Moths by Ouida — page 291: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MOTHS. ee 287 are not weary of me. I will sing you something that you never heard.’’ His hands strayed over the chords in that improvisation of " music which comes to the great singer as the sudden sonnet to the poet, as the burst of wrath to the orator. Correze was no mere interpreter of other men’s melody; he had melody in his brain, in his hands, in his soul. He drew a strange pathetic music from the keys; a music sad as death, yet with a ring of defiance in it, such defiance as had looked from his eyes when he entered and had stood by the side of the wife of Zouroff. He sang La Coupe of Sully-Prudhomme—the Coupe d’Or that he had quoted on the sands by the North Sea at Schevenine: *““‘Dans les verres epais du cabaret brutal, Le vin bleu coule a flots, et sans treve a la ronde. Dans le calice fin, plus rarement abonde Un vin dont la clarte soit digne du cristal. *“Enfin, la coupe d’or du haut d’un piedestal Attend, vide toujours, bien que large et profonde, Un cru dont la noblesse a la sienne reponde: On tremble d’en souiller l’ouvrage et le metal.’’ He sang it to music of his own, eloquent, weird, almost terrible. —music that seemed to search the soul as the rays of a lamp probe dark places. The person he looked at while he sang was Sergius Zouroff, Les verres epais du cabaret brutal! The words rang down ithe silence that was around him with a scorn. that was immeasurable, with a rebuke ‘that was majestic. Sergius Zouroff listened humbly, as if held under a spell; his eyes could not detach their gaze from the burning scorn of the singer. Les verres epais du cabaret brutal! The line was thundered through the stillness with a challenge and ja meaning ‘that none who heard it could doubt, with a pias- sion of scorn that cut like a scourge and spared not. Then his voice dropped low, and with the tenderness of an un- utterable yearning recited the versehe had not spoken by thesea: “Plus le vase est grossier de forme et de matiere, Mieux il trouve a combler sa contenance entiere, } Aux plus beaux seulement il n’est point de liqueur. ar There was once more a great silence. Vere still stood quite miotiionlesis. Sergius Zouroff leaned agiainst the white wall, with his head stooped and his eyes sullen and dull with an unwilling shame. Correze rose and closed the piano. “T came to sing; I have sung; you will allow me to leave you niow, for I must go away by daybreak to Paris.”’ And though many tried to keep him, none could do so, andi he went. Vere gave him her hand as ‘he passed out of the white draw- ing-room, l ’comicbooks (e(o )