And the singer gazed with tearful eyes at the broad _boina_ of black
velvet, the lock of gray hair, two broken, rusty steel pens--souvenirs
of the Master, that Hans Keller had piously preserved in a glass case.
"You knew him--tell me how he lived. Tell me everything: talk to me
about the Poet ... the Hero."
And the musician, no less moved, described the Master as he had seen him
in the best of health; a small man, tightly wrapped in an
overcoat--with a powerful, heavy frame, however, despite his slight
stature--as restless as a nervous woman, as vibrant as a steel spring,
with a smile that lightly touched with bitterness his thin, colorless
lips. Then came his "genialities," as people said, the caprices of his
genius, that figure so largely in the Wagner legend: his smoker, a
jacket 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.
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