To this letter he received no answer. He removed to Delileo's and occupied Annette's chamber.
One day, as he sat at the poor girl's little desk, and searched a drawer for an envelope, he found wedged in a crack the half of a torn note. He knew the writing. "... wild with bliss. At one o'clock in the Rue de la Montague
Thy S."
The violinist read this note twice, then he looked around with a dull, stupefied gaze, stretched his arms on high as those do who are shot through the heart, and sank senseless to the floor.
* * * * *
A lingering nervous fever broke his constitution, and destroyed the little energy he had still possessed. When he began to creep about his chamber, a weary convalescent, with thinned hair, he sought at once for pen and ink. Every day he wrote a letter to de Sterny, and tore it in pieces. When Delileo, who had nursed him through the sickness like a mother, begged him not to excite himself, he only answered, "I must have it off my heart!" and wrote a fresh letter,--but never sent any.
One day he said to himself that it did not become him to write, that he must demand satisfaction from de Sterny face to face. But before that could happen he must recover his health. From that time he wrote no more. He lived his brooding life, idle, and melancholy. His grief was mingled with a burning shame. He constantly feared that he should meet some one who would ask him about his bride, or his friend. At the thought the blood rushed into his cheek, and even when he was quite alone he turned his face to the wall. He trembled in every limb, a wild rage possessed him when he thought of the betrayer. Then--then he remembered the thousand kindnesses to which the virtuoso had accustomed him, his amiability, the cordial tone of his voice. He pressed his hands to his temples and groaned.
He could not understand.
And the days went by, and he did not seek de Sterny. A wild fear of men mastered him. By day he almost never left Delileo's dwelling, but, as his health improved, he gradually accustomed himself to go out at night. He was still young. He felt a vehement desire to deaden the power of feeling. In the midst of the wildest orgies, he sat pale and dumb, with fixed expressionless face. This joyless dissipation he soon gave up, but his wound still craved relief--and slowly, gradually, he gave himself to drink. Music he neglected altogether. Every note awoke a memory. If he had been obliged to earn his bread by his profession, he would probably not have gone so utterly to ruin, but the money which he had brought back from America permitted him to live.
When old Delileo, whom it cut to the heart to see his dear one's hopeless suffering, and his splendid talents so sadly wasted, asked him questions in regard to the future, Gesa answered, "I will work again, but leave me alone now for a while--it is too hard yet." And his fear of mankind more and more sought concealment in Rue Ravestein. In all large cities there are alleys like the Rue Ravestein. Paris has many of them. A man flies thither when he has suffered a fiasco, or a great sorrow, hides himself there from the derision of enemies and the pity of friends ... pity which at the best seems to him but a sentimental form of contempt! He has no intention of passing his whole life in that unwholesome obscurity, he will only give his wounds time to heal. Meanwhile he forges many plans in this voluntary exile; and dreams how he will go back to the world sometime and retrieve all by a grand success. The dreams never see fulfilment. For such streets are graves, and whoever after long years seeks to flee from that solitude, wanders among men like a risen corpse. Superannuated ideas surround and cling to him like the mouldy air of the sepulchre. He speaks a dead language.