His money was gone, his illusion had changed to disgust. He had withdrawn in melancholy from the world, seeking to hide himself and his disappointment. He wished nothing but to forget and be forgotten:--that is in the present; from the future, a far-off, misty future, he still hoped something--for his romance. Meanwhile he supported existence by copying notes,--like Rousseau. Two, three years passed by, Gesa became as handsome as a youth in a picture. At Delileo's side he could not fail to gain cultivation of mind and heart, but associated with the eccentric St. Simonian he remained a stranger to all discipline of character. More and more there was revealed a want of concentration, and a vague dreaminess in his nature which to a practiced observer, would have boded no good for his future. He could never maintain a medium between relaxed indolence and exhausting ardor: in tough, persistent capacity for work he failed altogether, and whatever did not come to him by inspiration, he acquired with greater difficulty than did the most commonplace pupil of the conservatory.
Upon all this, however, his violin-professor made no reflections. Gesa not only played his instrument with a skill unheard of for his years, but he also improvised with wonderful originality, at least, so said the professor--who marked nothing but the gigantic strides of the boy's progress, was proud of his pupil and presented him to one amateur after another.
The phlegmatic Brusselers were enchanted by his musical extravagances, because he was named Gesa, had a handsome brunette face, and was said to have sprung from Hungarian origin. Their enthusiasm at his performance always culminated in the same words--"how gipsy-like! Comme c'est tsigane!"
At last came a day when Gesa was to play for the first time at a public concert. With the colossal conceit of youth, he rejoiced at the thought of his debut The apprehensive Gaston Delileo on the contrary, lost appetite and sleep.
Anxiously anticipating a disappointment for the boy, he spent most of his time in exhorting Gesa not to care much for a fiasco; an exhortation which the young musician took very impatiently, and ran away from it. With his hat dragged down self-assertingly over his ears, he stamped fuming up and down the Rue Ravestein, while the sad elder crept back and forth in his chamber above, and foreboded.
On the concert evening, Delileo could not be moved to enter the music hall. Breathless and panting, he stood before the performer's entrance, and held his fingers in his ears. Suddenly, in spite of his efforts to exclude every sound, he heard a strange tumult. He let his hands fall. Was it a fire alarm? No, it was clapping from hundreds of hands and shouting from hundreds of throats. The next moment he had burst sobbing into the green-room, and held his nurseling in his arms.
All the other performers pressed the young fellow's hands, praised him, and promised him a brilliant future. With that naïve arrogance which one so easily pardons in young gods, even while it provokes a pitying smile, he received all these compliments as if they were his proper tribute; but even his unabashed self-possession gave way when the door opened and an elegant young man entered holding out both hands--Alphonse de Sterny.
"My dear young friend," he cried, "I could not let the evening pass without knowing you--without congratulating you." Then the young violinist's head sank, he trembled from head to foot, and his hands grew ice cold in those of the great virtuoso.
VI
Alphonse de Sterny! The name in those days exercised an enchantment that was mingled with awe upon the ears of every one, be he artist or amateur, who cared for music. In our coldly critical times we can form no idea of the insane idolatry that was addressed, during the decade of the fifties to one or two piano virtuosos. De Sterny was among the most famous of these. The Sterny craze appeared like an epidemic in every town where he gave his concerts. At the same time the riddle of his power was hard to solve. His envious contemporaries asserted bluntly that he owed his triumphs not so much to the artistic excellence of his playing as to his agreeable person and gracious manners. He was the perfection of a homme à succès. Gloved and cravated with just precision enough for elegance, sufficiently careless to appear distinguished, ready and malicious enough to pass for witty, dissipated and extravagant enough to be credited with genius, he was also very handsome, wore his hair parted low in the middle of his forehead, and always dressed with quiet correctness in the latest fashion but one, as became a person of the best gentility, avoiding all artist eccentricities. His conversation was amusing, his manners unimpeachable. He was the natural son of a French diplomat, called himself de Sterny after his birthplace, and had inherited an income of twenty-five thousand francs, as the world knew; from an Italian princess--as the world did not know. His piano playing was beautifully finished, a shower of pearls, a chain of flowers, with a masterly balanced technique, carried out in a dignified execution, never one false note, never any vulgar pounding.