"He was not ugly. You see, we cannot answer affirmatively when anyone asks us such a question about our own sex. He had a tall, slender figure, which moved in an elegant, I might say a coquettish, manner; always a quatre épingles; a long, regular face, with a pale rosiness; very fair, almost golden, hair, put into small curls; very high noble brows, a straight nose, pale blue eyes, a beautifully-chiselled mouth, a round chin. His features had something vague and characterless; something like milk, and in this milk-face often mingled, half sweet, half bitter, an expression of sorrow. This expression of sorrow compensated for the want of soul in Bellini's face, but it was a sorrow without depth; it glistened in the eyes without poetry, it played passionless about his lips. The young Maestro seemed anxious to make this flat, languid sorrow conspicuous in his whole person. His hair was curled in such a fanciful, melancholy way, his clothes sat so languidly about his frail body, he carried his little Spanish cane in so idyllic a way, that he always reminded me of the affected young shepherds with their be-ribboned sticks, and bright-coloured jackets, and pantaloons that we see in our pastorals. And his gait was so young-lady-like, so elegiac, so ethereal. The whole man looked like a sigh en escarpins. He had received much applause among women, but I doubt if he anywhere awakened a strong passion. In himself his appearance had something comically unenjoyable, the reason of which lay in his way of speaking French. Although Bellini had lived many years in France, he spoke the language so badly, that even in England it could scarcely be spoken worse. I ought not to call it 'bad;' bad is here much too good. One must call it awful, a violation, something enough to overturn the world. Yes, when one was in society with him, and he mangled the poor French words like an executioner, and displayed, unmoved, his colossal coq-à-l'âne, one thought sometimes that the world must fall in with a crash of thunder. The stillness of the grave reigned on the whole room; a death agony was painted on all faces in chalk or in vermilion; the ladies were uncertain whether to faint or to escape; the gentlemen gazed in alarm at their trousers, to convince themselves that they actually had them on; and what was most horrible, this fright raised at the same time a convulsive desire to laugh, which could hardly be suppressed. So that when one was in Bellini's society, his presence inspired a certain anxiety, which by a horrible charm was at once repellant and attractive. Often his involuntary calembours were merely amusing, and in their droll insipidity reminded one of the castle of his fellow-countryman, the Prince of Pallagonia, which Goethe in his Italian Journey has described as a museum of uncouth distortions and absurd deformities. As Bellini on such occasions always imagined he had said something quite harmless and earnest, his face and his words formed the maddest contrast. That which displeased me in his face came at such moments specially prominent. What I disliked could not be exactly described as something lacking, and may not have been displeasing to women at all. Bellini's face, like his whole appearance, had that physical freshness, that bloom of flesh, that rosiness which makes a disagreeable impression on me—on me, because I like much more what is death-like and marble. Later on, when I had known him a long time, I felt some liking for Bellini. This arose after I had observed that his character was thoroughly noble and good. His soul was certainly pure and unspotted by any hateful contagion. And he was not wanting in that good-natured, childlike quality which we never miss in men of genius, even if they do not wear it as an outward show.
