"Tell me what you feel, my darling!" he cried; "let me know if it is pity for me that makes you cry, or whether it is pleasure."
"I don't know how pleasure in a thing like that could make me cry," she said. "Don't ask me if I feel pain or pleasure; all that I know is that I can't help crying."
"But what were you thinking of while I played?" said Joseph, looking fixedly at her.
"So many things that I can't give account of them," replied Brulette.
"Well, tell me one," he said, in a tone that was impatient and dictatorial.
"I did not think of anything," said Brulette, "but a thousand recollections of old times came into my mind. I seemed not to see you playing, though I heard you clearly enough; you appeared to be no older than when we lived together, and I felt as if you and I were driven by a strong wind, sometimes through the ripe wheat, sometimes into the long grass, at other times upon the running streams; and I saw the fields, the woods, the springs, the flowery meadows, and the birds in the sky among the clouds. I saw, too, in my dream, your mother and my grandfather sitting before the fires, and talking of things I could not understand; and all the while you were in the corner on your knees saying your prayers, and I thought I was asleep in my little bed. Then again I saw the ground covered with snow, and the willows full of larks, and the nights full of falling stars; and we looked at each other, sitting on a hillock, while the sheep made their little noise of nibbling the grass. In short, I dreamed so many things that they are all jumbled up in my head; and if they made me cry, it was not for grief, but because my mind was shaken in a way I can't at all explain to you."
"It is all right," said José. "What I saw and what I dreamed as I played you saw too! Thank you, Brulette. Through you I know now that I am not crazy, and that there is a truth in what we hear within us, as there is in what we see. Yes, yes," he said, taking long strides up and down the room and holding his flute above his head, "it speaks!—that miserable bit of reed! it says what we think; it shows what we see; it tells a tale as if with words; it loves like the heart, it lives, it has a being! And now, José the madman, José the idiot, José the starer, go back to your imbecility; you can afford to do so, for you are as powerful, and as wise, and as happy as others!"
So saying, he sat down and paid no further attention to anything about him.