"Wonderful!" said the Minister himself. "It's perfectly wonderful! But I always say the musician is the international artist. Other artists--the poets for example--require their translators, but the musician needs no go-between. He uses the one universal language, and when he speaks the whole world may hear. What a gift! What a thing it must be to be among the great composers! Perhaps it has its penalties, though. What does the poet say? They learn in suffering what they teach in song. What a thought that is! I wonder if it's true? I wonder if every great song, every great symphony, every great opera is born of the suffering--the actual real life suffering, and perhaps in some cases the sin and sorrow--of the man who created it! What should you say, Mr. Christiansson?"
"God knows," said Christiansson, and after that there was silence for a moment.
"Poor Stephen!" said the Bishop suddenly, and then everybody raised his face from the table.
"I was thinking," said the Bishop, "that if sin and sorrow, added to the gift of genius, go to the making of great music, somebody was born in this very house who should have left immortal works behind him."
Christian Christiansson had looked up with the rest, and now the Minister leaned across to him and said in an undertone, "A sad story, sir--a son of my predecessor who made shipwreck of his life, poor fellow."
"You mean Oscar Stephenson?"
"Yes, indeed. But can it be possible that you knew him?"
"We talked of him on the steamer."
"Ah, of course, certainly! And then he was a kind of humble confrère of yours, and conducted at Covent Garden. What a tragedy! What a scandal! When the dreadful news came from Nice everybody here felt ashamed. Such a well-known Iceland name, and the son of a former Governor! It was almost as if Iceland had been dishonored in the eyes of the world, sir. So different, so entirely different, from the effects, the glorious effects of your own magnificent achievements."
Christian Christiansson was quivering from heart to eyelids, but the same mysterious impulse that compels the lamb to confront the dog forced him to go on.