United States or Ghana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Only the prince himself who was standing on the terrace, and had distinctly perceived the rich vibration of the strong, but calm, Hosanna interpreted it rightly and directly; more than that, his animal sagacity told him it was Rodomant, who, having amused himself, was now indulging the same individual....
She flew, with feet that gave no echo, up the stair on her side of the lobby. Rodomant was sitting dead-still, with his face in his hands; they looked rigid; the veins in his forehead, as it showed above his hands, were swollen and stood out, but colorless as the keys that stretched beneath. His calmness chilled her blood.
Rodomant, did one fail to find his identity, they would yet recognize him in those old prints, the listening head bent forwards, the features like discords melting info chords; it is hard to tell how such strength was given in such slight sentences, but from the time when he contemptuously tossed out his tune-fooleries, through the hour when with moonlight fancies "a serene ecstatic serenade was rippling silently beneath his pen," to that when the organ burst upon his ear in thunders quenchless and everlasting as the sea's, he is still Beethoven, gigantic in pride, purity, and passion.
"Then he took from his pocket a strong magnifying-glass, and put it gently into Rodomant's hand. Rodomant grasped it, and through it gazed long and eagerly. And from that hieroglyphic mist there started, sudden and distinct as morn without a cloud, a brilliant bird's-eye view of a superb and stupendous city, a dream of imaginative architecture, almost in itself a poem.
"Rodomant was in a lawless frame, a frame he had fixed on himself by his outrage on precedent; his subsequent excitement had enchanted him more wildly, and any number of imps and elves were ready to rush at his silent word from the caverns of his haunted brain.
But these are trivial, compared with Rodomant and Porphyro. It was daring enough, when Beckendorf mimicked Prince Metternich; but to undertake and to contrast Louis Napoleon and Beethoven, without belittling either, pales every other performance.
He knew he had seen something like it, but when and where? What planet boasted that star of cities for strength and lustre that must surpass new London and old Thebes? For Rodomant had the mathematical gift of all the highest harmonists, and his brain could magnify and actualize the elfin-sized images under his eye to their just and proper proportion in the real."
"Suddenly, in the words of Albericus, there burst overhead a noise like the roaring of 'enormous artificial golden lions, that was the drum: less, in this instance, like smitten parchment than the crackling roll of clouds that embrace in thunder. The noise amazed himself, yet Rodomant exulted in it, his audacity expanded with it, broke down the last barrier of reason.
"I dream now," said Rodomant; "like the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters, so stir my shadows, dim shapes of sound, across the chaos of my fathomless intention." This "Rumour" has never been reprinted in America; it will, then, be excusable to give here a scene which Is indeed its climax.
Word Of The Day