But a far stronger point is the power of portraiture. Seraphael having been identified, people turned their attention to the other cipher. Disregarding the orchestral similitude of sound in his name, which, by the way, nobody pronounces as Aronach instructed, they chose to infer that Charles Auchester himself was the Herr Joachim, that Starwood Burney stood for Sterndale Bennett, that Diamid Albany meant Disraeli, that Zelter figured as Aronach, and that Jenny Lind, of whom Mendelssohn himself said there would not in a whole century be born another being so gifted, and whom the Italians, those lovers of fair pseudonymes, called "La Benedetta," is no other than Clara Benette. But these are trivial, compared with Rodomant and Porphyro. It was daring enough, when Beckendorf mimicked Prince Metternich; but to undertake and to contrast Louis Napoleon and Beethoven, without belittling either, pales every other performance. They tower before us grand and immutable as if cast in bronze, and so veritable that they throw shadows; the prison-gloom is sealed on Porphyro's face,—power and purpose indomitable; just as the "gruesome Emperor" is to-day, we find him in that book,—dark in the midst of his glory, as enduring as a Ninevite sculpture, strong and inscrutable as the Sphinx. But his heights topple over with this world's decline, while the other builds for the eternal aeons. Rodomant,—did one fail to find his identity, they would yet recognize him in those old prints, the listening head bent forwards, the features like discords melting info chords; it is hard to tell how such strength was given in such slight sentences,—but from the time when he contemptuously tossed out his tune-fooleries, through the hour when with moonlight fancies "a serene ecstatic serenade was rippling silently beneath his pen," to that when the organ burst upon his ear in thunders quenchless and everlasting as the sea's, he is still Beethoven, gigantic in pride, purity, and passion. "I dream now," said Rodomant; "like the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters, so stir my shadows, dim shapes of sound, across the chaos of my fathomless intention." This "Rumour" has never been reprinted in America; it will, then, be excusable to give here a scene which Is indeed its climax.
"A spiritual nature has for its highest and hardest temptation a disposition to outrage, precedent,—sometimes propriety. It is sure of itself—very likely—but it may endanger the machinery, moral or tangible, which it employs for agent. Again, who has not dreamed of a dream? who has not remembered dimly what yet experience contradicts? who does not confound fact and imagination, to the damage of his reputation for truth?
"Rodomant was in a lawless frame, a frame he had fixed on himself by his outrage on precedent; his subsequent excitement had enchanted him more wildly, and any number of imps and elves were ready to rush at his silent word from the caverns of his haunted brain. Again, he felt he must spend his energy, his long idleness reacted on a sudden in prodigious strength of intellect, it stirred like a giant refreshed. Long time ago he had dreamed—he had entirely forgotten it was a fact that he had been told—that, if the whole force of that organ were put out, the result would be tremendous. He had also dreamed—that is, been assured—that there was a law made to the purpose that the whole force of the organ was never to be employed. The law had never been broken, except once;—but there his memories waxed dim and indistinct; he was at the mercy of his own volition, which resolved on recalling nothing that could dissuade him from his rash and forbidden longing. Unknown to himself, perhaps the failure of his design to escape, of which the princess had assured him, drove him to the crisis of a more desperate endeavor. But, whether it was so or not, he was unconscious of it,—so far innocent. He sat down, believing himself alone…. 'Softly, softly,' mocked his whisper—to himself,—and he touched alone the whispering reeds, Adelaïda held her breath, and chid the beating of her heart, which seemed louder than the mellow pulse that throbbed in tune above. The symphony that followed fell like a mighty universal hush, through which the clarionet-stop chanted, unuttered but articulate,—'Give to us peace.' Then the hush dissolved into a sea of sighs: 'Peace, peace!' they yearned, and the mild deep diapason muttered, 'Peace.' She, the one listener, felt, as it were, her brain fill soft with tears, her eyes rained them, and her heart, whose pulses had dropped as calm as dew, echoed the peaceful longing of the whole heart of humanity. A longing as peaceful in its expression as the peace it longed for; the creation's travail seemed spent to the edge of joy.
