II + 

The Sources of Musical Feeling⁠—The Blind Boy and the Melody + 

I + 

Thus the dark mind of the child was gradually enriched by new images. By means of his abnormally keen sense of hearing he was enabled to penetrate deeper and deeper into the secrets of Nature. The dense, impenetrable gloom that veiled his brain like a heavy cloud still enfolded him, and although he had felt this from his birth, and one might suppose that he would have become accustomed to his misfortune, yet such was the temperament of the child that he instinctively strove to free himself from this dark curtain. His perpetual though unconscious efforts to gain that light of which he knew not, had left upon his face the impress of his vague and painful struggle. + 

Yet the blind boy enjoyed moments of quiet satisfaction, even of childish delight, which came to him whenever he received a keen sensation from certain outward impressions, revealing unfamiliar manifestations of the unseen world. Nature in all her grandeur and power was not wholly inaccessible to him. Once, for instance, when he was led to a high cliff above the river, he listened with a peculiar expression to the faraway splashing of the water below, and when he heard the stones slipping from beneath his feet he seized his mother’s dress and held his breath in fear. From that time depth was represented to him by the gentle murmuring of water at the foot of a cliff, or by the startling sound of stones falling. + 

A remote and indistinct song conveyed to the mind of the boy the idea of distance; but when during a storm in the springtime the pealing thunder rang out, filling all the air with its reverberations and angry mutterings, gradually dying away amid the clouds, he listened with awe, his heart swelling with emotion, and in his mind arose a grand conception of the magnitude of the firmament. Thus sound embodied for the child the immediate expression of the outside world; all other impressions were merely supplementary to that of hearing, by whose aid his ideas took form as if poured into a mould. + 

Sometimes during the heat of noonday, when all around was quiet, when human life seemed at a standstill, and Nature had lapsed into that peculiar repose beneath which the noiseless current of life is felt rather than seen, the face of the blind boy likewise assumed an expression peculiar to himself. He seemed like one absorbed in listening to sounds inaudible to all the world beside⁠—sounds issuing from the depths of his own soul, impelled to utterance by the universal calm. One who observed him at such moments might fancy that his vague thoughts had found an echo in his heart, like the uncertain melody of a song. + 

II + 

The blind boy was already five years old. Slender and frail he was, it is true, but still he could walk and even run with ease and freedom around the house. No stranger on seeing him walk with such entire confidence from room to room, always turning at the right place and finding what he sought, would for one moment have suspected that the boy was blind; he would simply have been taken for a child intensely in earnest, ever with a faraway look in his eyes. But in the yard he moved with less confidence, feeling his way by the aid of his cane. If it so chanced that he had no cane in his hand, he chose rather to creep upon the ground, passing his hands rapidly over every object that came in his way. + 

III + 

It was a calm summer evening. Uncle Maxim was sitting in the garden. The father as usual was occupied in some distant field. Everything was quiet in the yard and around the house; the hamlet was to all appearances going to sleep, and the hum of the servants’ and workmen’s voices had likewise ceased. + 

The boy had already been in bed for half an hour. He lay between sleeping and waking. For a certain length of time this peaceful hour had seemed to arouse strange memories within him. Of course he could see neither the dusky blue sky, nor the dark waving treetops, outlined sharp and clear against the starry heavens, nor the frowning peaks of the courtyard buildings, nor the blue haze overspreading the ground, mingling with the pale golden light of the moon and the stars. For several days he had fallen asleep under the charm of a spell of which he could render no account the following day. When drowsiness had benumbed his senses, when he could no longer hear the rustle of the beech-trees, or the distant barking of the village dogs, or the voice of the nightingale beyond the river, or the melancholy tinkling of the bells attached to the colt browsing in the neighboring field⁠—when all these varied sounds grew faint and indistinct, it seemed to the blind boy that they were all merged in one harmonious melody, which made its way quietly into the room, and hovering over his bed brought in its train vague but enticing dreams. The next morning when he woke he still felt their influence, and asked his mother: “What was that⁠—yesterday? What was it?” + 

The mother did not know what her child meant; she thought he was probably excited by some dream. That night she put him to bed herself, and when she saw that he was on the point of falling asleep, she left him without observing anything unusual. But on the following day the boy again spoke to her of something he had heard the previous evening which had made him feel so happy. “It was lovely, mamma⁠—so lovely! What was it?” + 

