Volume I Part 30 (1/2)
”Understand me, then, that what I say I say to satisfy you: you are better as you are, better than you could be with ht to teach; I a of which it is not ht to call myself poor Do you understand, Charles?”
”I think, sir, that you mean you make music, and that therefore you have no tihter, like joy-bells ”There is as _ music But what I meant for you to understand was this, that I do not take ; because that would be to take the bread froh; and you knoeet it is even to give ht by money! I shall take this little friend of o and I am permitted to do so; and I shall treat him as my son, because he will, indeed, be my music-child, and no more indebted to me than I am to music, or than we all are to Jehovah”
”Sir, you are certainly a Jew if you say 'Jehovah;' I was quite sure of it before, and I am so pleased”
”I cannot contradict thee, but I am almost sorry thou knowest there are even such people as Jews”
”Why so, sir? Pray tell ht that _you_, before all other persons, would have rejoiced over them”
”Why so, indeed! but because the h to break the head, and perhaps the heart But now of this little one: he must, indeed, be covered as a bird in the nest, and shall be And if I turn hied wonder, thou wilt stand up and have to answer for him,--is it not so?”
”Sir, I am certain he will play wonderfully upon what he calls those 'beautiful cold keys'”
”Ah!” he answered dreamily, ”and so, indeed, they are, whose very tones are but as different shadows of the saht, the ice-blue darkness, and the snowy azure blaze He has right, if he thinks them cold, to find them _alone_ beautiful” He spoke as if in sleep
”Sir, I do not knohat you mean, for I never heard even Milans-Andre”
”You are to hear hiain the raillery pointed every word, as if arrows ”dipped in balm”
”I mean that I scarcely knohat those keys are like, for I never heard the lady I did not find the 'Tone-Wreath' cold, but I thought, when she played with Santonio, that her playing was cold,--cold co, as you know, sir, the violin”
”You are right; yes The violin is the violet!”
These words, vividly pronounced, and sowisdom to my soul I could have claimed them as my own, so exactly did they respond to my own unexpressed necessities
But indeed, and in truth, thefalling froh everything was new He did not talk incessantly,--on the contrary, his re into the noonday There was that in theh conserved,--the tones, the race unutterable; passing froent, but never supercilious gravity Such recollection only proves that the beautiful essence flows not well into the form of words,--for I re uttered forth, itself as hway, and we met no one for at least a mile except the peasants, who passed into the landscape as part of its picture The intense green of May, and its quickening blossoms, strewed every nook and plantation; but the sweetness of the country, so exuberant just there, only see ornament, the one idea I contemplated,--that he was close at hand There had been much sun, and one was naturally inclined to shade in the thrilling May heats, which per to the pulses
At last we ca into a mill-stream; for we could see far off in the clear air the flash of that wheel, and hear its lastfall But here at hand it was all lonely, unspanned by any bridge, and having its feathery banks unspoiled by any clearing hand A knot of beautiful beech-trees threw dark kisses on the tre water; there ildest rushes here, and the thick spring leaves of the yet unblooet-me-not on either hand The blue hill of Cecilia lay yet before us, but so in my companion's face made ested it I pulled outon before hirass I caain, and entreated him to repose He even flushed with satisfaction at my request, which I made, as I ever do, rather i out his own handkerchief, which was a royal-purple silk, he spread it beside ers upon h the roseate blood shone through, and the wandering violet veins showed the clearness of the unfretted palm But it was a hand too refined for model beauty, too thin and rare for the youth, the almost boyhood, that shone on his forehead and in his unwearied eye The brightness of heaven seemed to pour itself upon my soul as I sat beside him and felt that no one in the whole world was at that in, and began to weave a sort of basket So fleetly his fingers twisted and untwisted the but sit and weave green rushes the livelong day
”Pull ly; and I, who had been absorbed in those clear fingers playing, looked up at hiht of pure abstraction, and I answered not except by gathering the rushes, breaking the them one by one across his knees The pretty as nearly finished; it was the loveliest green casket I could have fancied, with a plaited handle It looked like a fairy field-flung treasure I wished it were for me When it was quite ready, and as co the lowest branch of the swaying beech grove, hung the plaything upon it and said, ”I wish it were filled with ripe red strawberries”
”Why so, sir?” I ventured
”Because one would like to ireen basket by the dusty way, filled with strawberries”
We arose, and again walked on
”Sir, I would rather have the basket than the strawberries”
”I wish a little child may be of your mind Were you happy, Charles, when you were a little child?”