Nita bends her head forward--listens--listens. Young Lensky has brought her the vinaigrette which Sophie had asked for. She turns it absent-mindedly in her hands. Her eyes become gloomier.
Why had she come here, why?--to oblige Sophie? No: because, again and again, the whole night long, she had ever heard these silvery violin tones, in a thousand caressing shadings, oppressive, sad, alluring. She had promised herself the highest musical enjoyment which can be offered to one, and feels a fearful disappointment.
Already after the first bars Lensky begins to hurry. He is vexed at the cold playing of the Parisian 'cellist, at a gnat which has flown against his face, at God knows what.
From that moment his playing differs from other violin virtuosos only through a raging acceleration of tempo, an astonishing lack of purity, and a luxuriant fulness of sound, an inimitable softness and satiety of tone which none of the other violinists have ever attained. His playing is of an arbitrariness which completely confuses the 'cellist, ignorant of his peculiarities. At many parts the three instruments are not together.
It is pitiable music. The veins in Lensky's forehead swell with rage. Ever more fiercely he draws the bow across his violin; it is now for him merely an instrument on which he can vent his bad moods.
A critic who is present describes his playing as a musical crime, the performance of the trio as a sin against Schumann's creation. Still, at the close of the number, abundant applause falls to the share of the artists. It is the fashion to rave over the "devil's violinist." What in any case seems strange in the performance to the Parisians, they describe as "Slavonic," and with this short word lull all such thoughts.
"It is one of his bad days," sighs Sophie, "or it is no longer the same man."
For the first time Nita's eyes rest on the virtuoso, who now, recalled by the audience with loud cries of applause, again steps on the stage between the two other performers.
He stoops, his lower lip is flabby, deep furrows are in his cheeks, there are heavy shadows under his eyes, the chin has no longer the firm, marked outline of formerly, and still-- "He is quite the same," says Nita, shortly, and turns away her head.
Naturally he is the same, only the dross in his nature comes to light more hatefully and intrusively than formerly, when the whole charm of fiery manhood glorified his faults. These faults become a young man, but an old man they do not.