cket of gold satin with pearl flowers for buttons; the precious cloths
that rolled about like waves of light in his study, velvets and silks,
of flaming reds and greens and blues, thrown across the furniture and
the tables haphazard, with no reference to usefulness--for their sheer
beauty only--to stimulate the eye with the goad of color, satisfy the
Master's passion for brightness; and perfumes, as well, with which his
garments--always of oriental splendor--were literally saturated; phials
of rose emptied at random, filling the neighborhood with the fragrance
of a fabulous garden, strong enough to overcome the hardiest uninitiate,
but strangely exciting to that Prodigy in his struggle with the Unknown.

And then Hans Keller described the man himself, never relaxed, always
quivering with mysterious thrills, incapable of sitting still, except at
the piano, or at table for his meals; receiving visitors standing,
pacing back and forth in his salon, his hands twitching in nervous
uncertainty; changing the position of the armchairs, rearranging the
furniture, suddenly stopping to hunt about his person for a snuff-box or
a pair of glasses that he never found; turning his pockets inside out,
pulling his velvet house-cap now down over one eye, now back over the
crown of his head, or again, throwing it into the air with a shout of
joy or crumpling it in his hand, as he became excited in the course of a
discussion!

And Keller would close his eyes, imagining that he could still hear in
the silence, the faint but commanding voice of the Master. Oh, where was
he now? On some star, doubtless, eagerly following the infinite song of
the spheres, a divine music that only his ears had been attuned to hear!
And to choke his emotion, the musician would sit down at the piano,
while Leonora, responsive to his mood, would approach him, and standing
as rigid as a statue, with her hands lost in the musician's head of
rough tangled hair, sing a fragment from the immortal _Tetralogy_.

Worship of Wagner transformed the butterfly into a new woman. Leonora
adored Keller as a ray of light gone astray from the glowing star now
extinguished forever; she felt the joy of humbleness, the sweetness of
sacrifice, seeing in him not the man, but the chosen representative of
the Divinity. Leonora could have grovelled at Keller's feet, let him
trample on her--make a carpet of her beauty. She willed to become a
slave to that lover who was the repository of th