HE saw himself drowned in a lake; heavy, icy drops of water fell rhythmically upon his breast, and when I made him listen to the sound of the drops of water which really were falling rhythmically on the roof, he denied ever having heard them.
He was even rather annoyed that I should have interpreted this in terms of a harmony made in imitation.
He protested in the strongest possible terms, as he had every right to do, against the childishness of these imitations intended for the ear.
His genius was full of mysterious harmonies of nature, interpreted through sublime equivalents in his musical thought, and not by a slavish reduplication of external sounds.
His composition that evening was certainly full of drops of rain ringing on the resonant tiles of the Chartreuse; but they were interpreted in his imagination and in his melody through tears falling from the sky upon his heart.