symphony, he was trembling with excitement. There was a long
silence; and then suddenly came the first theme--those fearful
hammer-strokes that cannot be thought without a shudder. They beat
upon Thyrsis' very heart-strings, and he sat appalled; and straight
out he went upon the tide of that mighty music-passion--without
knowing it, without knowing how. He forgot that he was trying to
understand a symphony; he forgot where he was, and what he was; he
only knew that gigantic phantoms surged within him, that his soul
was a hundred times itself. He never guessed that an orchestra was
playing a second theme; he only knew that he saw a light gleam out
of the storm, that he heard a voice, pitiful, fearful, beautiful
beyond utterance, crying out to the furies for mercy; and that then
the storm closed over it with a roar. Again and again it rose;
Thyrsis did not know that this was the "working-out portion" that
had forever been his bane. He only knew that it struggled and fought
his fight, that it pleaded and sobbed, and rose higher and higher,
and began to rejoice--and that then came the great black
phantom-shape sweeping over it; and the iron hammer-strokes of Fate
beat down upon it, crushed it and trampled it into annihilation.
Again and again this happened, while Thyrsis sat clutching the seat,
and shaking with wonder and excitement. Never in his experience had
there been anything so vast, so awful; it was more than he could
bear, and when the first movement came to an end--when the soul's
last hope was dead--he got up and rushed out. People who passed him
on the streets must have thought that he was crazy; and afterwards,
that day and forever, he lived all his soul's life in music.

As a result of this Thyrsis paid all his bank-account for a violin,
and went to see a teacher.