"M."
It was in Vienna that Lensky received his daughter's letter, at breakfast in a hotel, the day after a concert when he had at length received an ovation. He felt electrified, newly animated, ten years younger.
He read the letter twice; but if the first reading had truly pleased him, the second attentive perusal only moderately satisfied him.
"H-m! h-m!" he murmured to himself. "Yes, it is quite good, it is better than I dared expect. Poor woman! He loves her from convenience; she rules him since she no longer deludes herself about him. But still it is fearful for her to be bound for her whole life to this shallow man. She has a fine character, she will do her duty, will fight out her life-conflict honorably from pride, so as not to be reproached by her children, and not to give the malicious world the pleasure of slandering her. She will be a splendid mother. How maternity sanctifies a woman! And Nita--poor Colia!" Suddenly he felt strangely; remembrance had allured him to a dark spot of which he felt a horror. How would the meeting with Colia be? For years he had longed to be reconciled with his son, and still he could not overcome a certain anxiety in this case.
He tried to think of something else. What city should he appoint as the place of the family meeting? He did not wish to cause Mascha any great expense. Venice would have been the most convenient, but the old Bärenburgs vexed him. Well, it would occur to him. Meanwhile he picked up the newspaper. A correspondence from Rome was among the contents. The name Perfection immediately met his eye, the name of the young pianist who had formerly accompanied him on his concert tours. He had never had any special personal liking for Perfection, but yet he looked upon him as his musical apprentice and was interested in his progress.
He looked over the article more closely. The blood rushed to his head. What was it he read there? His name--yes--near Perfection's.
"Two greater contrasts would be hard to name in the musical world than Albert Perfection and Boris Lensky. This is the more striking as they, travelling together for years, formed a musical whole. But while the art of the pianist developed more splendidly with each year, the virtuosity of the violinist crumbled away bit by bit. The public did not suspect at Lensky's last concert tour what is now apparent to the most short-sighted; namely, that the applause which was accorded to Lensky was really only for Perfection's accompanying. Since then Perfection has emancipated himself from the despotism of his musical tyrant--for whom he has, nevertheless, preserved the most touching affection--and now stands alone in his artistic greatness, one of the noblest phenomenal artists of all times. Especially striking is the circumstance that he has been quite uninfluenced by Lensky in his artistic development.
"It is not uninteresting to bring more plainly to view the particulars of the glaring contrast between these two musical individualities. The principal difference is that Albert Perfection is a civilized genius, while Lensky, even at the height of his achievements, was nothing but a genial barbarian.
"Perfection is just as free as Lensky of old-fashioned virtuoso-pedantry, but he is also free of that distorted Tartar romanticism of which Lensky never knew how to make an end. Without, in so far as his thankless instrument permits, standing behind, in warmth and tenderness, the violinist's performances, his playing is still distinguished by a quite architectural perfection of style which no other virtuoso has attained. He never sins against good taste, against what we might call the higher moral principles of art. A Roman lady remarked recently that Perfection was for her a too well-bred pianist. He lacks the bewitching sinfulness, the demoniac fire which distinguished Lensky in his good days. That may be, but how sadly these bewitching peculiarities of youth degenerate in an old artist we have already unfortunately had occasion to observe in Lensky's last concert tour. And how greatly the symptoms of decay have increased in him since then, every musical report which comes to us from Germany proves. The bewitching sinfulness has become a caricature, and of the demoniac fire nothing more seems to be left than a Berserker rage expressed with the bow over the unvanquishable coldness of the public.
"One remembers in Rome no such success of a virtuoso as that which Albert Perfection attained last month in the Palazzo Caffarelli. He is the lion of the day. When he drives through the streets, the students nudge each other and say: 'Ah, è Perfezione!' and hats are removed as before a crowned head."