The Torrent

epless night tossi

ing cooled their heels all afternoon at the Club waiting for the deputy in vain. He put in an appearance well on towards evening, and a

uld read, unmistakably, the detailed story of everything he had done that afternoon. At the same time he was nu

rried to his room, to avoid

-car, he lay there with his eyes open in the dark, going over and over again in his feverish mind all that Leonora told him during that final hour of their walk through the garden. Her whole, her real life

back to him now, vivid, palpitant, vital

cade, cross-shaped, its walls covered with columns, set with a double row of windows under a vast crystal roof. Hardly a trace of masonry on the lower stor

ssant going and coming of merging, dissolving crowds: a quadruple avalanche flowing toward the grand square at the center of the cross, where the Café Biffi, known to actors and singers the world over, spreads its rows of marble tables! A h

ens, foregather to eat the macaroni of the trattoria, trusting that the world will some day do them justice by strewing their paths with millions. Beginners, in the first place, who, to make their start, will accept contracts in any obscure municipal theatre of the Milan district, in hopes of a paragraph in a musical weekly to send to the folks at home as evidence of promise and success; and with them, overwhel

t the great tenor has bought, of the dazzling jewels owned by the eminent soprano, of the graceful tilt at which the applauded baritone wears his hat; and in their voices there is a tingle of jealousy, of bitterness against destiny-the feeling that they are just as worthy of such splendor-the protest against "bad luck," to which they attribute fail

nglish misses, who want to become prima donnas of comic opera; fair-skinned, buxom Russian parishnas who greet their acquaintances with the sweeping bow of a dramatic soprano; Spanish se?oritas of bol

r old gossip, their old jealousies, as if they had been gone a day. They stand around in front of the show-windows with an air of proud disdain, like princes traveling incognito, but unable quite to conceal their exalted station. They tell about the ovations accorded them by foreign audiences. They exhibit the diamonds on their fingers and in their neckties. They hint at affairs with great ladies who offered to leave home and husband to follow them to Milan. They exaggerate the salaries they received on their

apped in fur coats that almost sweep the ground, with their "garibaldis" on the backs of their heads, they hover around Biffi's, defying the cold draughts that blow at the crossing of the Gallery, talking and talking away to quiet the hunger that is gnawing at their stomachs; despising the humb

oss a former chorister from the cathedral of Valencia, who could find nothing to do but loiter night and day about the Gallery. Through him

rot gracefully over the sidewalks with music sheets under their arms, or enliven the narrow

ty, so different from the warm orchards of her childhood home; the father, bearded, wrinkled, nervous, still irritated at the ruin of his Republican hopes; a veritable ogre to strangers who did not know his lamb-like gentleness. Like

pied by singers who began their vocal exercises the moment they got out of bed, setting the house ringing like a huge music-box from roof to cellar. The Doctor and his daughter had two rooms in the house of Signora Isabella, a former ballet-dancer who had achieved notorious "triumphs" in the principal courts of Europe, but was now a skeleton wrapped in wrin

thing that helped him endure his stay in Milan. After a lonely life back there in his native land, this corner of the smoke-filled café seemed like Paradise to him. There, in a labored Italian, sprinkled with Spanish interjections, he could talk of Beethoven an

its coterie of the latter's friends, also ruins surviving from the past, burned-out "flames" of great personages long since dead. And these witches, smoking their cigarettes, and looking their jew

ood souls at bottom, but they had very little still to learn about life. I don't remember just

boy. His tapering goatee and his fine, silky hair, covered by a sweeping, soft felt hat, made her think of Van Dyck's portrait of Charles I of England that she had seen in print somewhere. They called him "the poet" at the café, and gossip had it that an old woman, a retired "star," was paying for his keep-and his amusements-until his verses should bring him fame. "Well," said Leonora, simply, with a smile, "he was my first love-a calf-and-puppy love, a schoolgirl's infatuation which nobody ever knew about"; for though the Doctor's daughter spent hours with her green golden eyes fixed upon the poet, the latter never suspected his good fortune; doubtless because the beauty of his patroness, the superannuated diva, had so obsessed him that the attractions of other women left him quite unmoved. How vividly Leonora remembered those days of poverty and dreams!... Little by little the mode

grow longer and longer and thinner and thinner. The long-legged spindling "flapper," who was never quite sure where to stow her legs, became the reserved, well-proportioned girl with the mysterious gleam of puberty in her eyes. H

no higher, he had come to earth, stepping aside to let those behind him pass on, turning his stage experience to the advantage of a large class of girl-students whom he fondled with an affectionate, fatherly kindliness. His white goatee would quiver with adm

own daughter," the Doctor would say every time the maestro praised the

singer; until one afternoon, in the midst of a romanza, there was a hateful scene: the maestro, despite

maestro so betrayed? She sank into resigned passivity at last, and continued to visit Boldini's house dail

