The Floating Island (3 page)

WHEN a journey begins badly it
rarely ends well. At least that ought to have been the opinion of the four
instrumentalists whose instruments lay on the ground, the carriage in which
they were riding having suddenly upset against a mound by the side of the road.

“Anybody hurt?” asked the first,
actively springing to his feet.

“I have got off with a scratch,”
replied the second, wiping his cheek, striped by a piece of glass.

“And I with a graze,” replied the
third, whose calf was bleeding.

There was nothing serious as yet.

“And my violoncello?” said the
fourth. “It is to be hoped nothing has happened to my violoncello.”

Fortunately the cases were
untouched.

Neither the violoncello, nor the
two violins, nor the alto had suffered from the shock, and it was hardly
necessary to put them in tune. They were high-class instruments, of course.

“Confound that railway which left
us in distress when we had only gone half-way,” said one.

“Confound that carriage which has
thrown us out in the open country,” retorted another.

“Just at the moment night was
beginning,” added a third.

“Fortunately our concert is announced
for the day after to-morrow,” observed the fourth.

Then a few ridiculous repartees
were exchanged between the artistes who took their adventure so gaily. One of
them, according to his inveterate habit, gave his nonsense a musical twist.

“There is our carriage with the
mi
on the
do
.” “Pinchinat!” exclaimed one of his companions. “And my
opinion is,” continued Pinchinat, “that there are rather too many accidents in
this key.” “Will you be quiet?”

“And that we shall have to
transpose our pieces in another carriage!” added Pinchinat.

Yes! rather too many accidents,
as the reader will not be slow to learn.

The driver had suffered most,
having been pitched off his seat as the front axle broke. The damage was
restricted to a few contusions more painful than serious; but he could not walk
on account of a sprain. Hence the necessity of finding some means of transport
to the nearest village.

It was a miracle, indeed, that
somebody had not been killed. The road winds across a mountainous country,
skirting high precipices, bordered in many places with deep tumultuous torrents
and crossed by fords only passable with difficulty. If the axle had broken a
moment sooner the vehicle would have rolled deep down the rocks, and no one
could have survived the catastrophe. Anyhow, the carriage was useless. One of
the two horses, whose head had struck against a sharp stone, was gasping on the
ground. The other was severely wounded on the quarter; so that there were no
horses and no carriage.

In short, ill-fortune had not spared
these four artistes, in these regions of Lower California. At this period San
Francisco, the capital of the State, was in direct railway communication with
San Diego, situated almost on the frontier of the old Californian province. The
four travellers were on their way to this important town, where on the next day
but one they were to give a concert much advertised and long expected. The
night before they had left San Francisco, but when they were within fifty miles
of San Francisco the first contretemps had occurred. Yes, contretemps, as the
most jovial of the troupe remarked, and the expression might be tolerated on
the part of an old master of solfeggio.

The train was stopped at Paschal
owing to the line having been swept away by a flood for three or four miles.
The accident had occurred but a few hours before, and the communication with
the other end had not been organized. The passengers must either wait until the
road was repaired, or obtain in the nearest village a vehicle of some sort for
San Diego.

And this it was that the
quartette decided to do. In a neighbouring village they discovered an old
landau, rickety, noisy, and moth-eaten, but not uncomfortable. They hired it
from the owner, promised the driver a handsome present, and started with their
instruments, but without their luggage, about two o’clock in the afternoon; and
up to seven o’clock in the evening the journey was accomplished without much
difficulty or fatigue. But here a second contretemps occurred, the upsetting of
the carriage, and that with such damage that it was impossible for the said
carriage to continue the journey.

And the quartette were a good
twenty miles from San Diego.

But why had four musicians,
French by nationality, and Parisians by birth, ventured across these out-of-the-way
regions of Lower California?

Why? We will tell you in twenty
lines, with a few explanatory notes regarding the four virtuosos which chance,
that fantastic distributor of parts, was about to introduce among the
personages of this extraordinary story.

At this same time a feeling for
art had developed among the Americans; and if their productions were of limited
number in the domain of the beautiful
—
if
their national genius was still somewhat refractory in painting, sculpture, and
music
—
the
taste for good work was, at least, widely spread among them. By purchasing, for
their weight in gold, the pictures of old and modern masters for public or
private galleries; by engaging, at enormous prices, lyrical and dramatic
artistes of renown, instrumentalists of the highest talent, they had infused
among themselves that sense of beautiful and noble things which they had been
in want of so long.

