"

"That Quinsonnas is a terrifying devil, " said Jacques.

"Nonetheless, " Michel replied, "the old masterpieces are still performed at the Opera. "

"I know, " Quinsonnas answered; "there's even some talk of reviving Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld with the recitatives Gounod added to that masterpiece, and it's quite possible that the production will even make a little money, on account of the ballet! What our enlightened public requires, my friends, is some dancing! When you think that a monument costing twenty million francs has been erected chiefly to allow some jumping jacks to be maneuvered around the stage.... They've cut Les Huguenots[19] to a single act, and this little curtain-raiser accompanies the fashionable ballets; the dancers' costumes have been made transparent enough to deceive nature herself, and this enlivens our financiers; the Opera, moreover, has become a branch of the Bourse—quite as much screaming goes on there; business is conducted in full voice, and no one bothers much about the music! Between us, I must admit, the execution leaves something to be desired. "

"A great deal to be desired, " Jacques replied. "The singers whinny, cackle, shriek, and bray—anything and everything but sing. A menagerie!"

"As for the orchestra, " Quinsonnas continued, "it has fallen very low since his instrument no longer suffices to feed the instrumentalist! Talk about a trade that's not practical! Ah, if we could use the power wasted on the pedals of a piano for pumping water out of coal mines! If the air escaping from ophicleides could also be used to turn the Catacomb Company's windmills! If the trombone's alternating action could be applied to a mechanical sawmill—oh, then the executants would be rich and many!"

"You're joking, " exclaimed Michel.

"God help me, " replied Quinsonnas quite seriously, "I shouldn't be surprised if some ingenious inventor managed such things one day! The spirit of invention is what is highly developed in France nowadays! It's really the only spirit we have left! And I can tell you it doesn't make conversations very lively! But who dreams of being entertained? Let's bore one another to death! That's our ruling principle today!"

"And you can't see any remedy for it?" Michel asked.

"None, so long as finance and machinery prevail! And it's really machinery that's doing the mischief. "

"Why is that?"

"Because there's this one good thing about finance: at least it can pay for masterpieces, and a man must eat, even if he has genius! The Genoese, the Venetians, the Florentines under Lorenzo the Magnificent, bankers and businessmen as they were, all encouraged the arts! But mechanics, engineers, technicians—devil take me if Raphael, Titian, Veronese, and Leonardo could ever have come into being! They'd have had to compete with mechanical procedures, and they'd have starved to death! Ah, machinery! It's enough to make you loathe inventors and inventions alike!"

"But after all, " said Michel, "you're a musician, Quinsonnas, you work! You spend your nights at your piano—do you refuse to play modern music?"

"Oh, me! I play as much of it as anyone else—here's a piece I've just written that will appeal to today's taste; it may even have some success, if it finds a publisher. "

"What are you calling it?"

"After Thilorier[20]—a Grand Fantasy on the Liquefaction of Carbonic Acid."

"You can't be serious!" Michel exclaimed.

"Listen and judge for yourselves, " Quinsonnas replied. He sat down at the piano, or rather he flung himself at it. Under his fingers, under his hands, under his elbows, the wretched instrument produced impossible sounds; notes collided and crackled like hailstones. No melody, no rhythm! The artist had undertaken to portray the final experiment which had cost Thilorier his life.

"There!" he exclaimed. "Did you hear that? Now do you understand? Are you aware of the great chemist's experiment? Have you been taken into his laboratory? Do you feel how the carbonic acid is separated out? Here we have a pressure of four hundred ninety-five atmospheres! The cylinder is turning- watch out! watch out! The machine is going to explode! Take cover!" And with a blow of his fist capable of splintering the ivory keys, Quinsonnas reproduced the explosion. "Whew!" he said, "isn't that imitative enough—isn't that beautiful?"

Michel remained stupefied. Jacques couldn't help laughing.

"And you expect a lot from a piece like that, " he said.

