ntil the window-panes rattled. What a
brute!...

"I gave my brain to Chopin. When he returned to me from that mad trip to
the Balearic Islands I had not the heart to scold. He was pallid and
even coughed in a whisper. He had no money; Sand was angry with him and
went off to Nohant alone. I had no means, but I took twenty-four little
piano preludes that I had made while Frederic was away and sold them for
ready money. You know them, all the world knows them. They say now that
he wrote them whilst at Majorca, and tell fables about the rain-drop
prelude in D flat. A pack of lies! I wrote them and at my old piano
without strings, the same that I still have in the Rue Puteaux. But I
sha'n't complain. I love him yet. What was mine was his--is his, even my
music."

The group became uneasy. It was late. The rain had stopped, and through
the open doors of The Fallen Angels could be seen the soft-starred sky,
and melting in the distance were the lights of the Gare Saint-Lazare. It
was close by the Quarter of Europe, and the women who walked the
boulevard darted swift glances into the heated rooms of the brasserie.

Minkiewicz drank another absinthe--his last. There was no more money.
The disciples had spent their all for the master whom they loved as they
hated the name of Wagner. His slanting eyes--the eyes of the
Calmuck--were bloodshot; his face was yellow-white. His long, white hair
hung on his shoulders and there were bubbles about his lips.

"But I often despair. I loved Chopin's reputation too much ever to write
a line of music after his death. Besides who would have believed me?
Which one of you believes in his secret heart of hearts one word I have
spoken to-night? It is difficult to make the world acknowledge that you
are not an idiot; very difficult to shake its belief that Chopin was not
a god. Alas! there are no more gods. You say I am a poet, yet how may a
man be a poet if godless? I know that there is no God, yet I am unhappy
longing after Him. I awake at the dawn and cry for God as children cry
for their mother. Curse reason! curse the knowledge that has made a
mockery of my old faiths! Frederic died, and dying saw Christ. I look
at the roaring river of azure overhead and see the cruel sky--nothing
more. I tell you, my children, it has killed the poet in me, and it will
kill the gods themselves when comes the crack of doom.

"I dream often of that time--that time John, the poet of Patmos,
foretold in his Reve