A heavy, cold, beating rain began to fall. I entered the room which served me as living- and sleeping-room. From habit I ate and drank at the same restauration as that frequented by my confrères of the orchestra. I leaned my elbows upon the table, and listened drearily to the beat of the rain upon the pane. Scattered sheets of music containing, some great, others little thoughts, lay around me. Lately it seemed as if the flavor was gone from them. The other night Beethoven himself had failed to move me, and I accepted it as a sign that all was over with me. In an hour it would be time to go out and seek dinner, if I made up my mind to have any dinner. Then there would be the afternoon—the dreary, wet afternoon, the tramp through the soaking streets, with the lamp-light shining into the pools of water, to the theater; the lights, the people, the weary round of painted ballet-girls, and accustomed voices and faces of audience and performers. The same number of bars to play, the same to leave unplayed; the whole dreary story, gone through so often before, to be gone through so often again.
The restauration did not see me that day; I remained in the house. There was to be a great concert in the course of a week or two; the “Tower of Babel” was to be given at it. I had the music. I practiced my part, and I remember being a little touched with the exquisite loveliness of one of the choruses, that sung by the “Children of Japhet” as they wander sadly away with their punishment upon them into the Waldeinsamkeit (that lovely and untranslatable word) one of the purest and most pathetic melodies ever composed.
It was dark that afternoon. I had not stirred from my hole since coming in from the probe—had neither eaten nor drunk, and was in full possession of the uninterrupted solitude coveted by busy men. Once I thought that it would have been pleasant if some one had known and cared for me well enough to run up the stairs, put his head into the room, and talk to me about his affairs.
To the sound of gustily blowing wind and rain beating on the pane, the afternoon hours dragged slowly by, and the world went on outside and around me until about five o’clock. Then there came a knock at my door, an occurrence so unprecedented that I sat and stared at the said door instead of speaking, as if Edgar Poe’s raven had put in a sudden appearance and begun to croak its “never-more” at me.
The door was opened. A dreadful, dirty-looking young woman, a servant of the house, stood in the door-way.
“What do you want?” I inquired.
A gentleman wished to speak to me.
“Bring him in then,” said I, somewhat testily.
She turned and requested some one to come forward. There entered a tall and stately man, with one of those rare faces, beautiful in feature, bright in expression, which one meets sometimes, and, having once seen, never forgets. He carried what I took at first for a bundle done up in a dark-green plaid, but as I stood up and looked at him I perceived that the plaid was wrapped round a child. Lost in astonishment, I gazed at him in silence.