Part 4

Had a string of the violin really snapped? I do not know. I only observed the alternation in the sounds, and Paganini and his surroundings seemed to me again suddenly changed. I could scarcely recognize him in the monk's brown dress, which concealed rather than clothed him. With savage countenance half-hid by the cowl, waist girt with a cord, and bare feet, Paganini stood, a solitary defiant figure, on a rocky prominence by the sea, and played his violin. But the sea became red and redder, and the sky grew paler, till at last the surging water looked like bright, scarlet blood, and the sky above became of a ghastly corpse-like pallor, and the stars came out large and threatening; and those stars were black--black as glooming coal. But the tones of the violin grew ever more stormy and defiant, and the eyes of the terrible player sparkled with such a scornful lust of destruction, and his thin lips moved with such a horrible haste, that it seemed as if he murmured some old accursed charms to conjure the storm and loose the evil spirits that lie imprisoned in the abysses of the sea. Often, when he stretched his long, thin arm from the broad monk's sleeve, and swept the air with his bow, he seemed like some sorcerer who commands the elements with his magic wand; and then there was a wild wailing from the depth of the sea, and the horrible waves of blood sprang up so fiercely that they almost besprinkled the pale sky and the black stars with their red foam. There was a wailing and a shrieking and a crashing, as if the world was falling into fragments, and ever more stubbornly the monk played his violin. He seemed as if by the power of violent will he wished to break the seven seals wherewith Solomon sealed the iron vessels in which he had shut up the vanquished demons. The wise king sank those vessels in the sea and I seemed to hear the voices of the imprisoned spirits while Paganini's violin growled its most wrathful bass.

But at last I thought I heard the jubilee of deliverance, and out of the red billows of blood emerged the heads of the fettered demons: monsters of legendary horror, crocodiles with bats' wings, snakes with stags' horns, monkeys with shells on their heads, seals with long patriarchal beards, women's faces with one eye, green camels' heads, all staring with cold, crafty eyes, and long, fin-like claws grasping at the fiddling monk. From the latter, however, in the furious zeal of his conjuration, the cowl fell back and the curly hair, fluttering in the wind, fell round his head in ringlets, like black snakes.

So maddening was this vision that to keep my senses I closed my ears and shut my eyes. When I again looked up the specter had vanished, and I saw the poor Genoese in his ordinary form, making his ordinary bows, while the public applauded in the most rapturous manner.

"That is the famous performance upon G," remarked my neighbor. "I myself play the violin, and I know what it is to master the instrument." Fortunately, the pause was not considerable, or else the musical furrier would certainly have engaged me in a long conversation upon art. Paganini again quietly set his violin to his chin, and with the first stroke of his bow the wonderful transformation of melodies again began.

They no longer fashioned themselves so brightly and corporeally. The melody gently developed itself, majestically billowing and swelling like an organ chorale in a cathedral, and everything around, stretching larger and higher, had extended into a colossal space which, not the bodily eye, but only the eye of the spirit could seize. In the midst of this space hovered a shining sphere, upon which, gigantic and sublimely haughty, stood a man who played the violin. Was that sphere the sun? I do not know. But in the man's features I recognized Paganini, only ideally lovely, divinely glorious, with a reconciling smile. His body was in the bloom of powerful manhood, a bright blue garment enclosed his noble limbs, his shoulders were covered by gleaming locks of black hair; and as he stood there, sure and secure, a sublime divinity, and played the violin, it seemed as if the whole creation obeyed his melodies. He was the man-planet about which the universe moved with measured solemnity and ringing out beatific rhythms. Those great lights, which so quietly gleaming swept around, were they stars of heaven, and that melodious harmony which arose from their movements, was it the song of the spheres, of which poets and seers have reported so many ravishing things? At times, when I endeavored to gaze out into the misty distance, I thought I saw pure white garments floating ground, in which colossal pilgrims passed muffled along with white staves in their hands, and singular to relate, the golden knob of each staff was even one of those great lights which I had taken for stars. These pilgrims moved in a large orbit around the great performer, the golden knobs of their staves shone even brighter at the tones of the violin, and the chorale which resounded from their lips, and which I had taken for the song of the spheres, was only the dying echo of those violin tones. A holy, ineffable ardor dwelt in those sounds, which often trembled scarce audibly, in mysterious whisper on the water, then swelled out again with a shuddering sweetness, like a bugle's notes heard by moonlight, and then finally poured forth in unrestrained jubilee, as if a thousand bards had struck their harps and raised their voices in a song of victory.