As regards music, it was by
listening to Meyerbeer, Halévy, Gounod, Berlioz, Wagner, Verdi, Masse, Saint-Saëns,
Reyer, Massenet, Delibes, the famous composers of the second half of the
nineteenth century, that the dilettanti of the New Continent first awoke to
enthusiasm. Then gradually they advanced to the comprehension of the profounder
work of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven; mounting back to the sources of the sublime
art which expanded to full flood in the course of the eighteenth century. After
the operas, the lyric dramas; after the lyric dramas, the symphonies, sonatas,
and orchestral pieces. And, just at the moment we speak of, the sonata was the
rage among the different States of the Union. The people would willingly have
paid so much a note
—
twenty dollars a minim, ten dollars a crotchet, five dollars a quaver.

When this infatuation was at its
height, four instrumentalists of ability conceived the idea of tempting success
and fortune in the United States of America. Four excellent fellows, old pupils
of the Conservatoire, well known in Paris, much appreciated by the audiences of
what is known as “chamber music,” which was then little known in North America.
With what rare perfection, what marvellous time, what profound feeling, they
interpreted the works of Mozart, of Beethoven, of Mendelssohn, of Haydn, of
Chopin, written for four-stringed instruments, a first and second violin, alto,
and violoncello. Nothing noisy, nothing showy, but what consummate execution,
what incomparable virtuosity! The success of the quartette was all the more
intelligible, as at the time people were beginning to tire of formidable
harmonic and symphonic orchestras. That music is only an artistic combination
of sonorous waves may be true, but there is no reason why these waves should be
let loose in deafening tempests.

In short, our four instrumentalists
had decided to introduce the Americans to the gentle and ineffable delights of
chamber music. They set out together for the New World, and for two years the
dilettanti Yankees had spared them neither cheers nor dollars. Their matinees
and soirees were well attended. The Quartette Party, as they called themselves,
were hardly able to accept their invitations from the wealthy. Without them
there was no festival, no meeting, no rout, no five o’clock teas, no garden
parties worth talking about. This infatuation had put a good deal of money in
the pockets of the fortunate four, and if they had placed it in the Bank of New
York it must have constituted a fairly large capital. But why should we not confess
it? They had spent their money freely, had these Americanized Parisians! They
never thought of saving, did these princes of the bow, these kings of the four
strings! They enjoyed to the full this life of adventure, sure of meeting
everywhere and always with a good welcome and a profitable engagement. They had
travelled from New York to San Francisco, from Quebec to New Orleans, from Nova
Scotia to Texas, living rather a Bohemian life
—
that
Bohemia of the young which is the most ancient, the most charming, the most
enviable, the most loved province of our old France! We are much mistaken if
the moment has not come to introduce them individually to those of our readers
who never had, and never will have, the pleasure of listening to them.

Yvernès
—
first violin
—
thirty-two years old, above the medium
height, slight in build, fair, curly hair, smooth face, large black eyes, long
hands, made to stretch to any extent over his Guarnerius, of elegant bearing,
wearing a flowing cloak of some dark colour, and a high silk hat, somewhat of
an attitudinizer perhaps, the most careless of the four, the least troubled
about matters of interest, in all respects the artiste, an enthusiastic admirer
of beautiful things, a virtuoso of great talent and great promise.

Frascolin
—
second violin
—
thirty years old, short, with a
tendency to stoutness
—
which
he by no means liked
—
brown in hair and brown in beard, big in the head, black eyes, and a long nose,
marked at the side with red by the pinch of his gold eyeglasses
—
which he could not
do without
—
a
good fellow, good natured in every way, acting as the banker of the quartette,
preaching economy, and never listened to, not at all envious of the success of
his comrade, having no ambition of being promoted as solo violin, excellent
musician nevertheless
—
and
then wearing but a simple dust coat over his travelling suit.

Pinchinat
—
alto, commonly addressed as “his
highness”
—
twenty-seven
years of age, the youngest of the troupe, the most frolicsome too, one of those
incorrigibles who are boys all their life, a fine head, intelligent eyes,
always wideawake, hair approaching to red, pointed moustache, teeth white and
sharp, tongue never still, never tired of puns and nonsense, and alert for
repartee, invariably good-humoured, for ever making light of the discomforts
that fell to his comrades, and therefore continually being reprimanded and
taken up short by the chief of the Quartette Party.

For it had a chief, the
violoncellist, Sebastien Zorn, chief by his talent, chief by his age, for he
was fifty, short, rotund, hair abundant, and curled on the temples, moustache
bristling, and losing itself in the whiskers which ended in points, complexion
brick red, eyes gleaming through the glasses of his spectacles, which he
doubled by means of an eyeglass when he read music, hands plump, the right
accustomed to the undulatory movements of the bow, ornamented with large rings
on the second and little finger.