The Martian: A Novel

by George Du Maurier

¹ ("Un malheureux, vêtu de noir,
Qui me ressemblait comme un frère ..."— Ed.)

Father Louis had an admirable and highly cultivated musical gift, and played to them Beethoven and Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, and Schumann—and this music, as long as it lasted (and for some time after), was to Barty as great a source of consolation as of unspeakable delight; and therefore to his aunt also. Though I'm afraid she preferred any little French song of Barty's to all the Schumanns in the world.

First of all, the priest would play the "Moonlight Sonata," let us say; and Barty would lean back and listen with his eyes shut, and almost believe that Beethoven was talking to him like a father, and pointing out to him how small was the difference, really, between the greatest earthly joy and the greatest earthly sorrow: these were not like black and white, but merely different shades of gray, as on moonlit things a long way off! and Time, what a reconciler it was—like distance! and Death, what a perfect resolution of all possible discords, and how certain! and our own little life, how short, and without importance! what matters whether it's to‑day, this small individual flutter of ours; or was a hundred years ago; or will be a hundred years hence! it has or had to be got through—and it's better past than to come.

"It all leads to the same divine issue, my poor friend," said Beethoven; "why, just see here—I'm stone‑deaf, and can't hear a note of what I'm singing to you! But it is not about that I weep, when I am weeping. It was terrible when it first came on, my deafness, and I could no longer hear the shepherd's pipe or the song of the lark; but it's well worth going deaf, to hear all that I do. I have to write everything down, and read it to myself; and my tears fall on the ruled paper, and blister the lines,

"THE MOONLIGHT SONATA"

and make the notes run into each other; and when I try to blot it all out, there's that still left on the page, which, turned into sound by good father Louis the Dominican, will tell you, if you can only hear it aright, what is not to be told in any human speech; not even that of Plato, or Marcus Aurelius, or Erasmus, or Shakespeare; not even that of Christ himself, who speaks through me from His unknown grave, because I am deaf and cannot hear the distracting words of men—poor, paltry words at their best, which mean so many things at once that they mean just nothing at all. It's a Tower of Babel. Just stop your ears and listen with your heart and you will hear all that you can see when you shut your eyes or have lost them—and those are the only realities, mein armer Barty!"

Then the good Mozart would say:

"Lieber Barty—I'm so stupid about earthly things that I could never even say Boh to a goose, so I can't give you any good advice; all my heart overflowed into my brain when I was quite a little boy and made music for grown‑up people to hear; from the day of my birth to my fifth birthday I had gone on remembering everything, but learning nothing new—remembering all that music!