ut indifferently. I was very
much surprised indeed when after she had finished there rose such a
storm of applause as I had not heard even in Paris, where Clara was
received with exceptional enthusiasm. During the short pause, amateurs
and professionals began discussing the music, and in their animated
faces I read perfect satisfaction. The cheering lasted until Clara
reappeared on the platform. She stepped forth with downcast eyes, and
I who could read her face saw what she wanted to express: "You are
very kind, and I thank you for it; but it was not good and I feel
inclined to cry." I too had applauded with the rest, for which I
received a passing glance full of reproach. Clara loves her art too
much to be gratified by undeserved applause. I felt sorry for her, and
should have liked to say a few encouraging words, but the continued
cheering did not permit her to leave the platform. She sat down again
and played Beethoven's Sonata in cis-moll, which was not on the
programme. There is, I believe, no composition in the whole world that
shows with the same distinctness the soul torn by tragic conflict;
especially in the third part of the Sonata, the _Presto-agitato_. The
music evidently responded to the tune of Clara's soul, and certainly
harmonized with my own disposition, for never had I heard Beethoven
interpreted and understood like this before. I am not a musician, but
I suppose even musicians do not know how much there is in that Sonata.
I cannot find another word than "oppressiveness" to describe the
sensation wrought upon the audience. One had a feeling as if mystical
rites were being performed; there rose before me a vast desert, not of
this world, weird and unutterably sad, without shape, half lit up by a
ghostly moon, in the midst of which hopeless despair waited and
sobbed and tore its hair. It was terrible and impressive because so
unearthly; and yet irresistibly attractive,--never had my spirit
come in such close proximity to the infinite. It was almost an
hallucination. I imagined that in the shapeless desert, in the dusk of
a world of shadows, I was searching for somebody dearer to me than the
whole world, one without whom I could not and would not live, and I
searched with the conviction that I should have to search forever and
never find what I was looking for. My heart was so oppressed that at
times I could scarcely breathe. I paid no attention to the mechanical
part of the execution, which no doubt was