brave, fair world had once seemed to exist. Then he would lose himself
among strange names, in vague histories of those who had borne these
names, and of what they had become in their subsequent journeyings
towards the light, for which they had set out, side by side, with so
much ardour (and oftenest what he had to tell was a modest
mediocrity); but the greater number of them had lost sight one of the
other; the most inseparable friends had, once parted, soon forgotten.
And the bluish smoke sent upwards as he talked, in clouds and spirals
that mounted rapidly and vanished, seemed to Maurice symbolic of the
brief and shadowy lives that were unrolled before him. But, after all
this, when the lights came, the piano was opened, and then, for an
hour or two, the world was forgotten in a different way. It was here
that the chief landmarks of music emerged from the mists in which, for
Maurice, they had hitherto been enveloped; here he learned that Bach
and Beethoven were giants, and made uncertain efforts at appreciation;
learnt that Gluck was a great composer, Mozart a genius of many parts,
Mendelssohn the direct successor in this line of kings. Sonatas,
symphonies, operas, were hammered out with tremendous force and
precision on the harsh, scrupulously tuned piano; and all were
dominated alike by the hoarse voice of the old man, who never wavered,
never faltered, but sang from beginning to end with all his might.
Each one of the pleasant hours spent in this new world helped to
deepen Maurice's resolution to free himself while there was yet
time; each one gave more clearness and precision to his somewhat
formless desires; for, in all that concerned his art, the nameless old
musician hated his native land, with the hatred of the bigot for those
who are hostile or indifferent to his faith.

With a long and hot-chased goal in sight, a goal towards which our
hearts, in joyous eagerness, have already leapt out, it is astonishing