That night the mother decided to remain longer by her child’s bedside, to discover if possible the solution to this strange riddle. She sat in a chair beside the crib, knitting mechanically, listening meanwhile to the even breathing of her Petrùsya. She thought he was asleep, when suddenly his gentle voice was heard in the darkness: + 

“Mamma, are you there?” + 

“Yes, yes, my boy!” + 

“Please go away; it must be afraid of you; it has not come. I had almost dropped to sleep, and still it has not come.” + 

The astonished mother heard the child’s drowsy and plaintive whisper with a strange sensation. He spoke of his dreams in the most perfect good faith, as though they were reality. Nevertheless the mother rose, bent down to kiss him, and then quietly left the room; but she determined to creep cautiously round to the open window that looked out into the garden. Before she succeeded in carrying her plan into execution, the riddle was solved. Suddenly from the stable came the soft musical tones of a shepherd’s pipe, blending with the gentle rustling sounds of the southern evening. She had no difficulty in divining the pleasing influence which these simple modulations of an artless melody, harmonizing with the witching hour of dreams, would naturally possess over the imagination of her boy. She herself paused, and stood for a moment listening to the tender strains of a song of Little Russia, and with a sense of relief entered the dusky garden in search of Uncle Maxim. + 

“Joachim plays well,” the mother thought. “It is strange that this fellow who seems so rough should possess such an amount of feeling.” + 

IV + 

Joachim really did play well. He could even handle the more intricate violin, and there had been a time when on a Sunday at the inn no one had played the Cossack dance or the merry Polish Cracovienne better than himself. When seated on a cask with the violin braced against his shaven chin, and his tall sheepskin hat on the back of his head, he would draw the bow across the quivering strings, hardly a man in the inn could keep his seat. Even the old one-eyed Jew who accompanied Joachim on a bass-viol would wax enthusiastic, his awkward instrument with its heavy bass straining every nerve, as it were, to keep time with the light notes of Joachim’s violin, which seemed to dance as well as sing; while old Yankel himself, with his skullcap on his head, would lift his shoulders and turn his bald head, keeping time with his body to the gay capricious tune. It would hardly be worth while to describe the effect upon others whose feet are so made that at the very first note of a dancing tune they involuntarily begin to shuffle and stamp. + 

Ever since Joachim had fallen in love with Màrya, a courtyard servant-maid of the neighboring Pan, he had neglected his merry violin. In truth it had not helped him to win the heart of the saucy Màrya, who preferred the smooth German face of her master’s valet to the bearded visage of the musician. Since that time his violin had not been heard either in the inn or at the evening gatherings. He had hung it on a nail in the stable, nor did he seem aware that from dampness and neglect the strings of the instrument, once so dear to his heart, were constantly snapping with a sound so sharp, plaintive, and dismal that the very horses neighed in sympathy, and turned their heads to gaze in wonder at their indifferent master. In order to supply its place, Joachim had purchased from a travelling Carpathian mountaineer a wooden pipe. He probably expected to find it a more suitable medium wherewith to express the sorrow of a rejected heart, and that its sympathetic modulations would harmonize with his hard lot. But the mountain pipe disappointed Joachim’s expectations. He tried nearly a dozen of them in turn, in every possible way; he cut them, soaked them in water, dried them in the sun, hung them up under the roof to dry in the wind⁠—but all to no avail. The mountain pipe did not commend itself to the Hohòl’s heart. It whistled where it should have sung, wailed when he wanted a sentimental tremolo, and never in fact responded to his mood. + 

At last Joachim grew disgusted with all the wandering mountaineers, having made up his mind that not one of them understood the art of producing a good pipe, and decided to manufacture one with his own hands. For several days he roamed with frowning brow through swamp and field; went up to every willow bush, examined its branches, occasionally cut off one of them; but he failed to find just what he needed. With sternly frowning brow he still pursued his search, and came at last to a spot above the slowly running river, where the placid waters barely stirred the lilies’ snow-white heads. This nook was sheltered from the wind by a dense growth of spreading willows that hung their pensive heads over the dusky and peaceful depths below. Parting the bushes, Joachim made his way down to the river, where he paused for a moment; and the idea suddenly came to him that this was the very spot where he was to find the object of his search. The wrinkles vanished from his brow. From his bootleg he drew out a knife with a string attached to it, and after carefully examining a faintly whispering young willow, he unhesitatingly selected a straight and slender stalk that bent over the steep, crumbling shore. Tapping it with his finger for some purpose of his own, a look of self-satisfaction came upon his face, as he watched it sway to and fro in the air, and listened to the gentle murmur of its leaves. + 

