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Mr. Ernest Newman, in writing of Debussy, warmly praises the delightful naturalness of his early compositions. "One would feel justified in building the highest hopes on the young genius who can manipulate so easily the beautiful shapes his imagination conjures up." The work of the early period shows Debussy developing freely and naturally.
He ceases to be a critic, and takes on him the most contemptible character to which a rational creature can be degraded, that of a gossip, backbiter, and pasquillant: but with this heavy aggravation, that he steals the unquiet, the deforming passions of the world into the museum; into the very place which, next to the chapel and oratory, should be our sanctuary, and secure place of refuge; offers abominations on the altar of the Muses; and makes its sacred paling the very circle in which he conjures up the lying and profane spirit.
The margravine conjures them by their troth to tell how they parted from her husband, saying that the lie must have an end. Then spake the fiddler, Swemmelin the messenger: Lady, we wished to deny to you that which we yet must say, since no man could conceal it; after this hour, ye see Margrave Rüdiger no more alive. The margravine, we are afterward told, dies of grief at the news, as does old Queen Ute at her abbey of Lors.
In despair of ever restoring the imperial power of the Hohenstaufen, he seeks to forget his sadness in romance and song. There now appears upon the scene a young Saracen lady, just arrived from the East, who, by appealing to the alliance between East and West concluded by Manfred's noble father, conjures the desponding son to maintain his imperial heritage.
"He vows and declares, Monsieur, that the other whale, the dried one, is far more deadly than the blasted one; in fine, Monsieur, he conjures us, as we value our lives, to cut loose from these fish." Instantly the captain ran forward, and in a loud voice commanded his crew to desist from hoisting the cutting-tackles, and at once cast loose the cables and chains confining the whales to the ship.
Privation conjures up countless illusions and every chimera imaginable, so that the peaceful retreat of virgins of the Lord becomes a veritable hell, peopled by phantoms that groan in torture!" "Oh, madame!" exclaimed the King. "What a picture is this! What a spectacle you present to our view!"
In many other passages of his letters, he calls himself an exceeding evil man; a great sinner; and conjures his brethren to employ their intercessions to God in his behalf. "Bring to pass, by your prayers," says he to one of them, "that though my sins have rendered me unworthy of the ministerial vocation, yet God may vouchsafe, out of his infinite goodness, to make use of me."
All the vacations he speaks as good English as any man in England, but in term times he breaks out of that hopping one-legged pace into a racking trot of issues, bills, replications, rejoinders, demures, querelles, subpoenas, &c., able to fright a simple country fellow, and make him believe he conjures.
Read that chapter where Saul, face to face with the last things in his darkened career, and hard upon the Nemesis of his own evil past, seeks out the woman with the familiar spirit, and in the words that he addresses to the apparition which he conjures up before his distorted vision you have the confession of a lost soul: "The Philistines make war against me, and the Lord answered me no more, neither by prophet nor by dream."
Yonder is Babylon Lane, which I understand is part of my legacy. Dovelands Cottage, I believe, is situated about half-way along it." "Babylon Lane," mused Don. "Why so named?" "That I cannot tell you. The name of Babylon invariably conjures up strange pictures of pagan feasts, don't you find?
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