Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

was not a cheap artist, not a merely mechanical performer, not a crazy, ruined man. He was a genius, a great musical genius, who perished among you unknown and unvalued.”

Albert immediately understood of whom his friend was speaking; but not wishing to interrupt him, he hung his head modestly. “He, like a sheaf of straw, was wholly consumed by the sacred fire which we all serve,” continued the voice. “But he has completely fulfilled all that God gave him; therefore he ought to be considered a great man. You may despise him, torture him, humiliate him,” continued the voice, more and more energetically, “but he has been, is, and will be immeasurably higher than you all. He is happy, he is good. He loved you all alike, or cared for you, it is all the same; but he has served only that with which he was so highly endowed. He loved one thing⁠—beauty, the only infinite good in the world. Oh, yes, what a man he is! Fall all of you before him. On your knees!” cried Petrof in a thundering voice.

But another voice mildly answered from another corner of the hall. “I do not wish to bow my knee before him,” said the voice.

Albert instantly recognized Delesof.

“Why is he great? And why should we bow before him? Has he conducted himself in an honorable and righteous manner? Has he brought society any advantage? Do we not know how he borrowed money, and never returned it; how he carried off a violin that belonged to a brother artist, and pawned it?”

“My God! how did he know all that?” said Albert to himself, drooping his head still lower.

“Do we not know,” the voice went on, “how he pandered to the lowest of the low, pandered to them for money? Do we not know how he was driven out of the theatre? How Anna Ivánovna threatened to hand him over to the police?”

“My God! that is all true, but protect me,” cried Albert. “You are the only one who knows why I did so.”

“Stop, for shame!” cried Petrof’s voice again. “What right have you to accuse him? Have you lived his life? Have you experienced his enthusiasms?”

“Right! right!” whispered Albert.

“Art is the highest manifestation of power in man. It is given only to the favored few, and it lifts the chosen to such an eminence that the head swims, and it is hard to preserve its integrity. In art, as in every struggle, there are heroes who bring all under subjection to them, and perish if they do not attain their ends.”

Petrof ceased speaking; and Albert lifted his head, and tried to shout in a loud voice, “Right! right!” but his voice died without a sound.

“That is not the case with you. This does not concern you,” sternly said the artist Petrof, addressing Delesof. “Yes, humble him, despise him,” he continued, “for he is better and happier than all the rest of you.”

Albert, with rapture in his heart at hearing these words, could not contain himself, but went up to his friend, and was about to kiss him.

“Get thee gone, I do not know you,” replied Petrof. “Go your own way, you cannot come here.”

“Here, you drunken fellow, you cannot come here,” cried a policeman at the crossing.

Albert hesitated, then collected all his forces, and, endeavoring not to stumble, crossed over to the next street.

It was only a few steps to Anna Ivánovna’s. From the hall of her house a stream of light fell on the snowy dvor, and at the gate stood sledges and carriages.

Clinging with both hands to the balustrade, he made his way up the steps, and rang the bell.

The maid’s sleepy face appeared at the open door, and looked angrily at Albert.

“It is impossible,” she cried; “I have been forbidden to let you in,” and she slammed the door. The sounds of music and women’s voices floated down to him.

Albert sat down on the ground, and leaned his head against the wall, and shut his eyes. At that very instant a throng of indistinct but correlated visions took possession of him with fresh force, mastered him, and carried him off into the beautiful and free domain of fancy.

“Yes! he is better and happier,” involuntarily the voice repeated in his imagination.

From the door were heard the sounds of a polka. These sounds also told him that he was better and happier. In a neighboring church was heard the sound of a prayer-bell; and the prayer-bell also told him that he was better and happier.

“Now I will go back to that hall again,” said Albert to himself. “Petrof must have many things still to tell me.”

There seemed to be no one now in the hall; and in the place of the artist Petrof, Albert himself stood on the platform, and was playing on his violin all that the voice had said before.

But his violin was of strange make: it was composed of nothing but glass, and he had to hold it with both hands, and slowly rub it on his breast to make it give out sounds. The sounds were so sweet and delicious, that Albert felt he had never before heard anything like them. The more tightly he pressed the violin to his breast, the more sweet and consoling they became. The louder the sounds, the more swiftly the shadows vanished, and the more brilliantly the walls of the hall were illuminated. But it was necessary to play very cautiously on the violin, lest it should break.

Albert played on the instrument of glass cautiously and well. He played things the like of which he felt no one would ever hear again.

He was growing tired, when a heavy distant sound began to annoy him. It was the sound of a bell, but this sound seemed to have a language.

“Yes,” said the bell, with its notes coming from somewhere far off and high up, “yes, he seems to you wretched; you despise him, but he is better and happier