Would to heaven it were come and gone!
I feel no reluctance, my friends, to be thus explicit. Time was,
when these emotions would be hidden with immeasurable solicitude
from every human eye. Alas! these airy and fleeting impulses of
shame are gone. My scruples were preposterous and criminal. They
are bred in all hearts by a perverse and vicious education, and
they would still have maintained their place in my heart, had not
my portion been set in misery. My errors have taught me thus much
wisdom:--that those sentiments which we ought not to disclose it is
criminal to harbor.
It was proposed to begin the rehearsal at four o'clock. I counted
the minutes as they passed; their flight was at once too rapid and
too slow: my sensations were of an excruciating kind; I could taste
no food, nor apply to any task, nor enjoy a moment's repose; when
the hour arrived I hastened to my brother's.
Pleyel was not there. He had not yet come. On ordinary occasions
he was eminent for punctuality. He had testified great eagerness
to share in the pleasures of this rehearsal. He was to divide the
task with my brother, and in tasks like these he always engaged
with peculiar zeal.
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