ower would
depose Pope and Emperor. And again he dreamed the dreams of madmen--his
mother had been nearly related to Dostoiewsky....

Of what avail the seed-bearing Bach and his fugues--emotional
mathematics, all of them! Of what avail the decorative efforts of tonal
fresco painters, breeders of an hour's pleasure, soon forgotten in the
grave's muddy disdain! Had not the stage lowered music to the position
of a lascivious handmaiden? To the sound of cymbals, it postured for the
weary debauchee. No; music must go back to its origins. The church
fettered it in its service, knowing full well its good and evil. Before
Christianity was, it had been a power in hieratic hands. Ancient
Egyptian priests hypnotized the multitudes with a single silvery sound;
and in the deepest Indian jungles inspired fakirs induced visions by the
clapping of shells. Who knows how the Grand Llama of Thibet decrees the
destinies of millions! Music again, music in some other garb than we now
sense it. Illowski groaned as he attacked this hermetic mystery. He had
all the technique of contemporary art at his beck; but not that unique
tone, the unique form, by which he might become master of the universe
and gain spiritual dominion over mankind. Yet the secret, so fearfully
guarded, had been transmitted through the ages. Certain favored ones
must have known it, men who ruled the rulers of earth. Where could it be
found? "The jealous gods have buried somewhere proofs of the origins of
all things, but upon the shores of what ocean have they rolled the stone
that hides them, O Macareus?" Thus echoed he the fatidical query of the
French poet....

Illowski left Europe. Some said he had gone to Asia, the mother of all
religions, of all corruptions. He had been seen in China, and later
stories were related of his attempts to enter the sacred city, Lhasa. He
disappeared and many composers and critics were not sorry; his was a too
commanding personality: he menaced modern art. Thus far church and state
had not considered his individual existence; he was but one of the
submerged units of Rurik's vast Slavic Empire which now almost traversed
the Eastern hemisphere. So he was forgotten and a minor god arose in his
place--a man who wrote pretty ballets, who declared that the end of
music was to enthrall the senses; and his ballets were danced over
Europe, while Illowski's name faded away....

At the end of ten years he returned to St. Petersburg. Thinner, much
o