hears the music
both horizontally and vertically. This combination of the upright and
the transverse amused Pobloff immensely. He declared, with his
inscrutable giggle, that all other arts were childish in their demands
upon the intellect when compared to music. "You can see pictures, poems,
sculpture, and architecture--but music you must hear, see, feel, smell,
taste, to apprehend it rightfully: and all at the same time!" Pobloff
shook his heavy head and tried to look solemn. "Think of it! With every
sense and several more besides, going in different directions,
brilliantly sputtering like wet fireworks, roaring like mighty
cataracts!" Ah, it was a noble, crazy art, and the only art, except
poetry, that moved. All the rest are beautiful gestures arrested....

Pobloff ate five meals a day, and sometimes expanding his chest to its
utmost and extending his arms to the zenith, yawned prodigiously. Born a
true pessimist, often was bored to the extreme by existence. In addition
to the fortnightly symphony concerts and their necessary rehearsals, he
did nothing but compose and dream of new spaces to conquer. He was a
Czar over his orchestra, and though a fat, good-humored man, had a
singularly nasty temper.

Convinced that in music lay the solution of this particular mathematical
problem, he had been working for over a year on a symphonic poem which
he jocularly christened "The Abysm." Untouched by his wife's daily
tauntings--she was an excellent musician and harpist in his band--he
could not help admitting to his interior self, that she was right in her
aspersions on his originality: Richard Strauss had shown him the way.
Pobloff decided to leave map and compass behind, and march out with his
music into some new country or other--he did not much care where. Could
but the fourth dimension be traced to tone, to his tones, then would his
name resound throughout the ages; for what was the feat of Columbus
compared with this exploration of a vaster spiritual America! Pobloff
trembled. He was so transported by the idea, that his capacious frame
and large head became enveloped in a sort of magnetic halo. He diffused
enthusiasm as a swan sheds water; and his men did not grumble at the
numerous extra rehearsals, for they realized that their chief might
make an important discovery.

The composer was a stern believer in absolute music. For him the charms
of scenery, lights, odor, costume, singers, and the subtle voice of the
prompt