"Expect a lot!" Quinsonnas replied. "It's of my time—everyone's a chemist nowadays. I'll be understood. Only it isn't enough to have ideas, there must be proper execution. "

"What do you mean?" asked Jacques.

"Just what I said. It's by execution that I plan to astound the age. "

"But it sounds to me, " Michel argued, "as if you played that piece wonderfully. "

"Don't be ridiculous, " said the artist with a shrug of his shoulders. "I haven't mastered the first note, though I've been studying the cursed thing for three years!"

"What more do you want to do with it?"

"That's my secret, my children; don't ask me to share it with you, you'd only think I was mad, and that would discourage me. But I can assure you that one day the talents of Liszt and Thalberg[21], of Prudent and of Schulhoff[22], will be exposed for what they are. "

"You mean you want to play three more notes per second than they do?" asked Jacques.

"No, but I'll be playing the piano in a new way, a way that will amaze the public! How? I can't tell you.

One allusion, one indiscretion, and someone will steal my idea from me. The vile pack of imitators will be on my heels, and I want to be unique. But that requires superhuman labor! When I'm sure of myself my fortune will be made, and I'll say farewell to Bookkeeping forever!"

"I really think you must be mad, " said Jacques.

"No, not mad, merely maniacal, which is what you must be in order to succeed! But let's get back to some gentler feelings and try to revive a little of that charming past for which we were born too late. Here, my friends, is truth in music!"

Quinsonnas was a great artist; he played with profound feeling, and he knew everything the preceding centuries had bequeathed to his own, which refused the legacy! He took the art at its birth, passing rapidly from master to master, and by his rather rough but sympathetic voice completed what his fingers' execution lacked. He passed in review before his delighted friends the whole history of music, from Rameau and Lully to Mozart and on to Beethoven and Weber, illustrating all the founders of the art, weeping with the gentle inspirations of Grétry, and triumphing in the splendid pages of Rossini and Meyerbeer. "Listen!" he said, "here are the forgotten songs of Guillaume Tell[23], of Robert le Diable[24], of Les Huguenots; here is the charming period of Hérold[25] and Auber[26], two learned men who did themselves honor by knowing nothing! Ah, what has knowledge to do with music? Has it any access to painting? No, and painting and music are all one! That is how people understood this great art during the first half of the nineteenth century! They didn't search out new formulas—there's nothing new to find in music, any more than in love. It remains the charming prerogative of the sensuous arts to be eternally young!"

"Bravo!" cried Jacques.

"But then, " the pianist continued, "certain ambitious natures felt the need to follow new and unknown paths, and they have dragged music after them... into the abyss!"

"Are you saying, " Michel asked, "that you no longer count a single composer after Meyerbeer and Rossini as a true musician?"

"Not at all!" answered Quinsonnas, boldly modulating from D natural to E flat; "I'm not talking about Berlioz, leader of that impotent troupe whose musical ideas were packaged in envious feuilletons; but here are some of the heirs of the great masters: listen to Félicien David[27], a specialist whom our contemporary experts take for King David, first harpist of the Hebrews! Savor those true and simple inspirations of Massé[28], the last musician of heart and feeling, who in his Indienne has given us the masterpiece of his period! Then there's Gounod, the splendid composer of Faust who died soon after having taken orders in the Wagnerian church. And then Verdi, the man of harmonic noise, the hero of musical racket, who made wholesale melody the way certain writers of the period made wholesale literature—Verdi, creator of the inexhaustible Trovatore, who played his singular part in distorting the century's taste...

Enfin Wagnerbe vint... "[29]

At this moment, Quinsonnas let his fingers, no longer constrained by any recognizable rhythm, wander into the incomprehensible reveries of Contemplative Music, proceeding by abrupt intervals and disappearing into the midst of an endless phrase.

With incomparable talent the artist had evidenced the successive gradations of his art; two hundred years of music had just passed beneath his fingers, and his friends listened to him, mute and marveling.