Consuelo's escape from the castle, and even from Albert, her
admiration of him, and her incapacity to love him till her own
character be more advanced, are told with great naturalness. Her
travels with Joseph Haydn, are again as charmingly told as the
Venetian life. Here the author speaks from her habitual existence, and
far more masterly than of those deep places of thought where she is
less at home. She has lived much, discerned much, felt great need of
great thoughts, but not been able to think a great way for herself.
She fearlessly accompanies the spirit of the age, but she never
surpasses it; _that_ is the office of the great thinker.
At Vienna Consuelo is brought fully into connection with the great
world as an artist. She finds that its realities, so far from being
less, are even more harsh and sordid for the artist than for any
other; and that with avarice, envy and falsehood, she must prepare for
the fearful combat which awaits noble souls in any kind of arena, with
the pain of disgust when they cannot raise themselves to
patience--with the almost equal pain, when they can, of pity for those
who know not what they do.
Albert is on the verge of the grave; and Consuelo, who, not being able
to feel for him sufficient love to find in it compensation for the
loss of that artist-life to which she feels Nature has destined her,
had hitherto resisted the entreaties of his aged father, and the
pleadings of her own reverential and tender sympathy with the wants of
his soul, becomes his wife just before he dies.
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