The theme was in somewhat the nature of a mazurka, sweet and graceful. The voices sounded now near at hand, now far distant; now a bass was heard, now a tenor, now a falsetto such as the Tyrolese warblers are wont to sing.
It was not a song, but the graceful masterly sketch of a song. I could not comprehend what it was, but it was beautiful.
Those voluptuous, soft chords of the guitar, that sweet, gentle melody, and that solitary figure of the man in black, amid the fantastic environment of the lake, the gleaming moon, and the twin spires of the cathedral rising in majestic silence, and the black tops of the poplars—all was strange and perfectly beautiful, or at least seemed so to me.
All the confused, arbitrary impressions of life suddenly became full of meaning and beauty. It seemed to me as though a fresh fragrant flower had sprung up in my soul. In place of the weariness, dullness, and indifference toward everything in the world, which I had been feeling the moment before, I experienced a necessity for love, a fullness of hope, and an unbounded enjoyment of life.
“What dost thou desire, what dost thou long for?” an inner voice seemed to say. “Here it is. Thou art surrounded on all sides by beauty and poetry. Breathe it in, in full, deep draughts, as long as thou hast strength. Enjoy it to the full extent of thy capacity. ’Tis all thine, all blessed!”
I drew nearer. The little man was, as it seemed, a travelling Tyrolese. He stood before the windows of the hotel, one leg a little advanced, his head thrown back; and, as he thrummed on the guitar, he sang his graceful song in all those different voices.