J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal
Qu'enflammait l'orchestre sonore
Une fée allumer dans un ciel infernal
Une miraculeuse aurore;
J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal
Un être qui n'était que lumière, or et gaze,
Terrasser l'énorme Satan;
Mais mon coeur que jamais ne visite l'extase,
Est un théâtre où l'on attend.
Toujours, toujours en vain l'être aux ailes gaze.
--BAUDELAIRE.
They watched him until he turned the corner of the Rue Puteaux and was
lost to them.
He moved slowly, painfully, one leg striking the pavement in
syncopation, for it was sadly crippled by disease. He twisted his thin
head only once as he went along the Batignolles. It seemed to them that
his half face was sneering in the mist. Then the band passed up to the
warmer lights of the Clichy Quarter, where they drank and argued art far
into the night They one and all hated Wagner, adoring Chopin's morbid
music.
Minkiewicz walked up the lower side of the little street called Puteaux
until he reached a stupid, overgrown building. It was numbered 5, and
was a shabby sort of pension. The Pole painfully hobbled up the
evil-smelling stairway, more crooked than a youth's counterpoint, and on
the floor next to the top halted, breathing heavily. The weather was
oppressive and he had talked too much to the young men at the brasserie.
"Ah, good boys all," he murmured, trying the door; "good lads, but no
talent, no originality. Ah!" The door yielded and Minkiewicz was at
home.
An upright piano, a bed, a shaky washstand and bureau, one feeble chair,
music--pounds of it--filled the chamber lighted by one candle. The old
man threw himself on the bed and sighed drearily. Then he went to the
piano, lifted the lid and ran his fingers over the keyboard. He sighed
again. He sat down on the chair and closed his eyes. He did not sleep,
for he arose in a few moments, took off his coat, and lighted a
cigarette in the flame of the candle. Minkiewicz again placed himself
before the instrument and played, but with silent fingers. He executed
the most intricate passages, yet the wind in the room was soundless. He
sat in his shirt-sleeves, his hat on his head, playing a Chopin concerto
in dumb profile, and the night wore on....
He was awakened in the morning by the entrance of a grimy garçon who
grinned and put on the floor an oblong basket. Minkiewicz stirred
restlessly.
"The absinthe--you have not forgotten it?" he questioned in a weak
voice.
"Ah, no, sir; never, sir, do I forget the green fairy for the great
musician, sir," was the answer, evidently a set one, its polite angles
worn away by daily usance.
The man grasped the proffered glass and swallowed, choking, the
absinthe. It did him good, for he sat up in bed, his greasy, torn
nightgown huddled about him, and with long, claw-like fingers he
uncovered the scanty breakfast. When he had finished it he wiped his
mouth and hands on the counterpane:
"Charge it as usual."
The waiter packed up the dishes, bade a bon jour, and with a mocking
gesture left the room. Minkiewicz always had his breakfasts charged.
At noon he crawled out of bed and dressed at a grave tempo. He wore
always the same shirt, a woollen one, and his wardrobe knew no change.
It was faded, out of fashion by a full half-century, and his only luxury
a silk comforter which he knotted loosely about his neck. He had never
worn a collar since Chopin's death. It was two of the clock when he
stumbled downstairs. At the doorway he met Bernard the hunchback
landlord.
"No money to-day, M. Minkiewicz? Well, I suppose not--terribly hard
times--no money. Will you have a little glass with me?" The musician
went into the dusky dining-room and drank a pony of brandy with the
good-natured Alsatian; then he shambled down the Rue Puteaux into the
Boulevard des Batignolles, and slowly aired himself.
"A great man, M. Minkiewicz; a poet, a pianist, a friend of M.
Chopin--ah! I admire him much, much," explained Bernard to a
neighbor....
It was very wet. But the slop and swish of the rain did not prevent the
brasserie of The Fallen Angels from being filled with noisy drinkers. In
one corner sat Minkiewicz. He was drinking absinthe. About him clustered
five or six good-looking young fellows. The chatter in the room was
terrific, but this group of disciples heard all the master said. He
scarcely spoke above a whisper, yet his voice cut the hot air sharply.
"You ask me, Henri, how well I knew Frédéric. I could ask you in turn
how well did you know your mother? I was with him at Warsaw. I, too,
studied under Elsner. I accompanied him on his first journey to Vienna.