* * * * *

In Seventeen Hundred Eighty-four, Niccolo Paganini was born at Genoa. His father was a street-porter who eked out the scanty exchequer by playing a violin at occasional dances or concerts. That his playing was indifferent is evident from the fact that he was very poor--his services were not in demand.

The poverty of the family and the failure of the father fired the ambition of the boy to do something worthy. When he was ten years old he could play as well as his father, and a year or so thereafter could play better. The lad was tall, slender, delicate and dreamy-eyed. But he had will plus, and his desire was to sound the possibilities of the violin. And this reminds me that Hugh Pentecost says there is no such thing as will--it is all desire: when we desire a thing strongly enough, we have the will to secure it--but no matter!

Young Niccolo Paganini practised on his father's violin for six hours a day; and now when the customers who used to hire his father to play came, they would say, "We just as lief have Niccolo."

Soon after this they said, "We prefer to have Niccolo." And a little later they said, "We must have Niccolo." Some one has written a book to show that playing second fiddle is just as worthy an office as playing first. This doubtless is true, but there are so many more men who can play second, that it behooves every player to relieve the stress by playing first if he can. Niccolo played first and then was called upon to play solos. He was making twice as much money as his father ever had, but the father took all the boy's earnings, as was his legal right. The father's pride in the success of the son, the young man always said, was because he was proving a good financial investment. It does not always pay to raise children--this time it did. It was finally decided to take the boy to the celebrated musician, Rolla, for advice as to what was best to do about his education. Rolla was sick abed at the time the boy called and could not see him; but while waiting in the entry the lad took up a violin and began to play. The invalid raised himself on one elbow and pantingly inquired who the great master was that had thus favored him with a visit.

"It's the lad who wants you to give him lessons," answered the attendant.

"Impossible! no lad could play like that--I can teach that player nothing!"

Next the musician Paer was visited, and he passed the boy along to Giretta, who gave him three lessons a week in harmony and counterpoint. The boy had abrupt mannerisms and tricks of his own in bringing out expressions, and these were such a puzzle to the teacher that he soon refused to go on.

Niccolo possessed a sort of haughty self-confidence that aggravated the master; he believed in himself and was fond of showing that he could play in a way no one else could. Adolescence had turned his desire to play into a fury of passion for his art: he practised on single passages for ten or twelve hours a day, and would often sink in a swoon from sheer exhaustion. This deep, torpor-like sleep saved him from complete collapse, just as it saved Mendelssohn, and he would arise to go on with his work.

Paganini's wisdom was shown at this early age in that he limited his work to a few compositions, and these he made the most of, just as they say Bossuet secured his reputation as the greatest preacher of his time by a single sermon that he had polished to the point of perfection.

When fifteen years old Paganini contrived to escape from his father and went to a musical festival at Lucca. He managed to get a hearing, was engaged at once as a soloist, and soon after gave a concert on his own account. In a month he had accumulated a thousand pounds in cash.

Very naturally, such a success turned the head of this lad who never before had had the handling of money. He began to gamble, and became the dupe of rogues--male and female--who plunged him into an abyss of wrong. He even gambled away the "Stradivarius" that had been presented to him, and when his money, watch and jewels were gone, his new-found friends of course decamped, and this gave the young man time to ponder on the vanities of life.

When he played again it was on a borrowed "Guarnerius," and after the rich owner, himself a violinist, had heard him play, he said, "No fingers but yours shall ever play that violin again!"

Paganini accepted the gift, and this was the violin he played for full forty years, and which, on his death, was willed to his native city of Genoa. There it can be seen in its sealed-up glass case.

Up to his thirtieth year Paganini continued his severe work of subduing the violin. By that time he had sounded its possibilities, and thereafter no one heard him play except in concert. It is told that one man, anxious to know the secrets of Paganini's power, followed him from city to city, watching him at his concerts, dogging him through the streets, spying upon him at hotels. At one inn this man of curiosity had the felicity to secure a room next to the one occupied by Paganini; and one morning as he watched through the keyhole, he was rewarded by seeing the master open the case where reposed the precious "Guarnerius." Paganini lifted the instrument, held it under his chin, took up the bow and made a few passes in the air--not a sound was heard. Then he kissed the back of the violin, muttered a prayer, and locked the instrument in its case.

At concert rehearsals he always played a mute instrument; and Harris, his manager, records that for the many years he was with Paganini he never heard him play a single note except before an audience.

