Fresh objects strike upon the view, as if just called from chaos. A veil of uniform rose-color covers them all, but as the light augments in intensity, the thin gauze drapes and folds in shades of pale carnation, while the advancing plains grow clear in white and dazzling splendor.
The brilliant sun delays no longer to invade the firmament, gaining new glory as he rises. The vapors surge and crowd together, rolling themselves from right to left, like the heavy drapery of a curtain moved by the wind. Then all breathes, moves, lives, hums, sings; the sounds mingle, cross, meet, and melt into each other. Inertia gives place to motion, it spreads, accelerates and circulates. The waves of the lake undulate and swell like a bosom touched by love. The tears of the dew, motionless as those of tenderness, grow more and more perceptible, one after another they are seen glittering on the humid herbs, diamonds waiting for the sun to paint with rainbow-tints their vivid scintillations. The gigantic fan of light in the East is ever opening larger and wider. Spangles of silver, borders of scarlet, violet fringes, bars of gold, cover it with fantastic broidery. Light bands of reddish brown feather its branches. The brightest scarlet at its centre has the glowing transparency of the ruby; shading into orange like a burning coal, it widens like a torch, spreads like a bouquet of flames, which glows and glows from fervor to fervor, ever more incandescent.
At last the god of day appears! His blazing front is adorned with luminous locks of long floating hair. Slowly he seems to rise—but scarcely has he fully unveiled himself, than he starts forward, disengages himself from all around him, and, leaving the earth far below him, takes instantaneous possession of the vaulted heavens....
The memory of the days passed in the lovely isle of Majorca, like the remembrance of an entrancing ecstasy, which fate grants but once in life even to the most favored of her children, remained always dear to the heart of Chopin. "He [Footnote: Lucrezia Fioriani] was no longer upon this earth, he was in an empyrean of golden clouds and perfumes, his imagination, so full of exquisite beauty, seemed engaged in a monologue with God himself; and if upon the radiant prism in whose contemplation he forgot all else, the magic-lantern of the outer world would even cast its disturbing shadow, he felt deeply pained, as if in the midst of a sublime concert, a shrieking old woman should blend her shrill yet broken tones, her vulgar musical motivo, with the divine thoughts of the great masters." He always spoke of this period with deep emotion, profound gratitude, as if its happiness had been sufficient for a life-time, without hoping that it would ever be possible again to find a felicity in which the fight of time was only marked by the tenderness of woman's love, and the brilliant flashes of true genius. Thus did the clock of Linnaeus mark the course of time, indicating the hours by the successive waking and sleeping of the flowers, marking each by a different perfume, and a display of ever varying beauties, as each variegated calyx opened in ever changing yet ever lovely form!
The beauties of the countries through which the Poet and Musician travelled together, struck with more distinctness the imagination of the former. The loveliness of nature impressed Chopin in a manner less definite, though not less strong. His soul was touched, and immediately harmonized with the external enchantment, yet his intellect did not feel the necessity of analyzing or classifying it. His heart vibrated in unison with the exquisite scenery around him, although he was not able at the moment to assign the precise source of his blissful tranquillity. Like a true musician, he was satisfied to seize the sentiment of the scenes he visited, while he seemed to give but little attention to the plastic material, the picturesque frame, which did not assimilate with the form of his art, nor belong to his more spiritualized sphere. However, (a fact that has been often remarked in organizations such as his,) as he was removed in time and distance from the scenes in which emotion had obscured his senses, as the clouds from the burning incense envelope the censer, the more vividly the forms and beauties of such scenes stood out in his memory. In the succeeding years, he frequently spoke of them, as though the remembrance was full of pleasure to him. But when so entirely happy, he made no inventory of his bliss. He enjoyed it simply, as we all do in the sweet years of childhood, when we are deeply impressed by the scenery surrounding us without ever thinking of its details, yet finding, long after, the exact image of each object in our memory, though we are only able to describe its forms when we have ceased to behold them.
Besides, why should he have tasked himself to scrutinize the beautiful sites in Spain which formed the appropriate setting of his poetic happiness? Could he not always find them again through the descriptions of his inspired companion? As all objects, even the atmosphere itself, become flame-colored when seen through a glass dyed in crimson, so he might contemplate these delicious sites in the glowing hues cast around them by the impassioned genius of the woman he loved. The nurse of his sick-room—was she not also a great artist? Rare and beautiful union! If to the depths of tenderness and devotion, in which the true and irresistible empire of woman must commence, and deprived of which she is only an enigma without a possible solution, nature should unite the most brilliant gifts of genius,—the miraculous spectacle of the Greek firs would be renewed,—the glittering flames would again sport over the abysses of the ocean without being extinguished or submerged in the chilling depths, adding, as the living hues were thrown upon the surging waves, the glowing dyes of the purple fire to the celestial blue of the heaven-reflecting sea!
Has genius ever attained that utter self-abnegation, that sublime humility of heart which gives the power to make those strange sacrifices of the entire Past, of the whole Future; those immolations, as courageous as mysterious; those mystic and utter holocausts of self, not temporary and changing, but monotonous and constant,—through whose might alone tenderness may justly claim the higher name, devotion? Has not the force of genius its own exclusive and legitimate exactions, and does not the force of woman consist in the abdication of all exactions? Can the royal purple and burning flames of genius ever float upon the immaculate azure of woman's destiny?...
CHAPTER VIII.
Disappointment—Ill Health—Visit to England—Devotion of Friends—Last Sacraments—Delphina Potocka—Louise—M. Gutman—Death.