I was at his first concert. I trembled and cried as he played our
first--his first concerto in F minor. I wrote--we wrote the one in E
minor later. I proposed for the hand of Constance Gladowska for
Frédéric, and he screamed when I brought back the answer. Ah! but I did
not tell him that Constance, Constantia, had said, 'Sir Friend, why not
let the little Chopin woo for himself?' and she threw back her head and
smiled into my eyes. I could have killed her for that subtle look. Yes;
I know she married an ordinary merchant. What cared I? I loved Frédéric,
Frédéric only. I never left his side. When it rained, rained as it is
raining to-night, he would tremble, and often beat me with his
spider-like hands, but I didn't mind it, for I was stronger then.
"I went with him to Paris. It was I who secured for him from Prince
Radziwill the invitation to the Rothschild's ball where he won his first
triumph. I made him practise. I bore his horrible humors, his mad,
irritating, capricious temper. I wrote down his music for him. Wrote it
down, did I say? Why, I often composed it for him; yes, I, for he would
sit and moon away at the piano, insanely wasting his ideas, while I
would force him to repeat a phrase, repeat it, polish it, alter it and
so on until the fabric of the composition was complete. Then, how I
would toil, toil, prune and expand his feeble ideas! Mon Dieu! Frédéric
was no reformer by nature, no pathbreaker in art; he was a sickly
fellow, always coughing, always scolding, but he played charmingly. He
had such fingers! and he knew all our national dances. The mazurek, the
mazourk, the polonaise and the krakowiak. Ah! but then he had no blood,
no fire, no muscle, no vitality. He was not a revolutionist. He did not
discover new forms; all he cared for was to mock the Jews with their
majufes, and play sugar-water nocturnes.
"I was the artistic mate to this little Pole who allowed that old
man-woman to deceive him--George Sand, of course. Ah! the old rascal,
how she hated me. She forbade me to enter their hotel in the Cour
d'Orléans, but I did--Chopin would have died without me, the delicate
little vampire! I was his nurse, his mother, his big brother. I fought
his fight with the publishers, with the creditors. I wrote his
polonaises, all--all I tell you--except those sickly things in the keys
of C sharp minor, F minor and B flat minor. Pouf! don't tell me anything
about Chopin. He write a polonaise? He write the scherzi, the ballades,
the études?--you make me enraged. I, I made them all and he will get the
credit for all time, and I am glad of it, for I loved him as a father."
The voice of Minkiewicz became strident as he repeated his old story.
Some of the clients of The Fallen Angels stopped talking for a moment;
it was only that crazy Pole again with his thrice-told tale.
Minkiewicz drank another absinthe.
"And were you then a poet as well as a composer?" timidly asked young
Louis.
"I was the greatest poet Poland ever had. Ask of Chopin's friends, or of
his living pupils. Go ask Georges Mathias, the old professor of the
Conservatoire, if Minkiewicz did not inspire Chopin. Who gave him the
theme for his Revolutionary étude--the one in C minor?" Minkiewicz ran
his left hand with velocity across the table. His disciples followed
those marvellously agile fingers with the eyes of the hypnotic....
"I was with Frédéric at Stuttgart. I first heard the news of the capture
of Warsaw. Pale and with beating heart I ran to the hotel and told him
all. He had an attack of hysteria; then I rushed to the piano and by
chance struck out a phrase. It was in C sharp minor, and was almost
identical with the theme of the C minor study. At once Chopin ceased his
moaning and weeping and came over to the instrument. 'That's very
pretty,' he said, and began making a running bass accompaniment. He was
a born inventor of finger tricks; he took up the theme and gradually we
fashioned the study as it now stands. But it was first written in C
sharp minor. Frédéric suggested that it was too difficult for wealthy
amateurs in that key, and changed it to C minor. More copies would be
sold, he said. But he spoke no more of Warsaw after that. Why? Ah! don't
ask me--the true artist, I suppose. Once that his grief is objectified,
once that his sorrow is translated into tone, the first cause is quite
forgotten,--Art is so selfish, so beautiful, you know!
"I never left Frédéric but once; the odious Sand woman, who smoked a
pipe and swore like a cab driver, smuggled the poor devil away to
Majorca. He came back a sick man; no wonder! You remember the de Musset
episode. The poet's mother even implored the old dragon to take Alfred
to Italy. He, too, was coughing--all her friends coughed except Liszt,
who sneered at her blandishments--and Italy was good for consumptives.
De Musset went away ailing; he returned a mere shadow. What happened?