I have a full-length daguerreotype of Paganini taken when he was forty years of age. No one ever asked this man, "Kind sir, are you anybody in

## particular?"

Paganini was tall and wofully slim. His hands and feet were large and bony, his arms long, his form bowed and lacking in all that we call symmetry. But the long face with its look of abject melancholy, the curved nose, the thin lips and the sharp, protruding chin, made a combination that Fate has never duplicated. You could easily believe that this man knew all the secrets of the Nether World, and had tasted the joys of Paradise as well. Women pitied and loved him, men feared him, and none understood him. He lived in the midst of throngs and multitudes--the loneliest man known in the history of art.

Paganini, when he had reached his height, played only his own music; he played divinely and incomprehensibly; next to his passion for music was his greed for gold. These three facts sum up all we really know about the master--the rest fades off into mist--mystery, fable and legend. We do know, however, that he composed several pieces of music so difficult that he could not play them himself, and of course no one else can. Imagination can always outrun performance. Paganini had no close friends; no confidants: he never mingled in society, and he never married.

At times he would disappear from the public gaze for several months, and not even his business associates knew where he was. On one such occasion a traveler discovered him in a monastic retreat in the Swiss Mountains, wearing a horsehair robe and a rope girdle; others saw him disguised as a mendicant; and still another tells of finding him working as a day-laborer with obscure and ignorant peasants. Then there are tales told of how he was taken captive by a titled lady of great wealth and beauty, who carried him away to her bower, where he eschewed the violin and tinkled only the guitar the livelong day.

Everywhere the report was current that Paganini had killed a man, and been sentenced to prison for life. The story ran that in prison he found an old violin, three strings of which were broken, and so he played on one string, producing such ravishing music that the keepers feared he was "possessed." They decided they must get rid of him, and so contrived to have him thrown overboard from a galley; but he swam ashore, and although he was everywhere known, no man dared place a hand on him.

A late writer in a London magazine, however, has given evidence of being a psychologist and man of sense; he says, and produces proof, that after the concert season was over Paganini withdrew to a monastery in the mountains of Switzerland, and there the monks who loved him well, guarded his retreat. There he found the rest for which his soul craved, and there he practised on his violin hour after hour, day after day. All this is better understood when we remember that after each retreat, Paganini appeared with brand-new effects which electrified his hearers--"effects taught him by the devil."

Constant appearing before vast multitudes and ceaseless travel create a depletion that demands rest. Paganini held the balance true by fleeing to the mountains; there he worked and prayed. That Paganini had a soft heart, in spite of the silent, cold and melancholy mood that usually possessed him, is shown in his treatment of his father and mother, who lived to know the greatness of their son. He wrote his mother kind and affectionate letters, some of which we have, and provided lavishly for every want of both his parents. At times he gave concerts for charity, and on these occasions vast sums were realized.

Paganini died in Eighteen Hundred Forty, aged fifty-six years. His will provided for legacies to various men and women who had befriended him, and he also gave to others with whom he had quarreled, thus proving he was not all clay.

The bulk of his fortune, equal to half a million dollars, was bequeathed to his son, Baron Achille Paganini. And as if mystery should still enshroud his memory and this, true to his nature, should be carried out in his last will, there are those who maintain that Achille Paganini was not his son at all--only a waif he had adopted. Yet Achille always stoutly maintained the distinction--but what boots it, since he could not play his father's violin?

Yet this we know--Paganini, the man of mystery and moods, once lived and produced music that, Orpheus-like, transfixed the world. We are better for his having been and this world is a nobler place in that he lived and played, for listen closely and you can hear, even now, the sweet, sad echoes of those vibrant strings, touched by the hand of him who loved them well.

And when we remember the prodigious amount of practise that Paganini schooled himself to in youth; and join this to the recently discovered record of his long monastic retreats, when for months he worked and played and prayed, we can guess the secret of his power. If you wish me to present you a recipe for doing a deathless performance, I would give you this: Work, travel, solitude, prayer, and yet again--work.

[Illustration: FREDERIC CHOPIN]

FREDERIC CHOPIN

Nature does not design like art, however realistic she may be. She has caprices, inconsequences, probably not real, but very mysterious. Art only rectifies these inconsequences, because it is too limited to reproduce them. Chopin was a resume of these inconsequences which God alone can allow Himself to create, and which have their particular logic. He was modest on principle, gentle by habit, but he was imperious by instinct and full of a legitimate pride which was unconscious of itself. Hence arose sufferings which he did not reason and which did not fix themselves on a determined object.

