tor, who seldom spoke, but could eat more than four
men.... They drank their coffee and went across into Twelfth street,
and at the top of the house they found the musician's room. It was
large, but poorly fitted out. An old square-piano, a stove, a bed, three
chairs, a big lounge and a washstand completed the catalogue. Merville
made them comfortable and sat down to the piano. Its tone, as his
fingers crept over the keys, was of faded richness and there were
reverberations of lost splendors in the bass. Merville started with a
Chopin nocturne, but Hodson hurt the cat as it brushed against him, and
the noise displeased the pianist. He stopped.

"I don't feel like Chopin, it's too early in the day. Chopin should be
heard only in the early evening or after midnight. I'll give you some
Brahms instead. Brahms suits the afternoon, this gray, dull day." All
were too lazy to reply and the pianist began, with hesitating touch, an
Intermezzo in A minor. It sounded like music heard in a dream, a dream
anterior to this existence. It seemed as if life, tired of the external
blaze of the sun, sought for the secret of hidden spaces; searched for
the message in the sinuous murmuring shell. It was an art of an art, the
penumbra of an art. Its faint outlines melted into one's soul and
refused to be turned away. The recollection of other music seemed gross
after this curiously introspective, this almost whorl-like, music. It
was the return to the invertebrate, the shadow of a shadow, and the
hearts of Merville's guests were downcast and purified....

When he had finished, Cintras asked: "If that is Brahms, why then he has
solved the secret of the age's end. He has written the song of humanity
absorbed in the slime of a dying planet."

"Very morbid, very perverse in rhythms, I should say," broke in
Berkeley; they all shivered. Merville arose, his face glum and drawn,
and brought whiskey and glasses.

Cintras was the first to speak:

"Hodson, you are a very young fellow and I wish to give you good advice.
Yours to me was better than you supposed. Now don't you ever bother with
art, music or artistic prose. Just marry a nice girl who goes to comic
operas. You stick to her and avoid Balzac. He is too strong meat for
you--" "Yes, but he's great; I read him!" "And no more understand him
than you do Chopin. Because he is great he is readable, but his secret
is the secret of the sphinx; it may only be unravelled by a few strong
souls. So go