"A new melody of unheard-of power, which in his youth had been to him indistinct and impossible to fix, should suddenly rend his soul like a terrible sword."
"True!" said Glauro.
The wind-driven clouds were battling in phalanxes through space; the towers and cupolas seemed swaying in the background; the shadows of city and sky, equally vast and mobile on the troubled waters, alternately changed and blended, as if they had been produced by things equally near dissolution.
"Look at the Magyar, Daniele; there is a generous soul! He has served the hero with boundless faith and devotion; and by this service, more than by his art, he has won glory. But see how this very feeling, so strong and so sincere, inspires him with almost theatrical affectation, because of his continual wish to impose upon his spectators a magnificent image of himself, which shall delude them."
The Abbé Liszt straightened his thin and bony frame, which seemed encased by a coat of mail, and drawing himself to his full height he bared his head to pray, addressing a mute prayer to the God of Tempests. The wind stirred his thick white hair, that leonine mane that at times seemed to emit electric currents which affected his listeners, and many women. His magnetic eyes were raised to heaven, while the words of his inaudible prayer moved his thin lips, lending a mystic air to that face so deeply furrowed with wrinkles.
"What matters it?" said Glauro. "He possesses the divine faculty of fervor and a taste for all-powerful strength and dominating passion. Does not his art aspire toward Prometheus, Orpheus, Dante, Tasso? He was attracted by Richard Wagner as by some great force of nature; perhaps he heard in him the theme he has attempted to express in his symphonic poem: 'That which is heard on the Mountain'."
"That may be," said Effrena.
But both started on seeing the old man turn suddenly, with the gesture of one groping in darkness, and clutch convulsively at his companion, who uttered a cry. They ran toward the group. Everyone on the boat crowded around them, struck by that cry of anguish. A look from the woman prevented the curious from venturing too close to the apparently lifeless body. She herself supported him, laid him on a bench, felt his pulse, and bent over to listen to his heart-beats. Her love and her grief traced an inviolable circle around the stricken one. The bystanders stepped back and waited in silence, anxiously looking on that livid face for signs of either life or death.
The face was still and pale, as it lay on the woman's knees. Two deep furrows descended along the cheeks toward the half-open mouth, deepening near the imperious nose. Puffs of wind ruffled the thin, fine hair on the full forehead, and the white collar of beard below the square chin where the vigor of the jawbone was visible through the wrinkled skin. The temples were covered with perspiration, and one of the feet twitched slightly. The smallest detail of that fallen figure impressed itself forever on the minds of the two young men.
How long did his suffering endure? The shadows continued to float over the dark water, broken at intervals by long shafts of sun-rays that appeared to pierce the air and bury themselves like arrows in the dark waves. The regular cadence of the engine beat upon the air; and now arose the wild laughter of the sea-gulls, and a sort of dull, prolonged moan from the tempest-stricken city.