The organist and his sister set out one day, hurrying their adieus as people who run away. When they were at the foot of the Alps in Italy, they stopped at a sunny little town, a day's journey from Milan, which we will call Arèse. Master Swibert was then forty-four.
How this man, who, till now, had lived more like a priest than a man of the world, could be led by his passions to marry an Italian and a singer, is difficult to explain. Besides, it is superfluous to look for a reason for any unreasonable act. Perhaps the good old sun was the cause, laughing behind the trees at the follies of which he makes us guilty.
But the girl was pretty, reputed good, and dedicated to her parents every moment her vanity did not require. So the organist married her.
V.
They say love lives by contrasts; the god of such a union should have been well fed. But his life was short, for, after a few months only, he died. Perhaps of a fit of indigestion.
The Italian did not like the retired and exclusive life demanded of her, and the German could not accept the free behavior of his wife. He could not believe in the purity of a soul that sought vulgar homage and common admiration.
He was wrong to judge her by the ideas of his own country. His name there had been so honorably borne that, if it was for the singer too heavy a burden, death only could release her. This death took place under peculiar circumstances.
Paganini was just then being heard at Milan, and exercising that singular fascination that made his artistic personality the most characteristic of our time.
This age, which believes in no thing, accords him a legend, and, in truth, his power with the instrument he used was surprising and unequalled.