When grandfather played he turned every one out of his room. He played for himself alone, and in general the same airs, for I often listened at the door; and in after years I used to recognise passages that he played from the Freischütz and Euryanthe, the Magic Flute and the Marriage of Figaro. Mozart’s pure rhythms were to me like that joy in breathing that one takes in childhood without noticing it, as limpid water takes on the contours of a vase; but Weber gave me a vague desire for things which I could not describe. I seemed to be in the heart of a forest, with paths stretching away interminably into the lost distances.
The pieces that he played were not all of equal merit, though I could not know that. Everything is good to a child in the springtime of sentiment. To this day I can not hear the overture to Poet and Peasant without emotion. One evening at Lucerne, by the lake side, the most ordinary of orchestras in the most ordinary of hotels began that overture. Around me men in dinner jackets and ladies in evening gowns went on chatting and laughing as if they heard nothing, as if they were deaf, yet I felt utterly alone, my heart melting and I thought I should weep. The orchestra was not playing for the public, it was playing for me alone, no longer the mediocre art of the Austrian composer, but the memory of my entrance as a child into the mysterious realm of sound and dreams, in the forest whose paths stretch away into the infinite.
At the same period the singing of one of my school comrades quite overcame me. It was at a first communion service. I had not yet been admitted to the Holy Table and was at leisure to listen. He sang that melody of Gounod, Heaven Has Visited the Earth, and quite truly heaven was visiting me, taking me by storm, carrying me away. My whole enraptured being made a part of that song. The voice rose high, higher, it seemed that it must break, that it was not strong enough to bear up those mighty notes that filled all the chapel. It seemed like those tall fountains, so slender that the wind carries them away, so that they never fall to earth. That voice was indeed broken as the boy became a youth; death carried away my comrade in his sixteenth year.
Then there was a music box that father had brought me from Milan whither he had been summoned for a consultation. When the screw was turned it gave forth soft, thin, somewhat quavering notes, and a little dancer would pirouette upon the cover. Gravely and in cadence with the music she would point her toes and take her position as if she were accomplishing a sacred rite, a sweet yet sad little spectacle. How many times have I been disenchanted in later years when I discovered that my partners in the ball were frivolous, when I had expected to find in them tender sweetness, that sacred sadness of the little dancer of my music box.
The sluggard kings in my history book were accompanied by mayors of the palace, who, at first mere officers charged with the interior government, became prime ministers and even masters of their masters. In school we heard eulogiums upon Pepin d’Heristal and Pepin the Short, who became the father of Charlemagne. Grandfather was not a very serious king and I quite expected father to take over the power. But why did he treat grandfather with so much respect, instead of dispossessing him? History had taught me to expect a different attitude. To the farmers, labourers and servant folk grandfather was just Monsieur, or Monsieur Rambert, and father was Monsieur Michel. It would never have entered any one’s head to call upon monsieur, to consult monsieur, to ask monsieur for an order. Monsieur would have been the first to protest. “What do you want of me? Leave me in peace. I have no time (I could never understand why he had no time). Go to Monsieur Michel.” Thus he himself set the example. I had concluded like every one else that he was good for nothing. Yet once in a while, no one knew why, he would protest against being left out in matters of the palace—I mean to say, of the house. But whenever a serious matter was in question, an important order to be given, one would hear on all sides the cry, “Where is Monsieur Michel? Call Monsieur Michel!”
I have spoken of my father’s step. There was also his voice, sonorous, thrilling, cheery. He never raised it, he knew that there was no need. It opened doors, penetrated to the most distant rooms, and at the same time poured into the heart new strength, like a good glass of red wine—as folk declare who understand such things. When he came late to dinner because of the crowd of patients who hung upon him, there was no need to ring the bell,—from his ante-room he would proclaim, as it were an edict, “Dinner!”
And the dispersed family would make haste to assemble.
“What a voice!” grandfather would protest, starting as if in amazement.
I can never read expressions like the following, which occur more or less in all manuals of history, save in those of the present day in which battles are juggled with as if they gained themselves—At the voice of their chief the soldiers rushed to the assault.—At the voice of their general the troops rallied—without hearing my father’s voice echoing through all the house. Tem Bossette, who was fearfully afraid of it, would hear it from the uttermost vines. The step announced a presence, but the voice gave orders. And yet the labourers were not under my father; all the same every one of them felt that he was the head. Everything about him conspired to give this impression; his height, his clear cut features, crossed by a short stiff moustache, his piercing eyes, the gaze of which one did not like to encounter. A sort of fascination emanated from his person. Aunt Deen, who shared the general sentiment, would say my nephew, as if bursting with pride. The grenadier in the drawing-room could not have pursed up his lips otherwise to speak of the Emperor. I had not escaped this fascination, and even in my days of revolt I never ceased to pay him secret worship. But the spirit of liberty impels us to act contrary to our surest instincts, under pretext of asserting our liberty.
Do not think he was severe with us. He became terrible only when we were taking the wrong direction. Only, I have never known in any one else such an aptitude for command. In spite of his absorbing profession he found time to look after our studies and plays, and even to add to both by the epic stories which with consummate art he used to tell us. My memory retains them to this day, and will retain them always. It was easy to see that he honoured the family portraits. He made the past of our ancestors live again for us, but I could never forget that they were bad paintings.