"Really impossible?" repeats Mascha, depressed. "Well, then, good-by. It still was lovely to see you again. If only those horrid people had not been there! That bold girl who threw you the flower--how could she dare to presume so with you!" And Mascha's eyes sparkled with anger.
"She is charming, your daughter; I am quite in love with her," says the kind D'Olbreuse; "but now come, my dear child."
"One more kiss," murmurs Lensky, and takes the sweet, pale little face of his daughter between his great, warm hands. It is as if he could not look long enough on this sad, tender loveliness. "Oh, you angel, you! I will visit you to-morrow in the morning; but do not come here any more, I beg you. So--one kiss, and one more on your dear eyes--goodnight!"
V.
Now he sits alone in the desolate hotel parlor. He who usually flees solitude, who keeps his guests always until his eyes close, has to-day given them to understand before ten o'clock that they bore him. But now he would fain call them back, however indifferent all, however unsympathetic most of them are to him. At least they could dissipate the troop of recollections which pass through his mind in a confused throng. Involuntarily he compares his heart to a caravansary through which thousands of men have gone in and out, without a single one settling there, or leaving a trace.
He did not believe in friendship; he remained faithful to his old acquaintances even if they became burdensome to him, from a characteristic or from obstinacy; but he felt drawn to no one. His passions were of such a fleeting nature, left his heart so completely untouched, that the impression of women to whom he had stood in near relations was quite summarily a mixture of scorn, compassion, and disgust.
He had forgotten the names of the most. The pressure of every restraint, every discipline, every check, had been unbearable to him; he had given rein to all his instincts, had been moderate in nothing, had submitted to nothing, had always preached that one must forget one's self, and yet could never quite forget himself. No; during this mad bacchanal, in which the last fifteen years of his existence had been spent, something which he could not satisfy had remained within him.
He denied every religion, even that of duty. He only lived for enjoyment; but enjoyment died when he touched it, pleasure was in his arms a cold, stiff corpse.
The only thing which could still rouse him was his art; and he was about to lose his power in this. His compositions--that of his art which really was dear to his heart--had more and more become a group of contrasts seeking after effect. The inner voice which had formerly sung him such sweet songs was--not strong enough to be heard in the noisy confusion of his life--wearily silent. His creative power was paralyzed, and his playing--the Parisians might clap as loud as they wished; he knew best of all that it went downward.
For more than forty years he had given concerts, and for twenty years he had played over the same répertoire--an immense one, but, with a few little exceptions, still the same. It bored him. He no longer listened to himself when he played, only sometimes, half unconsciously, all that wounded head and heart slipped into his fingers, and then he sobbed himself out in tones; and what so powerfully moved his listeners was not what they suspected--it was compassion for a great man who despairingly tries to find in art what he has wasted in life.