, bark, shriek, even produce sounds which could only be described
as a hoarse rattle,--in short, go through an incomprehensible farce,
while his face was transfigured with rapturous expression like that of
a martyr, as painted by Zurbaran or Murillo, Titian or Raphael. The
general shout of laughter changed to almost tragical gravity when they
saw that Genovese was in utter earnest. La Tinti understood that her
companion was in love with her, and had spoken the truth on the stage,
the land of falsehood.
“_Poverino!_” she murmured, stroking the Prince’s hand under the table.
“By all that is holy!” cried Capraja, “will you tell me what score you
are reading at this moment--murdering Rossini? Pray inform us what you
are thinking about, what demon is struggling in your throat.”
“A demon!” cried Genovese, “say rather the god of music. My eyes,
like those of Saint-Cecilia, can see angels, who, pointing with their
fingers, guide me along the lines of the score which is written in
notes of fire, and I am trying to keep up with them. PER DIO! do you not
understand? The feeling that inspires me has passed into my being; it
fills my heart and my lungs; my soul and throat have but one life.
“Have you never, in a dream, listened to the most glorious strains, the
ideas of unknown composers who have made use of pure sound as nature
has hidden it in all things,--sound which we call forth, more or less
perfectly, by the instruments we employ to produce masses of various
color; but which in those dream-concerts are heard free from the
imperfections of the performers who cannot be all feeling, all soul? And
I, I give you that perfection, and you abuse me!
“You are as mad at the pit of the _Fenice_, who hissed me! I scorned the
vulgar crowd for not being able to mount with me to the heights whence
we reign over art, and I appeal to men of mark, to a Frenchman--Why, he
is gone!”
“Half an hour ago,” said Vendramin.
“That is a pity. He, perhaps, would have understood me, since Italians,
lovers of art, do not--”
“On you go!” said Capraja, with a smile, and tapping lightly on the
tenor’s head. “Ride off on the divine Ariosto’s hippogriff; hunt down
your radiant chimera, musical visionary as you are!”
In point of fact, all the others, believing that Genovese was drunk, let
him talk without listening to him. Capraja alone had understood the case
put by the French physician.
While the wine of Cyprus was loosening every tongue, and each one was
prancing on his favorite hobby, the doctor, in a gondola, was waiting
for the Duchess, having sent her a note written by Vendramin. Massimilla
appeared in her night wrapper, so much had she been alarmed by the tone
of the Prince’s farewell, and so startled by the hopes held out by the
letter.
“Madame,” said the Frenchman, as he placed her in a seat and desired the
gondoliers to start, “at this moment Prince Emilio’s life is in danger,
and you alone can save him.”
“What is to be done?” she asked.
“Ah! Can you resign yourself to play a degrading part--in spite of the
noblest face to be seen in Italy? Can you drop from the blue sky where
you dwell, into the bed of a courtesan? In short, can you, an angel of
refinement, of pure and spotless beauty, condescend to imagine what the
love must be of a Tinti--in her room, and so effectually as to deceive
the ardor of Emilio, who is indeed too drunk to be very clear-sighted?”
“Is that all?” said she, with a smile that betrayed to the Frenchman a
side he had not as yet perceived of the delightful nature of an Italian
woman in love. “I will out-do la Tinti, if need be, to save my friend’s
life.”
“And you will thus fuse into one two kinds of love, which he sees as
distinct--divided by a mountain of poetic fancy, that will melt away
like the snow on a glacier under the beams of the midsummer sun.”
“I shall be eternally your debtor,” said the Duchess, gravely.
When the French doctor returned to the gallery, where the orgy had
by this time assumed the stamp of Venetian frenzy, he had a look of
satisfaction which the Prince, absorbed by la Tinti, failed to observe;
he was promising himself a repetition of the intoxicating delights he
had known. La Tinti, a true Sicilian, was floating on the tide of a
fantastic passion on the point of being gratified.
The doctor whispered a few words to Vendramin, and la Tinti was uneasy.
“What are you plotting?” she inquired of the Prince’s friend.
“Are you kind-hearted?” said the doctor in her ear, with the sternness
of an operator.
The words pierced to her comprehension like a dagger-thrust to her
heart.
“It is to save Emilio’s life,” added Vendramin.
“Come here,” said the doctor to Clarina.
The hapless singer rose and went to the other end of the table where,
between Vendramin and the Frenchman, she looked like a criminal between
the confessor and the executioner.
She struggled for a long time, but yielded at last for love of Emilio.
The doctor’s last words were:
“And you must cure Genovese!”
She spoke a word to the tenor as she went round the table. She returned
to the Prince, put her arm round his neck and kissed his hair with an
expression of despair which struck Vendramin and the Frenchman, the
only two who had their wits about them, then she vanished into her room.
Emilio, seeing Genovese leave the table, while Cataneo and Capraja were
absorbed in a long musical discussion, stole to the door of the bedroom,
lifted the curtain, and slipped in, like an eel into the mud.
“But you see, Cataneo,” said Capraja, “you have exacted the last drop
of physical enjoyment, and there you are, hanging on a wire like a
cardboard harlequin, patterned with scars, and never moving unless the
string is pulled of a perfect unison.”
“And you, Capraja, who have squeezed ideas dry, are not you in the same
predicament? Do you not live riding the hobby of a _cadenza_?”
“I? I possess the whole world!” cried Capraja, with a sovereign gesture
of his hand.
“And I have devoured it!” replied the Duke.
They observed that the physician and Vendramin were gone, and that they
were alone.
Next morning, after a night of perfect happiness, the Prince’s sleep
was disturbed by a dream. He felt on his heart the trickle of pearls,
dropped there by an angel; he woke, and found himself bathed in the
tears of Massimilla Doni. He was lying in her arms, and she gazed at him
as he slept.
That evening, at the _Fenice_,--though la Tinti had not allowed him to
rise till two in the afternoon, which is said to be very bad for a
tenor voice,--Genovese sang divinely in his part in _Semiramide_. He was
recalled with la Tinti, fresh crowns were given, the pit was wild with
delight; the tenor no longer attempted to charm the prima donna by
angelic methods.
Vendramin was the only person whom the doctor could not cure. Love for
a country that has ceased to be is a love beyond curing. The young
Venetian, by dint of living in his thirteenth century republic, and
in the arms of that pernicious courtesan called opium, when he
found himself in the work-a-day world to which reaction brought him,
succumbed, pitied and regretted by his friends.
No, how shall the end of this adventure be told--for it is too
disastrously domestic. A word will be enough for the worshipers of the
ideal.
The Duchess was expecting an infant.