“That is the very thing,” he muttered, nodding with delight, as he threw into the river the twigs he had previously cut. + 

It proved to be a glorious pipe. Having dried the willow, Joachim burned out the pith with a red-hot wire; and boring six round holes, he cut the seventh crosswise and tightly closed one end with a wooden plug, across which he cut a narrow slit. Then for a week he hung the pipe up by a slender string, that it might be warmed by the sun and dried by the wind; after which he carefully cleaned it with his knife, scraped it with glass, and rubbed it hard with a piece of cloth. The upper part of the pipe was round; on its smoothly polished surface he burned with a twisted bit of iron all sorts of curious designs. When he at last tested his instrument by playing upon it several tones of the scale, he nodded his head excitedly, emitted a grunt of satisfaction, and hastily hid it in a safe place near his bed. He did not like to make the first musical trial amid the turmoil of the day; but that very evening, trills delicately modulated, tender, pensive, and vibrating, might have been heard from the direction of the stable. Joachim was perfectly satisfied with his pipe. It seemed a part of himself; its utterances came, as it were, from his own enthusiastic and sentimental bosom; and every change of feeling, every shade of sorrow, was forthwith transmitted to his wonderful pipe, which in its turn repeated it in gentle echoes to the listening evening. + 

V + 

Now, Joachim in love with his pipe was celebrating his honeymoon. In the daytime he conscientiously fulfilled his duties as a stable-boy⁠—watered the horses, harnessed them, and drove with the Pani or with Maxim. Sometimes, when he looked over toward the neighboring village where the cruel Màrya lived, his heart was conscious of a pang. But as evening drew on, all his woes were forgotten; even the image of the dark-browed maiden lost distinctness, as it stood before him enveloped in mist, faintly outlined against a pale background, serving but to lend a certain pensive melancholy to his melodious pipe. + 

As he lay in the stable that evening, Joachim’s musical ecstasy found vent in tremulous melodies. The musician had not only forgotten the cruel beauty, but had even lost all consciousness of his own existence, when suddenly he started and sprang up in bed, leaning on his elbow. Just when his notes were growing most pathetic, he felt a tiny hand pass swiftly and lightly over his face and hands, and then with equal swiftness over the pipe. At the same time he heard by his side the rapid panting of one whose breathing is quickened by agitation. “Begone, away with you!” he uttered the usual exhortation, and immediately added the question: “Are you the good or the evil spirit?” that he might know if it were the Evil with whom he had to deal. But a moonbeam that had just crept into the stable showed him his mistake. Beside him stood the small Pan, wistfully stretching forth his little hands. + 

An hour later, the mother on going to take a look at her sleeping Petrùsya did not find him in bed. For a moment she was startled, but the maternal instinct directly told her where to look for the lost boy. Joachim, pausing for a moment, was quite abashed at the unexpected sight of the “gracious Pani” standing in the doorway of the stable. It appeared that she had been there for several moments before he ceased playing, watching her boy, who sat on the cot wrapped in Joachim’s sheepskin coat, listening intently for the interrupted melody. + 

VI + 

From that evening the boy came to Joachim in the stable every night. It never occurred to him to ask Joachim to play for him during the daytime; he seemed to fancy that the stir and bustle of the day precluded all possibility of these sweet melodies. But as soon as the shades of evening began to fall, Petrùsya was seized with a feverish impatience. The evening tea and supper served but as signs of the approach of the longed-for moment; and the mother, although she felt an instinctive aversion for those musical séances, still could not forbid her darling to seek the company of the piper and spend two hours with him in the stable before bedtime. Those hours became for the boy the happiest of his life; and the mother saw with painful jealousy that the impressions of the previous evening held entire possession of the child; that during the day he no longer responded to her caresses with his former ardor; that while sitting in her lap with his arms about her, his thoughts would revert to Joachim’s song of the previous evening. + 

