Nigel stared.
"But the only cosmic genius is Offenbach."
"You mean the 'Orphée'?"
"Yes—and 'Hoffmann.' Life isn't a triumphal march, for all Beethoven would make it—it's comic opera, with just a pinch of the bizarre and a spice of the macabre. That's Offenbach."
Furlonger was still marching with the stricken army.
"When a man suffers," continued the student, "the gods laugh, the world laughs, and last of all—if he's a sport—the man laughs too."
"Sorrow is a triumph," said Nigel, dreamily.
"Not at all, old man—sorrow is a commonplace. The question is, what are we to make of the commonplace—a pageant or a joke? I'm not sure that Offenbach hasn't given a better answer than Beethoven."
III
In a small room in Gower Street a man lay on his bed, his face crammed into the pillow, his shoulders high against his ears, his legs twisted in a rigid lock of endurance. Now and then a shudder went through him, but it was the shudder of something taut and stiff, over which the merest surface tremble can pass.