* * * * * *
His colleagues in St. Petersburg asked each other what kept him so long in Rome. He wrote one of them that he was working, and indeed he did work. Through his soul vibrated melodies full of bewitching sad loveliness, full of the rejoicing and complaint of a longing which could not yet attain the longed-for happiness.
And there in Rome, in those mild fragrant spring nights, he wrote a cyclus of songs which might rank at the side of the most beautiful musical lyrics ever written.
In spite of their full richness of melody, his earlier compositions had something too glaring, overladen, and trivially pleasing; they were too much influenced by his virtuosity to please for themselves. In his Roman cyclus of songs he showed himself for the first time a great musician. And as until then he had distrusted his talent as composer, he was pleasantly astonished over his own achievement.
He always worked at night. His writing-table stood in front of the window of his room which looked out on the Piazza di Spagna. Very often his glance wandered there. A dark-blue heaven lighted by thousands of stars arched above the broad, irregular place, over the antique columns, from whose height a modern art nonentity looks down on Rome.
All was silent, only the water, the resonant soul of Rome, tittered and sobbed in the basins and fountains, and spouted up jubilantly in damp silver streams, greeting from afar the unattainable heavens, and all the tittering, sobbing, and rejoicing united in a long vibrating broken chord.
Still vibrating in every fibre at the recollection of Natalie's farewell smile, he sat at his shaky table and wrote. The mild night wind, fragrant with the kisses which it had stolen from the magnolia and orange blossoms, crept in to him and caressed his hot cheeks. He inhaled it eagerly. He had often been warned of the Roman night air, but he did not think of the warning, and if he had--? He was in that happy mood in which man no longer believes in sickness and death.
The hateful melancholy which as he said often pressed him down to the ground, and tormented him with predictions of his final annihilation, was gone. He no longer saw, as formerly, an open grave at his feet. Heaven had opened to him. An indescribable, light, elevating feeling had overpowered him; he no longer felt the weight of his body. Had his wings, then, grown in Rome?
* * * * * *
He did not think what would come of all this. He did not wish to think of it; did not wish to see clearly. With closed eyes he walked through life--the angels led him.