It suddenly occurred to the mother that while she was in the pension of Pani Radètzka, several years ago, she had among other “delightful accomplishments” pursued the study of music. This reminiscence was not in itself a source of delight, because it was connected with the memory of her teacher⁠—one Klapps; a lean, prosy, and irritable old German Fräulein. This bilious maiden, who in order to impart to the fingers of her pupils the required flexibility, had trained them most skilfully, succeeded at the same time in destroying every vestige of poetical and musical feeling. The very presence of Pani Klapps, not to mention her pedantic method, was well calculated to abash so sensitive an emotion. Therefore after leaving school, and even since her marriage, Anna Michàilovna had felt no inclination to renew her musical studies. But now, as she listened to the piper, she was conscious that in addition to the emotion of jealousy a sense of appreciation and feeling for the living melody had sprung up in her soul, and the image of the German Fräulein was almost forgotten. The result of this was that Pani Popèlska requested her husband to send to town for an upright piano. + 

“If you wish it, my dove,” replied the exemplary husband. “I thought you did not care much about music.” + 

That same day a letter was sent to town; but several weeks must elapse before the instrument could arrive in the country. + 

Meanwhile the same harmonious strains proceeded from the stable evening after evening; and the boy, who had ceased to ask his mother’s permission, hurried eagerly thither at the proper time. With the customary odor of the stable was mingled the fragrance of the hay and the pungent smell of the leather harnesses; and whenever the piper paused for a moment one could hear the faint rustling of the wisps of hay which the horses, quietly munching, pulled through the bars, and also the whispering of the green beeches in the garden. In the midst of all this Pètrik sat listening like one enchanted. He never interrupted the musician; but once when the latter had been resting, and several minutes had passed in absolute silence, the charmèd influence that possessed the boy gave way to a passionate yearning. He reached to grasp the pipe, took it in his trembling hands, and carried it to his lips. Gasping for breath, his first notes were faint and tremulous, but by slow degrees he gained a certain mastery over the simple instrument. Joachim placed the boy’s fingers on the holes, and although the tiny hand could hardly grasp them, he had very soon mastered the notes of the scale. Every note possessed to him an individuality of its own; he knew in which opening he should find each of these tones, whence to bring it forth; and at times when Joachim was quietly and slowly playing some simple melody, the blind boy’s fingers would imitate his movements. As tone followed tone, he seemed to know exactly from which hole each one came. + 

VII + 

At last, after three weeks had gone by, the piano was brought from town. Pétya stood in the yard and listened attentively, in order to discover how the workmen hurrying to and fro would carry “the music” into the rooms. Surely it must be very heavy, for when they lifted it down from the cart there was a creaking noise, and also much groaning and puffing among the men. And now he could hear their heavy, measured tread; and at every step there was a jarring, a rumbling, and a ringing above their heads. When this strange music was placed on the drawing-room floor, it again sent forth a dull rumbling sound like the threatening tones of an angry voice. + 

All this alarmed the boy and by no means attracted him toward this new guest, at once inanimate and wrathful. He went into the garden, and thus he missed hearing them set up the instrument; neither did he know when the tuner, who had arrived from town, tuned it with his tuning-hammer, tried the keyboard, and tightened the wires. It was not until all was in readiness that the mother ordered Pétya to be brought into the room. + 

With the best Vienna instrument as an auxiliary, Anna Michàilovna felt confident of victory over the simple rustic pipe. Now her Pétya is to forget the stable and the piper, and she will once more become the source of all his joys. She glanced merrily at her boy as he timidly entered the room, accompanied by Uncle Maxim and Joachim; the latter, having asked leave to listen to the foreign music, with downcast eyes and overhanging forelock now stood bashfully in the doorway. Just as Uncle Maxim and Pétya seated themselves on the lounge Anna suddenly struck the keys of the piano. She played the piece that she had learned to perfection at the pension of Pani Radètzka, under the instruction of Fräulein Klapps. It was not a particularly brilliant piece, but quite complicated, and one that required a certain amount of dextrous fingering; at the public examination Anna Michàilovna gained much praise, both for herself and her teacher, by the playing of this piece. No one positively knew, but many surmised, that the silent Pan Popèlski was first charmed with Pani Yatzènko during the identical quarter of an hour required for the performance of her difficult music. Now the young woman played it with the view of winning a second victory: she wished to bind still more closely to herself her son’s young heart, enticed away from her by the pipe of the Hohòl. + 