Poor do?a Pepa had sold everything her brother owned and a good deal of her own land besides. Only at the cost of painful stinting could she send him anything at all. The Doctor, through connections with itinerant directors and impresarios à l'aventure, "launched" his daughter finally. Leonora began to sing in the small theatres of the Milan

vanity on receiving bouquets and sonnets from subalterns and cadets in small garrison towns. Boldini followed her everywhere, neglecting his lessons, in pursuit of this, his last depraved infatuation. "All for art, art for all!" He must en

here she met the tenor Salvatti, a high and mighty divo, who looked down upon all his ass

ting a clandestine warfare for him; queens scandalizing their subjects by blind passions he inspired; eminent divas selling their diamonds for the money to hold him faithful by lavish gifts. The jealousy of Salvatti's comrades tended to perpetuate and exa

hness, he determined to profit by her na?ve admiration. Was it love that thrust her toward him? As, so long afterwards, she analyzed her passion to Rafael, she was vehemently certain it had not been love: Salvatti could never have inspired a genuine feeling in anyone. His egotism, his moral corruptness, were too close to the surface. No, he was a philanderer simply, an exploiter of women. But for her it had been a blinding hallucination nevert

story. What folks said about her father's end was not true. Poor Doctor Moreno had not committed suicide

to his landlady at Milan whenever the old danseuse would

from London, from Naples, from Paris. The Doctor, though in direst poverty, would at once return the checks "to the sender" and,

nees, reading Beethoven, the only one "in his family"-as he said-"who had never played him false." When old Isabella, tired of his music, would literally put him out of the house to get a breath of air, he would wander

r admiration for their "little girl's" success; and even grew indignant at the father for not accepting things "as things had to be." Salvatti

h critics found defects in her singing, her beauty helped them to forget these, and one and all they contributed loyally to the deification of the young goddess. Salvatti, sheltering his old age under this p

lly answering the lure of the elegant world she glimpsed in the distance but was not yet a part of, she began to deceive Salvatti in passing adventures, taking a diabolical pleasure in the deceit. But no; as she looked back on that part of her life with the sober eye of experience, she understood that she had really been

"society columns" referred, in veiled language, to the passion of an aged king, a democratic monarch, who had left his throne, much as a manufacturer of London or a stockbroker of Paris would leave his

Brunna!" people would declare enthusiastically. "The favorite of king Ernesto.... Our greatest arti

lo had simply grown tired of living-a general collapse of that wonderful constitution, so strong, so powerful, in a way, yet strangely susceptible to moral and emotional influences. He was almost blind when admitted to the hospital. He seemed quite to have lost his mind-sunk in an unbreakable

Where are you?... Litt

than a week, to the great disgust of Salvatti, who observe

ke a vegetable in a garden, her stupid mind entirely on her prayer-book. Leonora vented her anguish in a burst of hatred for Salvatti. He was responsible for

be like that! She would pass from stage to stage, fr

o thoroughly a gentleman, had loved her t

first time and feared a repulse. He would kiss her softly, delicately, with hushed reserve, as if she were a fragile jewel that might break beneath his tenderest caress. Poor Selivestroff! Leonora had wept at the thought of him. In Russia and with princely Russian

she needed applause and admiration. She induced Selivestroff to move to St. Petersburg, and for a who

nish beauty; and they envied Selivestroff. The count yearned moodily for the solitude of his castle, which held so many loving memories for him. In the bustling, competitive life of the capit

had gone up for a moment to his Club. He had caught an allusion to Leonora and himself in some words of a friend. There had been blows-then hasty arrangements for a duel, which had been fought at sunrise, with pistols. Selivestroff died in the arms of his mistress, smiling, seeking those delicate, powerful, pearly hands for one last

