Sacred and Profane Love | Page 8

eyes met mine. (But
why did I choose moments when the playing of the piece demanded less than all his
attention?) The Berceuse was a favourite. In sentiment it was simpler than the great
pieces that had preceded it. Its excessive delicacy attracted; the finesse of its embroidery
swayed and enraptured the audience; and the applause at the close was mad, deafening,
and peremptory. But Diaz was notorious as a refuser of encores. It had been said that he
would see a hall wrecked by an angry mob before he would enlarge his programme. Four

times he came forward and acknowledged the tribute, and four times he went back. At the
fifth response he halted directly in front of me, and in his bold, grave eyes I saw a
question. I saw it, and I would not answer. If he had spoken aloud to me I could not have
more clearly understood. But I would not answer. And then some power within myself,
hitherto unsuspected by me, some natural force, took possession of me, and I nodded my
head.... Diaz went to the piano.
He hesitated, brushing lightly the keys.
'The Prelude in F sharp,' my thought ran. 'If he would play that!'
And instantly he broke into that sweet air, with its fateful hushed accompaniment--the
trifle which Chopin threw off in a moment of his highest inspiration.
'It is the thirteenth Prelude,' I reflected. I was disturbed, profoundly troubled.
The next piece was the last, and it was the Fantasia, the masterpiece of Chopin.
In the Fantasia there speaks the voice of a spirit which has attained all that humanity may
attain: of wisdom, of power, of pride and glory. And now it is like the roll of an army
marching slowly through terrific defiles; and now it is like the quiet song of royal
wanderers meditating in vast garden landscapes, with mossy masonry and long pools and
cypresses, and a sapphire star shining in the purple sky on the shoulder of a cypress; and
now it is like the cry of a lost traveller, who, plunging heavily through a virgin forest,
comes suddenly upon a green circular sward, smooth as a carpet, with an antique statue
of a beautiful nude girl in the midst; and now it is like the oratory of richly-gowned
philosophers awaiting death in gorgeous and gloomy palaces; and now it is like the
upward rush of winged things that are determined to achieve, knowing well the while that
the ecstasy of longing is better than the assuaging of desire. And though the voice of this
spirit speaking in the music disguises itself so variously, it is always the same. For it
cannot, and it would not, hide the strange and rare timbre which distinguishes it from all
others--that quality which springs from a pure and calm vision, of life. The voice of this
spirit says that it has lost every illusion about life, and that life seems only the more
beautiful. It says that activity is but another form of contemplation, pain but another form
of pleasure, power but another form of weakness, hate but another form of love, and that
it is well these things should be so. It says there is no end, only a means; and that the
highest joy is to suffer, and the supreme wisdom is to exist. If you will but live, it cries,
that grave but yet passionate voice--if you will but live! Were there a heaven, and you
reached it, you could do no more than live. The true heaven is here where you live, where
you strive and lose, and weep and laugh. And the true hell is here, where you forget to
live, and blind your eyes to the omnipresent and terrible beauty of existence....
No, no; I cannot--I cannot describe further the experiences of my soul while Diaz played.
When words cease, music has scarcely begun. I know now--I did not know it then--that
Diaz was playing as perhaps he had never played before. The very air was charged with
exquisite emotion, which went in waves across the hall, changing and blanching faces,
troubling hearts, and moistening eyes.... And then he finished. It was over. In every

trembling breast was a pang of regret that this spell, this miracle, this divine revolution,
could not last into eternity.... He stood bowing, one hand touching the piano. And as the
revolution he had accomplished in us was divine, so was he divine. I felt, and many
another woman in the audience felt, that no reward could be too great for the beautiful
and gifted creature who had entranced us and forced us to see what alone in life was
worth seeing: that the whole world should be his absolute dominion; that his happiness
should be the first