"No," he said, "No. When you hear themes in your head, and rhythms throbbing in your pulses—is that a sign?"
"Behüte! We all have that. After an opera my head goes round like a buzz-saw, and the motives spring about inside like demons. If that is all, Velasco, you are not mad. Take a cigarette."
"Thank you, Ritter. Tell me—when you conduct, is it as if force and power were going from you, oozing away with the music; and you were in a trance and someone else were wielding the baton, interpreting, playing on the instruments, not yourself?"
The Kapellmeister shook his head grimly: "Sometimes, Velasco, but not often; we are not all like you. That is Genius speaking through you."
"Afterwards," continued the Violinist, "it is as if one had had an illness. To-night I am weary—Bózhe moi! My body is numb, I can scarcely lift my feet, or my hands; only my nerves are alive, and they are like electric wires scintillating, jumping. The liquid runs through my veins like fire! Is that a—?"
"Bewahre—bewahre! You throw yourself into your playing headlong, body and soul. It wrecks one mentally and physically to listen; how much more then to play! If you were like others, Velasco, you would drink yourself to drowsiness and drown those sensations; or else you would seek pleasure, distraction. When Genius has been with you, guiding your brain and your fingers, and you are left suddenly with an empty void, what else can you expect but reaction, nausea of life and of art? Bewahre, man! That is no madness! It is sanity—normal conditions returning. You are mad when the Genius is with you, you are mad when you play; but now—now you are sane; you are like other men, Velasco, and you don't recognize yourself!"
The Kapellmeister laughed, drawing whiffs from his cigar.
Velasco uncovered his eyes: "You don't understand," he said slowly: "I see things—I have illusions! It is something that comes and dances before me as I play, the same thing always. I saw it to-night."
"What sort of thing?"
Velasco stared suddenly at the opposite wall. "What is that painting there, Ritter?"