"Yes, I remember," Maximilian pursued, sinking down on the chair, on the back of which he had been hitherto leaning—"I remember one moment when Bellini appeared in so amiable a light, that I gazed on him with pleasure, and resolved to become more intimately acquainted with him. But, unhappily, it was the last time I should see him in this life. It was one evening after we had been dining together at the house of a great lady who had the smallest foot in Paris. We were very merry, and the sweetest melodies rang out from the piano. I see him still, the good-natured Bellini, as, at last, exhausted with the mad Bellinism that he chattered, he sank into a seat.... It was a very low one, so that Bellini found himself sitting at the foot, as it were, of a beautiful lady, stretched on a sofa opposite, who gazed down on him with a sweet, malicious delight, as he worked off some French expressions to entertain her, and was compelled, as usual, to communicate what he had said in his Sicilian jargon to show that it was no sottise, but, on the contrary, the most delicate flattery. I think the fair lady paid little attention to Bellini's conversation. She had taken from his hand the little Spanish cane with which he often used to assist his weak rhetoric, and was making use of it for a calm destruction of the elegant curl-edifice on the young Maestro's brows. But this wanton occupation was well repaid by the smile which gave her face an expression which I have seen on no other living human countenance. That face will never leave my memory! It was one of those faces which belong more to the kingdom of poetry than to the crude reality of life, contours which remind one of Da Vinci—that noble oval, with the naïve cheek-dimples and the sentimental pointed chin of the Lombard school. The colouring was more soft and Roman, with the dull gleam of pearls, a distinguished pallor, morbidezza. In short, it was one of those faces which can only be found in early Italian portraits, which, perhaps, represent those great ladies with whom the Italian artists of the sixteenth century were in love when they created their masterpieces, of whom the poets of those days thought when they sang themselves immortal, and which kindled German and French heroes with desire when they girded on their swords and started across the Alps in search of great deeds. Yes, it was such a face, and on it played a smile of sweetest, malicious delight and most delicate wantonness, as she, the fair lady, with the point of the little Spanish cane destroyed the blonde curls on the good-natured Bellini's brows. At that moment Bellini seemed to me as if touched by an enchanted wand, as if transformed, and he was at once akin to my heart. His face shone with the reflection of that smile; it was, perhaps, the most joyful moment of his life. I shall never forget it. Fourteen days afterwards I read in the papers that Italy had lost one of her most famous sons!
"Strange! At the same time Paganini's death was announced. About his death I had no doubt, for the old, ash-coloured Paganini always looked like a dying man; but the death of the young, rosy Bellini seemed to me incredible. And yet the news of the death of the first was only a newspaper error; Paganini is safe and sound at Genoa, and Bellini lies in his grave at Paris!"
"Do you like Paganini?" asked Maria. "He is the ornament of his country," answered Maximilian, "and deserves the most distinguished mention in speaking of the musical notabilities of Italy."
"I have never seen him," Maria remarked, "but according to report his outward appearance does not altogether satisfy the sense of beauty. I have seen portraits of him."
"Which are all different," broke in Maximilian; "they either make him uglier or handsomer than he is; they do not give his actual appearance. I believe that only one man has succeeded in putting Paganini's true physiognomy on to paper—a deaf painter, Lyser by name, who, in a frenzy full of genius, has, with a few strokes of chalk, so well hit Paganini's head that one is at the same time amused and terrified at the truth of the drawing. 'The devil guided my hand,' the deaf painter said to me, chuckling mysteriously, and nodding his head with good-natured irony in the way he generally accompanied his genial witticisms. This painter was, however, a wonderful old fellow; in spite of his deafness he was enthusiastically fond of music, and he knew how, when near enough to the orchestra, to read the music on the musicians' faces, and to judge the more or less skilful execution by the movements of their fingers; indeed, he wrote critiques on the opera for an excellent journal at Hamburg. And is that peculiarly wonderful? In the visible symbols of the performance the deaf painter could see the sounds. There are men to whom the sounds themselves are invisible symbols in which they hear colours and forms."
"You are one of those men!" exclaimed Maria.
"I am sorry that I no longer possess Lyser's little drawing; it would perhaps have given you an idea of Paganini's outward appearance. Only with black and glaring strokes could those mysterious features be seized, features, which seemed to belong more to the sulphurous kingdom of shades than to the sunny world of life. 'Indeed, the devil guided my hand,' the deaf painter assured me, as we stood before the Alster pavilion at Hamburg on the day when Paganini gave his first concert there. 'Yes, my friend,' he pursued, 'it is true, as everyone believes, that he has sold himself to the devil, body and soul, in order to become the best violinist, to fiddle millions of money, and principally to escape the damnable galley where he had already languished many years. For, you see, my friend, when he was chapel-master at Lucca he fell in love with a princess of the theatre, was jealous of some little abbate, was perhaps deceived by the faithless Amata, stabbed her in approved Italian fashion, came in the galley to Genoa, and, as I said, sold himself to the devil to escape from it, become the best violin-player, and impose upon us this evening a contribution of two thalers each. But, you see, all good spirits praise God; there in the avenue he comes himself, with his suspicious Famulus!'
