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Adolphe, very much alarmed, says to himself: "The doctor's right, she may get to be morbidly exacting, and then what will become of me? Here I am compelled to choose between Caroline's physical extravagance, or some young cousin or other." Meanwhile Caroline sits down and sings one of Schubert's melodies with all the agitation of a hypochondriac.
A fat young man sitting at Schubert's side seized it and, drawing a few music-bars on the back of a programme, pushed it on to him. "Ach!" said Schubert, with a grateful sigh, "Goot goot!" In another moment he was lost. The talk grew louder. Hurried waiters rushed back and forth behind his chair with foaming mugs and slices of black bread, and gray and brown.
She clutched the window-sill and stood choking and blinded, fighting with a crowd of daunting recollections and miserable apprehensions. The young violinist was playing Schubert's Serenade. From the violin came the cry of hungry human love demanding its mate, questing, praying, half despairing, and yet wooing, seeking again. Johnnie's piteous gaze roved over the well-beloved lineaments.
The same genial and acute critic, in further discussing the envy, jealousy, and prejudice that Gounod awakened in certain musical quarters, writes in still more decided strains: "The fact has to be swallowed and digested that already the composer of 'Sappho, the choruses to 'Ulysse, 'Le Médecin malgré lui, 'Faust, 'Philemon et Baucis, a superb Cecilian mass, two excellent symphonies, and half a hundred songs and romances, which may be ranged not far from Schubert's and above any others existing in France, is one of the very few individuals left to whom musical Europe is now looking for its pleasure."
For a single cradle, saith Nature, I would give every one of my graves." By her little practice piano her eyes fell on the pages of Schubert's unfinished symphony. "Unfinished!" she said. "And yet even there is the phrase that comes and comes again, sweeter and more full of meaning in every renewed variety. So I must have love to play through my life, or else it will be nothing but a medley.
One of Strauss's waltzes, or Schubert's melodies played on the piano by the band-master completed the illusion; and yet we had only to rub off the thin incrustation of frozen vapour that covered the panes of the windows, to look out upon the gigantic and terrible forms of the icebergs dashed against each other by a black and broken sea, and the whole panorama of Polar nature, its awful risks, and its sinister splendours.
At the height rings out the main tune of yore, transformed in triumphant majesty. The musical design embraces various phases. First is the clear rhythmic sense of the ride. We think of other instances like Schubert's "Erl-King" or the ghostly ride in Raff's "Lenore" Symphony. The degree of vivid description must vary, not only with the composer, but with the hearer.
She was playing something of Schubert's Isabel knew not what, but recognised Schubert and she touched the piano with a discretion of her own. It showed skill, it showed feeling; Isabel sat down noiselessly on the nearest chair and waited till the end of the piece.
The conventions are strictly observed at Little Lost in the kitchen, at least," she added, under her breath, with a flash of resentment. "Run along and the next time Honey asks you to play the piano, will you please play Lotusblume? And when you have thrown open the prison windows with that, will you play Schubert's Ave Maria the way you play it to send a breath of cool night air in?"
It was not until her father began to play the offertory, one of Schubert's beautiful inspirations, that she noticed the look of real delight that held the florid profile till the last note, and for some seconds after. "He certainly does love music," she thought; and when the bell rang for the Elevation, she bowed her head and became aware of the Real Presence.
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