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Heavens! if I could have lived with you as he did, believe me I should have produced far greater things. A musician is also a poet, he too can feel himself transported into a brighter world by a pair of fine eyes, where loftier spirits sport with him and impose heavy tasks on him.
Magda entered the house and, crossing the cheerfully lit hall, threw open the door of a room whence issued the sound of someone obviously a first-rate musician playing the piano. As she opened the door the twilight, shot by quivering spears of light from the fire's dancing flames, seemed to rush out at her, bearing with it the mournful, heart-shaking music of some Russian melody.
But she was almost twice his age, and he left her for another musician to marry in. Then he went to Italy, and was pursued in vain under those bewitching skies by no belated German spinster, but by a beautiful and attractive Italienne. Her, he also spurned. When he was in England, he seems to have come very near falling in love with two different women.
She came into my room, wished me good day, asked me what kind of a night I had spent, if I wanted anything, and the sight of her grace and beauty and the sound of her voice so ravished me, that I determined to seek safety in flight. A few years later Magdalena became a famous musician.
Truth to say, the doctor could not but betray his surprise at the idea of the cold-looking Arnold in the light of a musician; his doubts took instant flight after the opening chords. Rubenstein's Melody in F, played by a master-hand, is one long sound of divine ecstasy thrilling the listener to exquisite rapture.
This talk was like the improvisation of a musician who is profoundly learned, but has in him a vein of poetry too. The talk and the music strongly appeal to robust minds, and at the same time do not repel the sentimentalist. It is not to be supposed that the Bibliotaph pleased every one with whom he came in contact. There were people whom his intellectual potency affected in a disagreeable way.
As he was not able to play the scores of my operas himself, he had them performed for him by Saint-Saens, whom he apparently patronised. I thus learned to appreciate the skill and talent of this young musician, which was simply amazing.
The ambassadors who resorted to Ravenna from the most distant countries of Europe, admired his wisdom, magnificence, and courtesy; and if he sometimes accepted either slaves or arms, white horses or strange animals, the gift of a sun-dial, a water-clock, or a musician, admonished even the princes of Gaul of the superior art and industry of his Italian subjects.
In fact, while wealth had acknowledged advantages, it held a subordinate place in the estimation of the people. I never heard the expression "very wealthy," used as a recommendation of a person. It was always: "She is a fine scholar, or mechanic, or artist, or musician. She excels in landscape gardening, or domestic work. She is a first-class chemist." But never "She is rich."
Gifted by nature with boundless frolic and good-humour, wit and cunning, her Greek taste for the physically beautiful and graceful developed by long training, until she had become, without a rival, the most perfect pantomime, dancer, and musician who catered for the luxurious tastes of the Alexandrian theatres, she had lived since her childhood only for enjoyment and vanity, and wished for nothing more.
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