But the fond mother’s hope was doomed to disappointment; the Vienna instrument proved no match for the willow twig of Ukraine. True, the piano from Vienna was rich in resources⁠—expensive wood, fine strings, the skilled workmanship of a Vienna artisan, and all the wealth of its wide musical range; but the pipe of the Ukraine had allies of its own⁠—it was in its native haunts, surrounded by its own Ukraine nature. Before Joachim had cut it with his knife and burned out its heart with red-hot iron, it had swung to and fro above the river, so dear to the boy’s heart; it had been caressed by the sun of the Ukraine, and fanned by its breezes until the keen eye of the piper had caught sight of it overhanging the precipice. The foreign visitor had but a slender chance against the simple native pipe, whose tones had first been heard by the boy at the peaceful hour of bedtime, through the mysterious rustling of the night and the murmuring of the green beech-trees, with all the well-known voices of Nature in the Ukraine that found an echo within his soul. + 

There could, moreover, be no fair comparison between Pani Popèlska and Joachim. Her fingers, it is true, were more dextrous and flexible; the melody she played was richer and more complex; and Fräulein Klapps had labored diligently to make her pupil mistress of this difficult instrument. But Joachim had the true musical instinct. He had loved also, and sorrowed; and animated by these emotions, he sought his themes in the surrounding Nature, and there he found his simple melodies⁠—the soughing of the forest, the gentle whisper of the grass upon the steppes, the sad, old, national melodies that he had heard sung over his crib when he was an infant. + 

The instrument from Vienna had truly but a slender chance against the magic of the Hohòl’s pipe. Not more than a minute had passed before Uncle Maxim with sudden energy rapped on the floor with his crutch. When Anna Michàilovna turned toward him, she saw on Pètrik’s pale face the same expression it had worn as he lay upon the grass on the memorable day of their first spring walk. Joachim in his turn looked sympathetically at the boy, then with one disdainful glance at the German music he left the room, his heavy boots resounding across the drawing-room floor. + 

VIII + 

Many a tear and no slight mortification did this failure cost the poor mother. She, “the gracious Pani Popèlska,” who had been applauded by a “select audience,” to find herself so utterly defeated⁠—and by whom? By a common stable-boy, Joachim, with his absurd pipe! As she remembered the disdainful glance of the Hohòl when her unsuccessful concert came to an end, an angry blush overspread her face, and she felt an actual hatred for the “detestable fellow.” But every evening when her boy hastened to the stable, she would open the window, rest her elbows on the sill, and listen intently. At first it was with a feeling of angry disdain that she sought to catch that “stupid squeaking;” but gradually⁠—she knew not how it came to pass⁠—the “stupid squeaking” had taken possession of her soul, and she found herself eagerly devouring those mournful and pathetic strains. When she woke to a realizing sense of this, she began to wonder whence came their fascination, their enchanting mystery; and by degrees, the bluish dusk of evening, the vague shadows of the night, and the harmony existing between those melodies and Nature revealed the secret. No longer resisting the attraction, she confessed to herself⁠— + 

“Yes, I must admit that this humble music does possess a rare and genuine feeling⁠—a bewitching poetry not to be acquired by notes.” + 

This was indeed true. The secret of this poetry might be found in the intimate relation between Nature and those memories of the past of which it was ever whispering to the human heart. Joachim, the rude peasant, with his greasy boots and calloused hands, possessed that harmonious, that keen feeling for Nature. + 

Then the mother became aware that her haughty spirit had succumbed before the stable-boy. She no longer remembered his coarse garments, redolent of tar; but the pleasing modulations of the songs recalled to mind his kind face, the mild expression of his gray eyes, and the bashful, humorous smile that lurked under the long mustache. Yet again the angry color rose, overspreading the face and temples of the young woman: she was conscious that in this struggle for her child’s admiration she had placed herself on a level with this “varlet,” and that he, “the varlet,” had conquered. The whispering trees in the garden high above her head, the light of the stars in the dark-blue sky, the violet mist that shrouded the earth, together with Joachim’s melodies, all contributed to fill the mother’s soul with gentle melancholy. Her spirit yielded itself in meek submission, and entered more and more deeply into the mystery of that pure, direct, and simple poetry of Nature. + 

Yes, the peasant Joachim had the true, living feeling! And how was it with the mother herself? Was she entirely devoid of that feeling? Why then did her heart beat so wildly, and why did the tears rise to her eyes? Did not her emotion spring from her devoted love for her unfortunate blind child, who left her for Joachim because she failed to give him as keen a pleasure as the latter? She remembered the expression of distress on the boy’s face caused by her playing, and hot tears gushed from her eyes; it was with difficulty that she controlled her suffocating sobs. + 

