"I dream often of that time—that time John, the poet of Patmos, foretold in his Revelations: The time when the Sixth Seal was opened. Alas! when the Son of Man cometh out of the clouds and round about the throne are the four-winged beasts, what will he see?
"Nothing—nothing, I tell you.
"Unbelief will have killed the very soul of creation itself. And where once burned the eye of the Cosmos will be naught but a hideous emptiness.
"Hélas! mes enfants, I could drink one more absinthe; my soul grieves for my lost faith, my lost music, my lost Frédéric, my lost life." ...
But they went away. It was past the hour of closing and the host was not in a humor for parleying.
"Ah! the old pig, the old blasphemer!" he said, shaking his head as he locked the doors.
They watched him until he turned the corner of the Rue Puteaux and was lost to them.
He moved slowly, painfully, one leg striking the pavement in syncopation, for it was sadly crippled by disease. He did not twist his thin head as he went along the Batignolles. Then the band passed once more up to the warmer lights of the Clichy Quarter and argued art far into the night.
They one and all hated Wagner, adoring Chopin's magic music.