The Musician raised his hands with a shrug of his shoulders, and then sank back in his former listless attitude.
"That is your Polish taste, Velasco. Try a bit of Schinken with me, or a Stückchen of Cervelat with cheese--eh? If you eat, you will be less nervous, and your fingers will become warm. When you play, you are abstinent as a priest before the mass."
The older man smoothed his beard, which was fast turning grey, and lifted the beer mug to his lips.
"Ich danke!" said Velasco with irony: "My dear Kapellmeister, I am not as those who would serve Art with a bottle of champagne under each arm. I want no fumes in my brain and no clod between my fingers when I meet the Muse face to face."
"You are right there," said Ritter thoughtfully, lowering his glass: "It is like a pearl coming out of the throat of a swine to hear the tones from Bauermann's fingers, when he can scarce keep himself at the pianoforte, and his head rocks between his shoulders like a top falling. His sense of beauty is all that is left of him, and that seems over ripe, like a fruit left too long in the sun. Materialism is the artist's curse. Their heads are in the clouds and their feet are in the slough.--Pah!"
The Kapellmeister tapped his glass sharply with the edge of his knife, and called without turning: "Hey--a Münchener, Fräulein!"
He scanned the face of his companion curiously. The Violinist seemed to be dreaming; he held the Rhine wine in his hand, gazing down into its liquid gold as if a vision lay at the bottom of the glass.
The Musician half raised his lids and then lowered them again.
"Potztausend--no! I hear what you say! You speak of musicians and swine in the same breath. It is true. You ought to know, who wave the baton over them year in and year out. They rise like a balloon and then they fall--!"
He dropped his hands on the table with an expressive gesture. "They give out through the senses; they take in the same way." He lifted the glass, staring into it again: "But it is not through pleasure, not pleasure, Ritter, never pleasure, that their senses are developed, and they learn to feel, and give back what they have felt. They think it is pleasure, and they fall into the error, and their art dies within them sooner or later. It is like some fell thing clutching at their feet, and when they try to rise, it seizes them and drags them back, and they sink finally--they sink!"