"Good night!" replied Reinhold, without turning round.
Hugo left the room. "I wish this Circe of a Beatrice could see him at such moments," muttered he, shutting the door. "You have conquered, Signora, and torn him to yourself as your indisputable property--you have not made him happy."
Reinhold remained a few moments longer immovable, at his place; then he raised himself and went over to his work room. He had to pass through several apartments in order to reach it. This abode, which occupied the entire ground floor of the roomy villa, was not so brilliant as that of Signora Biancona, but yet more extravagantly furnished, as the magnificence which reigned there was here ten times surpassed by the artistic decorations of the rooms; so there pictures hung on the walls, statues stood in the window niches, whose value could only be estimated by thousands; here were produced masterly copies of the most splendid art treasures of Italy. Wherever the eye turned, it met vases, busts, drawings and beautiful works, which elsewhere would have been each alone the ornament of any drawing-room, and which here, scattered everywhere, only served as additional decorations. Everywhere was wealth of beauty and art such as only a Rinaldo could gather around him in so lavish a manner, to whom gold as well as fame flowed in never-ceasing plenty, and who was accustomed to throw the former away quite recklessly.
In the middle of the study there stood a splendid piano, the gift of an enthusiastic circle of admirers, who wished to offer a visible testimony of their thanks to the master; the writing-table was covered with cards and letters, which bore the names of the first people in the kingdom, both as regards birth and genius, and which here were indifferently thrust aside, without the recipient placing the least value on them; from the principal wall, a life-sized picture of Beatrice Biancona looked down, painted by a celebrated hand, most charmingly represented, a really speaking likeness. She wore the fanciful costume of one of her chief parts in an opera of Rinaldo's, through the successful representation of whose works she herself had only risen to be an actress of the first order. The painter had succeeded in embodying the utterly infatuating magic, the glowing charm of the original, in this portrait. The beautiful figure appeared half-turned to the piano in an inimitably graceful pose, and the dark eyes gazed with deceptively life-like truth down upon the man whom they had kept so long already in indissoluble bonds, as if even here, in the sacred place of his works and labour, they would not leave him alone.
CHAPTER IX.
Reinhold sat at his piano, improvising. The room was not lighted, only the moon's rays, streaming fully in, hung over the flood of tones, which now rose as if the storm were raging in its waves, now rolling up mountains high, and then again disclosing the depths of an abyss. The melodies flowed forth passionately, glowing, intoxicatingly, and then suddenly they would start and change as if to harsh dissonance, to jarring discord. Those were the tones with which Rinaldo for years had reigned in the realms of music, with which he carried the crowd away to admiration; perhaps because they lent language to that demon-like element which slumbers in every one's breast, and of which every one is conscious, partly with dread, partly with secret shuddering. There lay, too, in these melodies something of that wild rush from pleasure to pleasure, of that rapid change from feverish excitement to deadly exhaustion, from that striving to benumb all feeling, which, sought for ever, is never found; and yet there rang forth something powerful, eternal, which had nothing in common with that element with which it fought, and which was raised above it, only to be wrecked within it at last.
The perfume of oranges rose from the gardens and streamed in through the widely-opened doors on to the balcony, and was wafted intoxicatingly through the apartments. Clear, full of great beauty and intense peace, lay the moonlight above the old town, and the dim distance disappeared in the blue, misty vapour. The fountain rustled dreamily amongst the blooming trees, and the light which shone in the falling drops illuminated with powerful distinctness the whole row of apartments, with their marble treasures of art; it illuminated the picture in the richly gilt frame, so that the witch-like, beautiful figure above seemed to live; and the same light fell upon the countenance of the man, whose brow, amid all this beauty and all this peace, remained so heavily overcast.
How many years, and, indeed, much besides which weighed more heavily than years only, lay between those long northern winter nights on which the young musician created his first compositions, and this balmy moonlight night of the south, on which the world-renowned Rinaldo repeated, in endless variations, the principal theme of his newest opera. And yet all vanished in this hour. Softly, recollection passed before him, and let long-forgotten days live again, long-forgotten pictures stand before him; the little garden house, with its old-fashioned furniture, and the stunted vines over the window, the miserable little strip of garden with its few trees and shrubs, and the high, prison-like walls around it; the narrow, gloomy house, with the so intensely hated business-room. Faint, colourless pictures--and yet they would not give way, as above them floated smilingly a pair of large, deep, blue child's eyes, which only there had shone for the father, and which here, in this orbit, full of poetry and beauty, he sought for in vain. He had seen them so often in his child's face, and also once--somewhere else. The remembrance of this was certainly but dim, almost forgotten; they had only then shown themselves to him for a moment, before being veiled again immediately, as they had been for years; but it was still those eyes, which hovered before him, as now, out of the storming and rolling tones, a magically sweet melody arose. An endless longing spoke in it, a pain which his lips would not utter, and thus formed a bridge across into the far distant past. Now had genius burst the fetters which then oppressed and confined him; now he stood aloft on the once dreamed-of heights. All that life and success, fame and love could give had become his portion, and now--again like a storm, it swept over the notes, wild, passionate, bacchante-like, and through it ever again that melody came plaintively, with its touching pain, its restless longing, which could not be pacified.
"I fear our captain will not endure Mirando much longer. It is dangerous having the sea thus ever before his eyes; he gazes over it with such longing, as if the sooner that he could sail away from us the better."