Ah! I cannot say. Possibly his eyes were opened by the things he
saw--you remember the young Italian physician--I think his name was
Pagello? It was the same with Chopin. Without me he could not thrive.
Sand knew it and hated me. I was the sturdy oak, Frédéric the tender
ivy. I poured out my heart's blood for him, poured it into his music. He
was a mere girl, I tell you--a sensitive, slender, shrinking, peevish
girl, a born prudish spinster, and would shiver if any one looked at
him. Liszt always frightened him and he hated Mendelssohn. He called
Beethoven a sour old Dutchman, and swore that he did not write piano
music. For the man who first brought his name before the public, the
big-hearted German, Robert Schumann--here's to his memory--Chopin had an
intense dislike. He confessed to me that Schumann was no composer, a
talented improviser only. I think he was a bit jealous of the man's
genius. But Freddie loved Mozart, loved his music so madly that it was
my turn to become jealous.
"And fastidious! Bon Dieu! I tell you that he could not drink, and once
Balzac told us a piquant story and Frédéric fainted. I remember well how
Balzac stared and said in that great voice of his: 'Guard well thy
little damsel, my good Minkiewicz, else he may yet be abducted by a
tom-cat,' and then he laughed until the window-panes rattled. What a
brute!...
"I gave my brain to Chopin. When he returned to me from that mad trip to
the Balearic Islands I had not the heart to scold. He was pallid and
even coughed in a whisper. He had no money; Sand was angry with him and
went off to Nohant alone. I had no means, but I took twenty-four little
piano preludes that I had made while Frédéric was away and sold them for
ready money. You know them, all the world knows them. They say now that
he wrote them whilst at Majorca, and tell fables about the rain-drop
prelude in D flat. A pack of lies! I wrote them and at my old piano
without strings, the same that I still have in the Rue Puteaux. But I
sha'n't complain. I love him yet. What was mine was his--is his, even my
music."
The group became uneasy. It was late. The rain had stopped, and through
the open doors of The Fallen Angels could be seen the soft-starred sky,
and melting in the distance were the lights of the Gare Saint-Lazare. It
was close by the Quarter of Europe, and the women who walked the
boulevard darted swift glances into the heated rooms of the brasserie.
Minkiewicz drank another absinthe--his last. There was no more money.
The disciples had spent their all for the master whom they loved as they
hated the name of Wagner. His slanting eyes--the eyes of the
Calmuck--were bloodshot; his face was yellow-white. His long, white hair
hung on his shoulders and there were bubbles about his lips.
"But I often despair. I loved Chopin's reputation too much ever to write
a line of music after his death. Besides who would have believed me?
Which one of you believes in his secret heart of hearts one word I have
spoken to-night? It is difficult to make the world acknowledge that you
are not an idiot; very difficult to shake its belief that Chopin was not
a god. Alas! there are no more gods. You say I am a poet, yet how may a
man be a poet if godless? I know that there is no God, yet I am unhappy
longing after Him. I awake at the dawn and cry for God as children cry
for their mother. Curse reason! curse the knowledge that has made a
mockery of my old faiths! Frédéric died, and dying saw Christ. I look
at the roaring river of azure overhead and see the cruel sky--nothing
more. I tell you, my children, it has killed the poet in me, and it will
kill the gods themselves when comes the crack of doom.
"I dream often of that time--that time John, the poet of Patmos,
foretold in his Revelations: The time when the Sixth Seal was opened.
Alas! when the Son of Man cometh out of the clouds and round about the
throne are the four-winged beasts, what will he see?
"Nothing--nothing, I tell you.
"Unbelief will have killed the very soul of creation itself. And where
once burned the eye of the Cosmos will be naught but a hideous
emptiness.
"Hélas! mes enfants, I could drink one more absinthe; my soul grieves
for my lost faith, my lost music, my lost Frédéric, my lost life." ...
But they went away. It was past the hour of closing and the host was not
in a humor for parleying.
"Ah! the old pig, the old blasphemer!" he said, shaking his head as he
locked the doors.
They watched him until he turned the corner of the Rue Puteaux and was
lost to them.
He moved slowly, painfully, one leg striking the pavement in
syncopation, for it was sadly crippled by disease. He did not twist his
thin head as he went along the Batignolles. Then the band passed once
more up to the warmer lights of the Clichy Quarter and argued art far
into the night.
They one and all hated Wagner, adoring Chopin's magic music.