The poor mother! It seemed as if an incurable malady had settled upon her, revealing its presence by an exaggerated tenderness at every manifestation of suffering on the part of the child, and a mysterious sympathy which by a thousand invisible chords bound her aching heart to his. For this reason, the strange rivalry between herself and the Hohòl piper, which in a woman of different nature would merely have stirred a feeling of annoyance, became for her a source of bitter, exaggerated suffering. + 

Thus time went on, without bringing the fond mother any apparent relief; and yet she was gradually gaining a certain advantage. She began to feel within her own breast an influx of melody and poetry, not unlike that which had attracted her in the playing of the Hohòl. Hope, too, sprang up in her heart. Under the influence of this sudden access of confidence she approached the piano several times, and opened it, intending to overpower the low-voiced pipe by harmonious chords. But every time a sense of irresolution and timidity restrained her. She remembered her boy’s distressed face, and the disdainful glance of the Hohòl; and dark as it was, her cheeks flushed with shame, while with timid wistfulness she let her hands flutter over the keys. + 

Still, day by day an inner consciousness of her own power grew within the woman’s heart; and choosing the time when her boy was playing in the evening in some remote garden-path, or perhaps out for a walk, she would seat herself at the piano. At first her attempts were unsatisfactory; her hands seemed powerless to evoke a response to her conception, and the tones of the instrument failed to interpret her emotions. But soon she perceived that the ease and freedom with which she could express her feelings through the medium of those tones were gradually increasing. The Hohòl’s lessons had not been without avail; while the mother’s love, and an intuitive perception of the potent charm that swayed the heart of her boy helped her to profit by them. Her difficult and brilliant themes had given place to pensive songs; the sad Ukraine “meditation” echoed in plaintive tones through the dimly lighted rooms, adding a tenderness to the mother’s heart. + 

At last she gained confidence to enter into an open contest; and one evening a strange combat went on between the manor and the stable. From the shaded barn with its overhanging thatch, gently quivering, came the trills of the pipe, while advancing to the encounter from the open windows of the mansion, glittering in the moonlight through the leaves of the beech-trees, echoed the full ringing chords of the piano. At first neither the boy nor Joachim, prejudiced as they were, deigned to pay any attention to the “learned” music of the mansion. The boy even frowned when Joachim paused, and impatiently urged him on, saying⁠— + 

“Come, play! Go on playing!” + 

Three days had not gone by when these pauses grew more and more frequent. Joachim often laid his pipe aside to listen, and the boy, forgetting to urge his friend, listened also. Finally Joachim said in a dreamy sort of way, “That is fine! Listen! that is a fine thing!” And then in his dreamy, absentminded way he took the boy in his arms and carried him through the garden to the open window of the drawing-room. + 

Joachim supposed that the “gracious Pani” was playing for her own amusement, and would take no notice of them. But Anna Michàilovna had become aware that her rival, the pipe, had been silenced; she realized her victory, and her heart beat with pride and joy. Moreover, her displeasure with Joachim had entirely vanished. She knew that she owed her present happiness to him⁠—he had shown her how to regain the devotion of her child; and if her boy were now to receive from her new and valuable impressions, they would both owe a debt of gratitude to their teacher, the peasant piper. + 

IX + 

The ice was broken. On the following day the boy with timid curiosity came into the drawing-room, where he had not been since the new city guest⁠—that angry, loud-voiced creature⁠—had taken possession of the room. But yesterday he heard the guest sing a song that pleased his ear, and gave him cause to change his opinion of the instrument. With the last lingering traces of his former timidity he drew near the spot where the piano stood, and stopping at a short distance from it, he listened. There was no one in the drawing-room. His mother sat on a sofa in the adjoining room, sewing; she held her breath as she watched him, admiring every movement, every change of expression on his sensitive face. + 

Putting out his hand, the blind boy touched the polished surface of the piano; then overcome by bashfulness, he immediately withdrew it. Having twice repeated this experiment he drew nearer, and began a careful examination of the instrument, stooping to the floor to pass his hand over the legs, and feeling his way as far around its sides as he could go. At last his hand touched the smooth keyboard: the soft reverberation of the string vibrated uncertainly on the air. The boy listened to this vibration long after it had ceased to be audible to his mother; then with a look of intense interest he touched another key. Presently, as he drew his hand along the keyboard, he happened to touch a note of the upper register; then he touched every note, one after the other, and paused to listen as they vibrated in trembling cadence and were lost in the air. The face of the blind boy wore an expression of mingled attention and delight; he evidently enjoyed every separate tone, and by this sensitive observation of each elementary sound as component parts of melodies yet unborn, the future artist might be divined. + 