"It was indeed Paganini himself, whom I then saw for the first time. He wore a dark grey overcoat, which reached to his feet, and made his figure seem very tall. His long black hair fell in neglected curls on his shoulders, and formed a dark frame round the pale, cadaverous face, on which sorrow, genius, and hell had engraved their indestructible lines. Near him danced along a little pleasing figure, elegantly prosaic—with rosy, wrinkled face, bright grey little coat with steel buttons, distributing greetings on all sides in an insupportably friendly way, leering up, nevertheless, with apprehensive air at the gloomy figure who walked earnest and thoughtful at his side. It reminded one of Retzsch's representation of Faust and Wagner walking before the gates of Leipsic. The deaf painter made comments to me in his mad way, and bade me observe especially the broad, measured walk of Paganini. 'Does it not seem,' said he, 'as if he had the iron cross-pole still between his legs? He has accustomed himself to that walk for ever. See, too, in what a contemptuous, ironical way he sometimes looks at his guide when the latter wearies him with his prosaic questions. But he cannot separate himself from him; a bloody contract binds him to that companion, who is no other than Satan. The ignorant multitude, indeed, believe that this guide is the writer of comedies and anecdotes, Harris from Hanover, whom Paganini has taken with him to manage the financial business of his concerts. But they do not know that the devil has only borrowed Herr George Harris's form, and that meanwhile the poor soul of this poor man is shut up with other rubbish in a trunk at Hanover, until the devil returns its flesh-envelope, while he perhaps will guide his master through the world in a worthier form—namely, as a black poodle.'
"But if Paganini seemed mysterious and strange enough when I saw him walking in bright mid-day under the green trees of the Hamburg Jungfernstieg, how his awful bizarre appearance startled me at the concert in the evening! The Hamburg Opera House was the scene of this concert, and the art-loving public had flocked thither so early, and in such numbers, that I only just succeeded in obtaining a little place in the orchestra. Although it was post-day, I saw in the first row of boxes the whole educated commercial world, a whole Olympus of bankers and other millionaires, the gods of coffee and sugar by the side of their fat goddesses, Junos of Wandrahm and Aphrodites of Dreckwall. A religious silence reigned through the assembly. Every eye was directed towards the stage. Every ear was making ready to listen. My neighbour, an old furrier, took the dirty cotton out of his ears in order to drink in better the costly sounds for which he had paid two thalers. At last a dark figure, which seemed to have arisen from the under-world, appeared upon the stage. It was Paganini in his black costume—the black dress-coat and the black waistcoat of a horrible cut, such as is perhaps prescribed by infernal etiquette at the court of Proserpina; the black trousers anxiously hanging around the thin legs. The long arms appeared to grow still longer, as, holding the violin in one hand and the bow in the other, he almost touched the ground with them while displaying to the public his unprecedented obeisances. In the angular curves of his body there was a horrible woodenness, and also something absurdly animal-like, that during these bows one could not help feeling a strange desire to laugh; but his face, that appeared still more cadaverously pale in the glare of the orchestra lights, had about it something so imploring, so simply humble, that a sorrowful compassion repressed one's desire to laugh. Had he learnt these complimentary bows from an automaton or a dog? Is that the entreating gaze of one sick unto death, or is there lurking behind it the mockery of a crafty miser? Is that a man brought into the arena at the moment of death, like a dying gladiator, to delight the public with his convulsions? Or is it one risen from the dead, a vampire with a violin, who, if not the blood out of our hearts, at any rate sucks the gold out of our pockets?