Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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Other music ran now as undercurrent to his thoughts: wild, incoherent music, illusive and wailing, like the shriek of a hundred violins, yet clear and chord-like. Art, beauty, love and life passed in a panorama before him, exotic with the hot perfumes of world-passion. He saw struggles and wars, banners waving somewhere, voices giving hail to a king—and looking at him through it all were the sweet sad eyes of the girl who was now a woman.

Again the music changed; the air was low and sad. He seemed to front a howling crowd who accused him. The smoke rose again around the body of John Wycliffe; a monk knelt at a prie-dieu and laughed because the poor had not bread. Alexander VI pressed once more the poisoned ring into his brother’s hand, and the black-robed figures of the Inquisition scowled and whispered. Three great men said there was no God; a million voices seemed to cry, “Why! Why must we believe?” Then as in a crystal he seemed to hear Huxley, Nietzsche, Zola, Kant cry, “I will not”—He saw Voltaire and Shaw wild with cold passion. The voices pleaded “Why?” and the girl’s sad eyes gazed at him with infinite longing.