But it seemed as if each note possessed for the blind boy an attribute peculiar to itself. When beneath the pressure of his finger a brilliant note of the upper register rang out, a glow would come upon his face, uplifted as if to follow the ringing note in its upward flight; but when he touched a deep bass-note, he stooped to listen⁠—seeming to feel sure that the heavy note must be rolling along the ground, scattering itself all over the floor, to be finally lost in the corners. + 

X + 

Uncle Maxim simply tolerated all these musical experiments. Strange though it may seem, the inclinations which had so unmistakably manifested themselves in the boy excited mingled emotions in the breast of the old soldier. On the one hand, this intense passion for music indicated the boy’s inherent musical talent, and foreshadowed a possible career; but in spite of this, a vague sense of disappointment filled Uncle Maxim’s heart. + 

“It cannot be denied,” thus ran Maxim’s thoughts, “that music is a power by which a man may sway the hearts of the multitude. He, the blind man, will attract dandies and fashionable women by the hundreds, will play a valse or a nocturne,”⁠—here Uncle Maxim’s musical vocabulary came suddenly to an end⁠—“and they will wipe away their tears with their delicate handkerchiefs. Ah, the deuce take it! that is not what I could have wished for him. But what’s to be done about it? The fellow is blind; he must do what he can with his life. But if it had only been singing! A song speaks not alone to the fastidious ear⁠—it excites fancies, arouses thoughts in the mind, and kindles courage in the heart.” + 

“Look here, Joachim,” Uncle Maxim said one evening, as he followed the blind boy into the stable, “do for once stop that whistling! It might do well enough for a street urchin, or for the shepherd boy in the field; but you are a grown-up peasant, although that silly Màrya has made a calf of you. Fie! I am really ashamed of you! The lass proved hard-hearted, and that has made you so soft that you whistle like a quail caught in a net.” + 

As he listened in the darkness to this sharp tirade from the Pan, Joachim smiled at his unnecessary indignation. But he did feel somewhat wounded by his allusion to the street urchin and the shepherd boy, and replied⁠— + 

“Don’t say that, Pan! Not a shepherd in the Ukraine has a pipe like that, let alone the shepherd boy. Theirs are nothing but whistles; but mine⁠—just listen!” He closed all the openings with his fingers, and struck the two notes of the octave, drinking in as he did so the fullness of the tones. + 

Maxim spat. “The Lord have mercy on us, the lad has lost his wits! What do I care for your pipe? They are all alike, both pipes and women, with your Màrya into the bargain! You had better sing us a song, if you know how⁠—a good song of our fathers’ or grandfathers’.” + 

Maxim Yatzènko, a Little Russian himself, was simple and unassuming in his manners toward peasants and servants. Although he often scolded and shouted at them, he never hurt any man’s feelings; and while his inferiors were on familiar terms with him, they never failed to treat him with respect. Hence to the Pan’s request, Joachim replied⁠— + 

“Why not? I used to sing as well as the next man. But, Pan, do you think our peasant songs are likely to please you?” he asked, slightly sarcastic. + 

“Eh, what nonsense, fellow!” replied Maxim. “A pipe cannot be compared with a good song, if only a man can sing well. Let us listen to Joachim’s song, Petrùsya. But only you may not understand it, my boy.” + 

“Is it to be a peasant’s song?” inquired the boy. “I understand their language.” + 

Maxim heaved a sigh. “Ah, my dear boy, these are not slave songs; they are the songs of a strong and free people. Your mother’s ancestors sang them on the steppes of the Dnièper, the Danube, and the Black Sea. Well, you will understand them sooner or later, but just now I am anxious about something else.” + 

