—MARCEL PROUST, Les Plaisirs et les Jours No ONE UNDERSTOOD WHY the maestro was so anxious and melancholy after that night when Cardinal Barberini came through. It was true he had eaten and drunk too much at the banquet, and had then slept badly and eventually fallen into one of his syncopes, and come out of it too ill to attend the farewell breakfast the next morning. But none of that was particularly unusual for him, and the extremely warm letter from the cardinal should have more than reassured him about missing the send-off breakfast. Really, his anno mirabilis had lasted for almost three years now and was still going strong. He should have been happy. But he wasn’t. His sleep was frequently broken by nightmares, and his days were irritable to him. “Something bad is going to happen,” he kept saying, looking through his telescope at Jupiter like a soothsayer. “Something monstrous wants to be born.” One night he called Cartophilus to him. Staring at the old man over a cup of warmed milk brought to him to ward off the chill, he said suddenly, “Where is your master?”
