VII.
Failing with the old Arlecchino, the Prince determined to try his own influence with the girl; but he had no intention of acting in a blundering and inartistic manner. He was too good an artist not to prepare the way. Having failed with Carricchio, he resolved to try the Maestro once more.
He sent for the old man. "Maestro," he said, "I regret exceedingly what has happened. I do not wish to make a disturbance immediately after coming to Court after so long an absence. It would not be well. But we shall soon put things right. Meanwhile, if you like to travel for a few months you can do so. There is no necessity for it that I know of, but it will be an entertainment for you, and you will gather ideas for your music, and, no doubt, fame also. If the Signorina remains here, you shall have letters of credit on Paris or any other city. As you will not be dependent on your music, it probably will be a great success. As the Scripture says, 'To him that hath shall be given.' When you are tired of wandering you can return. But Tina remains here—you understand."
"I have already tried to persuade her, Highness," said the old man.
"Well, you must try again. You shall sup with her to-night, as you are neither of you wanted at the opera. I will order supper for you in la petite Salle beyond the salon. When I return at night I shall find everything arranged."
The Prince himself went to the opera. He did not care to be seen, as he was supposed to have received a slight, but he had nothing else to do, and was interested in the performance, which was a new opera by Metastasio. Indeed, he was restless, and wanted diversion of any kind.
He sat well back in his box, across the front of which the delicate lace curtains were partly drawn. Karl the Jager, and the valet who attended, had left the box and retired to their own gallery, where they criticised the play and the music with more interest than did their master. The Prince lay back in his chair, watching the piece listlessly through the gauzy screen, and listening half heedlessly to the music—the wonderful music of Pergolesi.
The fairy world of song and harmony, peopled by fantastic and impossible creatures who exist only for the sake of the melodies which give them birth, was not devoid of powerful and pathetic phases of passion and of character; but what made its lesson particularly adapted to the Prince's frame of mind, and gradually aroused his languid interest, was the subordination of passion and character to the nicest art. The deepest sorrow warbled to exquisite airs; passion, despairing and bewildered, flinging itself as an evil thing across the devious paths of Romance, yet never for a second forgetful of the nicest harmony or capable of a jarring note. This ideal musical world—bizarre and rococo as, in some respects, it was—seemed to the Prince in some sort an allegory, or even parody, on the art-life he had set himself to create or to perfect. He thought he saw that even its faults were instinct with, and revealed, the secret of which he was in search. Faultiness and feebleness, folly and littleness, seemed restrained, corrected, transformed, when presented in solemn, noble, and pure melodies. Everything in this parody of life was ruled by art just as, in the so-called reality, he had wished. The lesson was not altogether a noble one. Passion, ennobled by art, lost its fatal, repellent aspect, and became perfect as an artistic whole. Here the poison worked readily in the Prince's mind. To sacrifice the least portion of this art-life to any narrow illiterate scruples was to sin against its perfection, without which the whole structure were worthless. Better, far better, throw the entire scheme to the winds. Imperfect art is worse than none at all. He had already forgotten, if he had ever listened to it, Carricchio's warning against unreal and loveless art.
Moreover, as the play went on, and the fantastic adventures and fortunes of its strange actors gradually won the Prince's attention and attracted his interest, through the gauzy veil of the curtains and the haze of delicious melody, his desire was excited and he longed to play out his own part on a real stage, and with tangible, no longer ideal, delights and success. Why did he sit there gazing at a mere show of life, when life itself, in a form strangely attractive and prepared—life which he himself had in some sort formed and created—awaited him, with parts and scenes, ready for the playing, compared to which all the glamour of the piece before him was a mere dream-shade? Fortune had been kind to him; or rather, he thought, his patient loyalty to art had wrought the usual result. As he had followed his steadfast course, nature, chance, the confusions and spite of men, had all tended to co-operate with him, had each supplied a thread of gold to perfect his brilliant woof of coloured existence. The moment seemed at hand; let him no longer dally with shadows, but play his own part, compared with which the piece before him was poor and tame.