"Suddenly, as light swept chaos, this peaceful fancy was disrupted,—her heart ravished from its rest, its calm torn from it. Down went the pedal which forced the whole first organ out at once, and as if shouted by hosts of men and by myriad angels echoed, pealed the great Hosanna. The mighty rapture of the princess won her instantly from regret; no peace could be so glorious as that praise; and vast as was the volume of sound, the hands that invoked it had it so completely under control—voluntary control as yet—that it did not swamp her sense; her spirit floated on the wide stream with harmonious waves towards the measureless immensity of music at its source. To reach that centre without a circle,—that perfection which imperfection shadows not,—that unborn, undying principle, which art tries humbly, falteringly, to illustrate,—was never given to man on earth; and tries he to attain it, some fate, of which the chained Prometheus is at once the symbol and the warning, fastens to his soul for life.
"The princess had bowed her head, and the soft and plenteous waters of her eyes had dried like dew under the midsummer sun; yet still she closed her eyes, for her brain felt fixed and alight with a nameless awe, such as passion lends presentiment.
"Suddenly, in the words of Albericus, there burst overhead a noise like the roaring of 'enormous artificial golden lions,'—that was the drum: less, in this instance, like smitten parchment than the crackling roll of clouds that embrace in thunder. The noise amazed himself,—yet Rodomant exulted in it, his audacity expanded with it, broke down the last barrier of reason. He added stop after stop,—at the last and sixtieth stop, he unfettered the whole volume of the wind. That instant was a blast, not to speak irreverently, which sounded like the crack of doom. To her standing stricken underneath, it seemed to explode somewhere in the roof with a shock beyond all artillery,—to tear up the ground under her feet, like the spasm of an earthquake,—to rend the walls, like lightning's electric finger; and to shriek in her ringing brain the advent of some implacable and dreadful judgment, but not the doom of all men,—only one, which doom, alas! she felt might be also hers in his.
"All men and women within a mile had heard the shock, or rather felt it, and interpreted it in various ways. Only the prince himself—who was standing on the terrace, and had distinctly perceived the rich vibration of the strong, but calm, Hosanna—interpreted it rightly and directly; more than that, his animal sagacity told him it was Rodomant, who, having amused himself, was now indulging the same individual….
"To Adelaïda there was something more terrible in the succeeding silence than in the shock of sound; it had ceased directly, died first into a discordant groan, which, rising to a scream, was still. She listened intensely: there was no fall of rattling fragments, the vibration had been insufficient, or not prolonged enough, to injure the window,—that had been her first, chief fear. This removed, however, she felt doubly, desperately anxious. Why did he not come down, or speak, or stir? The men employed to feed the monstrous machine with wind had all rushed away together by the back-ladder through which they entered: hence the cause of the shrieking groan and silence. He was there alone,—for he knew not that she was there. Oh that he would give some sign!
"In a few minutes a sign was given, but not from him. The princess heard the grinding of the immense door near the altar; it was opened; steps entered hurriedly. She heard, next instant, her father's voice,—impregnated with icy ire, low with smothered hatred, distinct with the only purpose he ever entertained,—punishment. She flew, with feet that gave no echo, up the stair on her side of the lobby. Rodomant was sitting dead-still, with his face in his hands; they looked rigid; the veins in his forehead, as it showed above his hands, were swollen and stood out, but colorless as the keys that stretched beneath. His calmness chilled her blood. She thought him dead, and all within her that lived seemed to pass out of her in the will, nay, the power also, to restore him. She grasped his arm. He was not dead, then, for he sighed,—an awful sigh; it shook him like a light reed in the tempest, he shuddered from head to foot; he leaned towards her, as if about to faint, but never removed his close-locked hands from his eyes…. She had only clasped his arm before; as hand met hand, or touch thrilled touch, he shivered, his grasping fingers relaxed in their hold on each other, but closed on hers…. She waited long,—she listened to his breathing, intermittent with tearless sobs. At last he gasped violently, a cold tear dropped on her hand, and he thrust it rudely from him.
"'God has taken my punishment into Hiss own hands: yet I defied not Him, only something made by man, and man himself.' He spoke loudly, yet in halting words, with gaps of silence between each phrase; then stared wildly round him, and clapped both his hands upon his ears,—withdrew them,—closed his ears with his fingers, then dropped his hands, and cast on her a glance that implored—that demanded—the whole pity of her heart. 'Have mercy!' were his words; 'I have lost my hearing, and it is forever!'"