And now the instrument sent forth tones, low, rhythmical, and sad, like the music of a “set of bells” under the dugà of a Russian tròika, receding along the dusty road in the dim vista of evening,—a sound low and monotonous, growing softer and softer, until the last notes are lost amid the silence of the quiet fields.
“Ah, now you have it! You have caught the idea,” said Maxim. “Our language possesses certain definitions applicable to our conceptions of sound and light, as well as of touch. Thus we use the word ‘brilliant’ in regard to tones, and also in regard to colors; and the word ‘soft’ belonging primarily to the sense of touch, may also be applied to colors. We even say a ‘warm’ color, a ‘cold’ color. Of course this is only by way of analogy, but they show some points of resemblance. Some time ago, while you were still a child, your mother tried to explain colors to you by means of sounds.”
“Yes, I remember. Why did you forbid us to continue? Perhaps I might have succeeded in understanding.”
“No,” replied Maxim, “that would have been impossible, and all your labor would have been in vain. You can study an object by itself, as far as its form and the space it occupies are concerned,—and you seem able, in some inscrutable way, to perceive vague differences in color; but in order to gain any distinct ideas of form, size, and color the sense of sight is absolutely indispensable. The sooner you give up your vain efforts the better it will be for you.”
Peter made no reply; but afterward he returned to those musical experiments that had been given up in days gone by. While he by the sense of touch would examine bits of bright-colored cloth, his mother—her nerves strained to their utmost tension, and trembling with agitation—would try to represent the color by a correspondence in sound.
Maxim no longer opposed these performances; he realized that his influence was of no avail against that inward impulse, and felt that it would be better to allow the blind man to pursue his own course, that in the end he might be convinced that all his efforts to combine these separate impressions were utterly in vain. And that this result might be the sooner attained, Maxim lent his own assistance to promote the blind man’s researches.
“Uncle Maxim,” said Peter to him one day, “you once described red to me by means of words so vividly, I wish you would tell me about the other colors that you see in Nature.”
Maxim paused to consider. “That is a very difficult matter; but I will try. I will begin by describing to you something with which you are perfectly familiar, and that is blood. Blood courses through the veins, but it cannot be seen. It circulates through the body, diffused by the heart, which is constantly throbbing, beating, and burning with sorrow or joy. When a sudden thought occurs to you, or when from dreams you awake trembling and weeping, it is because the heart has given a more rapid impulse to the blood, and sent it coursing in bright streams to the brain. Well, this blood is red.”
“Red, warm,” said the young man, thoughtfully.
Maxim paused: was it well for him to go on with these fruitless illustrations? But when he saw the eagerness with which the blind man was hanging on his words, he sighed, and made up his mind to continue.