cross the world! She had returned to Russia once, and been expelled by the Czar for compromising the prestige of the Imperial Family, through an affair with a grand duke who had wanted to marry her. In Rome she had posed in the nude for a young and unknown sculptor out of pure compassion for his silent admiration; and she herself made his "Venus" public, hoping that the world-wide scandal would bring fame to the work and to its author. In Genoa she found Salvatti again, now "retired," and living on usury from his savings. She received him with an amiable

is chin, he was certainly not so handsome as Selivestroff. But he had one irresistible charm, the charm of Art. With the tragic Russian in her mind and on her conscience, she felt the need of burning herself in the immortal flame of the ideal; and she adored the famous musician for t

ro was an absolute rupture with all her past. Her one wish was to love and be loved-to throw a cloak of mystery over her real self, ashamed as she now was of her previous wild c

crowds, displaying physical beauty, and attracting men. It was a religion-the mysterious power that brings the infinite within us into contact with the infinite that surrounds us. She became the sinner awakening to repentance, and yearning for the atoning peace o

uld give to have known him as you did!... I did see him onc

a pair of blue, imperious eyes, shining, under thick eyebrows, with the cold glint of steel-eyes that could never be mistaken for common eyes, for the divine fire of the Elect, of the demi-God, was bright within them! And they seemed

en mouth toward the sensuous, powerful jaw. A gray beard ran down along the neck, that was wrinkled, wasted with age. A hasty vision it had been, to be sure; but she had seen him; and his venerable figure remained in her memory like a landscape glimpsed at the flare of a lightning-flash. She had witnessed his arrival in Venice to die in the peace of those canals, in that silence which is broken only by the stroke of the oar-where many years before he had thought himself dying as he wrote his Tristan-that hymn to the Death that is pure, to the Death that lib

lvet, the lock of gray hair, two broken, rusty steel pens-souvenirs o

ed. Tell me everything: talk to

prices of his genius, that figure so largely in the Wagner legend: his smoker, a jacket of gold satin with pearl flowers for buttons; the precious cloths that rolled about like waves of light in his study, velvets and silks, of flaming reds and greens and blues, thrown across the furniture and the tables haphazard, with no reference to usefulness-for their sheer beauty only-to stimulate the e

salon, his hands twitching in nervous uncertainty; changing the position of the armchairs, rearranging the furniture, suddenly stopping to hunt about his person for a snuff-box or a pair of glasses that he never found; turning his pocket

llowing the infinite song of the spheres, a divine music that only his ears had been attuned to hear! And to choke his emotion, the musician would sit down at the piano, while Leonora, re

, the sweetness of sacrifice, seeing in him not the man, but the chosen representative of the Divinity. Leonora could have grovelled at Keller's feet, let him trample on her-make a carpet of h

ig, Geneva, Paris; and she, the most famous living prima donna, would stay behind the scenes, with no jealousy for the applause she heard, waiting for Hans,

; Leonora, voluntarily in the background, like a patrician of old, dre

a dream of hers and sing in Bayreuth; and he grounded her in the principles that had guided the Master in the creation of his great characters. And so, when Leonora made her appearance on the stage one winter with the winged helmet and the lance of the Valkyrie

e would say with conviction. "

Bayreuth. Winters it was he who went into ecstasies under her tremendous "Hojotoho!"-the fierce cry of a Valkyrie afraid of the austere father Wotan; or

at Keller's side, pampering his whims and selfish caprices. But one day Keller deserted her, as she had deserted others, to take up with a sickly, languid contralto, whose best charms could have been hardly comparable to the morbid delicacy of a hot-house fl

e in their way. Far preferable were the ordinary, normal men she had known before Keller'

tulate to his melancholy sonnets! In Vienna there had been a duel, in which one of her admirers was slain. An eccentric Englishman followed her about, looming in her pathway everywhere like the shadow of a fatal Destiny, vowing to kill anybody she should prefer to him.... She had had enough at last! She was wearied of such a life, disgusted at the male voracity that dogged her every step. She longed to fall out of

ife. She would care for the poor old woman! Her presence would bring a note of cheer into that gray, monotonous existence that had gone on without the slightest

find there something to keep her ever from return

ees, now and then fondling a memory of her old life, perhaps, but wishing eternally to enjoy that tranquillity, fiercely repell

ted no more of love. She already knew what

their adoration of that woman. A king, great artists, handsome and aristocratic paladins, Russian counts, potentates with vast wealth at their command! And he, a humble country

s he had tried to take. But despite the contempt he began to feel for himself, he lacked the strength to withdraw now. He had been caught up in the wake of seducti