When he awoke in the morning he was relieved to find that his brain seemed to have become quite clear, surprisingly clear, as if the fog that had been gathering about him had lifted; and he sat at the piano playing for many hours, and when he had finished playing he heard still more ravishing sounds in the air, a music which was like what Chopin might have written in Paradise. Tears of delight came into his eyes; he sat listening in an ecstasy. Now everything had come right; all the trouble and confusion had gone out of the sounds; they no longer teased him with their muttering, coming and going elusively; they were all about him, they flooded the air, they were like pure joy, speaking at last its own language.
And for days after that he went about with a strange, secret smile on his face, more than reconciled to his new companion, enamoured of him; and at last he could keep the secret no longer, but had to tell every one he met of this miracle that now went with him wherever he went. When he stopped listening, and played the music that he had known before this new music spoke to him, he seemed to play better than he had ever played before. Only, when he had stopped playing, he sank back sleepily into his ecstatic oblivion, not distinguishing between those he talked with in his dream (the Chopin out of Paradise) and the few remaining friends, who now came about him pityingly, and tried to do what they could for him. Their coming awakened him a little; he awoke enough to realise that they thought him mad; and it was with a very lucid fear that he waited now for the doctor who was to decide finally whether he might still keep his place in the world.
Five years later, when Christian Trevalga died in the asylum at ----, some loose scraps of paper were found, on which he had jotted down a few disconnected thoughts about music. They are, perhaps, worth giving, for they are more explicit than he ever cared, or was able, to be when he was quite sane; and, fragmentary as they are, may help to complete one's picture of the man.
'It has been revealed to me that there is but one art, but many languages through which men speak it. When the angels talk among themselves, their speech is art; for they do not talk as men do, to discuss matters or to relate facts, but to express either love or wisdom. It is partly the beauty of their voices which causes whatever they say to assume a form of beauty. Music comes nearer than any other of the human languages to the sound of these angelic voices. But painting is also a language, and sculpture, and poetry; only these have more of the atmosphere of the earth about them, and are not so clear. I have heard pictures which spoke to me melodiously, and I have listened to the faultless rhythm of statues; but it was as an Englishman who knows French and Italian quite well follows a conversation in those languages. He has to substitute one sound for another in his mind.