human voice plays in his scheme, I may tell
you now that he doesn't care a farthing for it except as color. He uses
the voice as he would use any instrumental combination, and he mixes his
colors so wonderfully that he sometimes polarizes them--they no longer
have any hue or scent. He should have been a painter not a composer. He
makes panoramas, psychological panoramas, not music."

"You heard them, saw them?"

"Yes," said Scheff, sourly. "Some of the early ones, and I had brain
fever for months afterward."

"Yet," challenged Lenyard, "you deny his powers?"

"I don't know what he has written recently," was the sullen answer, "but
if the newspapers are to be believed, he is crazy. Music all color, no
rhythm, no themes, and then his preaching of Nietzsche--it's all wrong,
all wrong, my boy. Art was made for joy. When it is anything else, it's
a dangerous explosive. Chemically separate certain natural elements and
they rush together with a thunder-clap. That's what Illowski has done.
It isn't art. It's science--the science of dangerous sounds. He
discovered that sound-vibrations rule the universe, that they may be
turned into a musical Roentgen ray. He presents this in a condensed art,
an electric form--"

"But the means, man, the methods, the instruments, the form?" Lenyard's
voice was tense with excitement. The phlegmatic Scheff noticed this and
soothingly said:

"The means? Why, dear boy, he just hypnotizes people, and promises them
bank accounts and angel-wings. That's how he does the trick. Here's the
tramcar. Jump in. I'm dying of thirst. To the Monferino!" ...

* * * * *

Paris laughed when Illowski announced the performance of his new
orchestral drama named "Nietzsche." The newspapers printed columns
about the composer and his strange career. A disused monster music-hall,
near the Moulin Rouge on Montmartre, was to be the scene of the concert
and the place was at once christened "Theatre du Tarnhelm"--for a story
had leaked out about the ebon darkness in which the Russian's music was
played. This was surpassing the almost forgotten Richard Wagner.
Concerts in the dark must be indeed spirituelle. The wits giggled over
their jokes; and when the kiosks and bare walls were covered by placards
bearing the names of "Illowski--'Nietzsche,'" with a threatening sword
beneath them, the excitement became real. Satirical songs were sung in
the cafes chantants, and several fashionable c