you please. I am very interested.”
Salmoros continued in his slow, deliberate tones. “The femme incomprise, a more or less bovine husband, a man almost as old as her husband, but ardent and impetuous, ten years younger in spirit than his real age. What happens? The woman falls in love with him for his genius. He bewitches her with his beautiful art. With his deft and skilled fingers, and by Heaven he was almost the finest pianist I have ever heard, he drew out from her her very soul.”
“Ah! I can understand he must have been very wonderful,” interjected Nello. “Even at his age, there were times when he thrilled me.”
Salmoros nodded. “You can understand the spell he would cast over a comparatively young woman. Well, let us get to the end of this. My poor old friend Jean sleeps in peace, why wake up those old faint memories?”
“But they are very interesting, Baron,” urged Corsini.
“I know, my young friend. Even I have a melancholy interest in them, because they take me back to the days of comparative youth. Well, to be brief – a romance in a nutshell. A violent altercation between husband and lover, a duel, the husband is wounded, not mortally, carried to his house. The charming young wife, innocent, or perhaps guilty, cause of all this dire misfortune, commits suicide. Jean Villefort, apprised of her tragic end, disappears. He might have thrown himself into the Seine. For days his friends searched for him in the morgue to no purpose. And, through you, I have at last unearthed the mystery. Jean Villefort did not avail himself of the coward’s resource.”
“Ah, Baron, dear Monsieur Péron – I prefer to call him by that name – was no coward,” interjected Nello eagerly.
“I quite agree. He left a world which held no further joys or triumphs for him. Mon Dieu, what a strange temperament! Why don’t these fellows make art and sentiment a part of their life only, and put in some common sense on the other side?”
“You speak from the great financier’s point of view, Baron?” suggested Nello shrewdly.
Salmoros smiled his slow, appreciative smile. “I see, young man, you have got a head on your shoulders. Well now, let us come to this letter.”
Nello was only too anxious that he should.
“I am waiting for that, Baron. Of course I can only guess at the contents that he has recommended me to you.”
“That he does in the warmest terms, and for the sake of our old friendship I am prepared to comply with his request. In this letter, which is not dated – he explains that by the fact that he does not know how soon his death will take place – he states that you are hoping to establish yourself as an artist, that he has already secured you a small, but fairly remunerative, engagement at the Parthenon.”
“That is quite true, sir.”
“Then, I take it, this letter was antecedent to your considerable success at the Covent Garden Concert. In that comparatively short space of time, your remuneration has gone up by leaps and bounds?”
Nello assented for the second time. “Perfectly correct, sir.”
“Then how do we stand? Of course, if you were quite a poor man, I would find you a post at once for the sake of my old friendship with Jean Villefort. But, candidly, do you want my assistance? I am not dissatisfied with my lot, Signor Corsini, I can assure you – ”
And Nello murmured, half under his breath: “I should think you were not, Baron, you a financier of European renown.”
A whimsical smile overspread the other man’s features. “And yet I will tell you a little secret. Music is a passion with me. I am a financier by profession, but art, art alone absorbs my soul. I have tried, oh how hard! to be an executant on more than one instrument. Signor Corsini, I would pay you a hundred thousand pounds to-morrow, if you could teach me to play that exquisite little romance as you played it last night. I feel every note in my soul, but when my feeble fingers touch the strings, they are powerless.”
Nello looked at him compassionately. There was in his composition the hard Latin fibre; but here was a new experience for him. Here was a man who had achieved eminence in one of the most difficult professions, a man who could write a cheque for one or two millions. And here he was, lamenting his incapacity to succeed in an art for which nature had given him no equipment.
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