In point of fact, what Maxim really feared was that the picturesque language of the folk-songs would not appeal to the vaguely obscure mind of the child; he felt that the animated music of epic song must be interpreted to the heart by familiar images. He forgot that the old bards, the singers and bandura-players of the Ukraine, were for the most part blind men, who had been driven by misfortune or physical incapacity to the lyre, or bandura, to gain their daily bread. It is true that these men were but beggars and artisans with harsh voices, some of whom had not become blind until they were old men. Blindness wraps the outer world about with a dark veil, which likewise envelops the brain, entangling and impeding its processes; and yet by the aid of inherited conceptions and impressions gained from other sources, the brain creates in this darkness a world of its own, sad, gloomy, and sombre, but not devoid of a vague poetry peculiar to itself. + 

Maxim and the blind boy seated themselves on the hay, while Joachim reclined on his bench⁠—a position which seemed especially conducive to his artistic efforts⁠—and after musing for a moment he began to sing. Whether by chance or by instinct, his choice was a happy one. He selected a historical picture⁠— + 

“Over yonder on the hill the reapers are reaping.” + 

No one who has heard this beautiful song well rendered can ever forget its strange melody⁠—high-pitched and plaintive, as though oppressed by the sadness of historical reminiscence. It contains no stirring incidents, no bloody battles or exploits; neither is it the farewell of a Cossack to his beloved, nor a daring invasion, nor a naval expedition on the blue sea or the Danube. It is but a fleeting picture that comes uppermost in the memory of a Little Russian, like a vague revery, like the fragment of a dream from an historic past. In the midst of his monotonous, everyday life that picture rises before his imagination, its outlines dim and indistinct, steeped in the strange melancholy that breathes from bygone days⁠—days that have left their impress on the memory of man. The lofty burial-mounds beneath which lie the bones of the Cossacks, where fires are seen burning at midnight, where groans are sometimes heard, still remind us of the past. The popular legends as well as the folk-songs, now fast dying out, also tell us of the past. + 

“Over yonder on the hill the reapers are reaping, + 

And beneath the hill, the green hill, + 

Cossacks are passing, + 

Cossacks are passing! + 

They are reaping on the hill, while below the troops are marching.” + 

Maxim Yatzènko was lost in admiration of the sad song. That charming melody, so well suited to the words, called up before his fancy a scene illumined by the melancholy rays of sunset. Along the peaceful slopes of the hillsides he seemed to see the bowed and silent figures of the reapers, and below moving noiselessly, one after the other, the ranks of the army, blending with the shades of evening in the valley. + 

“Doroshenko at the head, + 

Leading his army, his Zaporòg army + 

Gallantly.” + 

And the prolonged note of the epic song resounds, vibrates, and dies away upon the air, only to start forth anew, evoking fresh images from the dim twilight. These were the pictures which at the bidding of the song took form in Uncle Maxim’s mind; and the blind boy, who had listened with a sad and clouded face, was also impressed by it after his own fashion. + 

When the singer sang of the hill where the reapers were reaping, Petrùsya was straightway transported in his imagination to the summit of the familiar cliff. He recognizes it by the faint plashing of the river against the stones below. He knows very well what reapers are⁠—he has heard the ringing sound of the sickles and the rustle of the falling ears. But when the song went on to describe the action under the hill, the imagination of the blind listener at once transported him into the valley below. Though he no longer hears the sound of the sickles, the boy knows that the reapers are still up there on the hill, and he knows that the sound has died away, because they are so high above him⁠—as high as the pine-trees, whose rustling he hears when he stands on the cliff; and below, over the river, echoes the rapid monotonous tramp of the horses’ hoofs. There are many of them, and an indistinct murmur rises through the darkness from under the hill. Those are the Cossacks “on the march.” + 

Petrùsya also knows what “Cossacks” means. The Cossack Hvèydka, who sometimes stops at the house, is called by everybody “the old Cossack.” Many a time has he lifted Petrùsya to his lap and smoothed his hair with his trembling hand. When the boy according to his custom felt of his face, he found deep wrinkles under his sensitive fingers, a long, drooping mustache and sunken cheeks, and on those cheeks the tears of old age. It was such Cossacks as he that the boy pictured to himself marching below the hill. They are on horseback, and like Hvèydka they wear long mustaches, and are old and wrinkled too. These vague forms advance slowly amid the darkness, and like Hvèydka are weeping for grief. It may be that the echo of Joachim’s song suggests the lament of the unfortunate Cossack who exchanged his young wife for a camp-bed and the hardships of a campaign, as it rings over hill and valley. + 

One glance was enough for Maxim to discover that despite the boy’s blindness the poetic images of the song appealed to his sensitive nature. + 