--_George Sand in "The Story of My Life"_

FREDERIC CHOPIN

Maybe I am all wrong about it, yet I can not help believing that the spirit of man will live again somewhere in a better world than ours. Fenelon says, "Justice demands another life in order to make good the inequalities of this." Astronomers prophesy the existence of stars long before they can see them. They know where they ought to be, and training their telescopes in that direction they wait, knowing they will find.

Materially, no one can imagine anything more beautiful than this earth, for the simple reason that we can not imagine anything we have not seen; we may make new combinations, but the whole is all made up of parts of things with which we are familiar. This great green earth out of which we have sprung, of which we are a part, that supports our bodies, and to which our bodies must return to repay the loan, is very, very beautiful.

But the spirit of man is not fully at home here; as we grow in soul and intellect, we hear, and hear again, a voice which says, "Arise and get thee hence, for this is not thy rest." And the greater and nobler and more sublime the spirit, the more constant the discontent. Discontent may come from various causes, so it will not do to assume that the discontented are always the pure in heart, but it is a fact that the wise and excellent have all known the meaning of world-weariness. The more you study and appreciate this life, the more sure you are that this is not all. You pillow your head upon Mother Earth, listen to her heart-throb, and even as your spirit is filled with the love of her, your gladness is half-pain and there comes to you a joy that hurts.

To look upon the most exalted forms of beauty, such as a sunset at sea, the coming of a storm on the prairie, the shadowy silence of the desert, or the sublime majesty of the mountains, begets a sense of sadness, an increasing loneliness.

It is not enough to say that man encroaches on man so that we are really deprived of our freedom, that civilization is caused by a bacillus, and that from a natural condition we have gotten into a hurly-burly where rivalry is rife--all this may be true, but beyond and outside of all this there is no physical environment in way of plenty which earth can supply, that will give the tired soul peace. They are the happiest who have the least; and the fable of the stricken king and the shirtless beggar contains the germ of truth. The wise hold all earthly ties very lightly--they are stripping for eternity.

World-weariness is only a desire for a better spiritual condition. There is more to be written on this subject of world-pain--to exhaust the theme would require a book. And certain it is that I have no wish to say the final word on any topic. The gentle reader has certain rights, and among these is the privilege of summing up the case. But the fact holds that world-pain is a form of desire. All desires are just, proper and right; and their gratification is the means by which Nature supplies us that which we need. Desire not only causes us to seek that which we need, but is a form of attraction by which the good is brought to us, just as the ameba creates a swirl in the waters that brings its food within reach. Every desire in Nature has a fixed, definite purpose in the Divine Economy, and every desire has its proper gratification. If we desire the friendship of a certain person, it is because that person has certain soul-qualities that we do not possess, and which complement our own. Through desire do we come into possession of our own; by submitting to its beckonings we add cubits to our stature; and we also give out to others our own attributes, without becoming poorer, for soul is not limited.

All Nature is a symbol of spirit, so I believe that somewhere there must be a proper gratification for this mysterious nostalgia of the soul. The Eternal Unities require a condition where men and women will live to love, and not to sorrow; where the tyranny of things hated shall not ever prevail, nor that for which the heart yearns turn to ashes at our touch.

* * * * *

"I believe Stevie is not quite at home here--he'll not remain so very long," said a woman to me in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five. Five years have gone by, and recently the cable flashed the news that Stephen Crane was dead.

Dead at twenty-nine, with ten books to his credit, two of them good, which is two good books more than most of us scribblers will ever write. Yes, Stephen Crane wrote two things that are immortal. "The Red Badge of Courage" is the strongest, most vivid work of imagination ever fished from an ink-pot by an American.

"Men who write from the imagination are helpless when in presence of the fact," said James Russell Lowell. In answer to which I'll point you "The Open Boat," the sternest, creepiest bit of realism ever penned, and Stevie was in the boat.

American critics honored Stephen Crane with more ridicule, abuse and unkind comment than was bestowed on any other writer of his time. Possibly the vagueness, and the loose, unsleeked quality of his work invited the gibes, jeers, and the loud laughter that tokens the vacant mind; yet as half-apology for the critics we might say that scathing criticism never killed good work; and this is true, but it sometimes has killed the man.

Stephen Crane never answered back, nor made explanation, but that he was stung by the continued efforts of the press to laugh him down, I am very sure.