Volume II Part 24 (1/2)
”Thone chose this cottage for me because of the number of the flowers
I believe she thinks there is so wicked! If you had been so kind as to bring your violin, I would have filled up the case with roses, and then you would not have had to carry theh I did not bring h, for strewing that sarcophagus”
”Sarcophagus means 'tomb,' does it not? It is a fine idea of resurrection, when you take out the sleeping music and make it live I knohat you mean about violets,--their perfume is like the tones of your instrument, and one can separate it fro, as those tones from all other tones of the orchestra”
”I have a tender thought for violets,--a very sad one, Miss Benette; but still sweet now that what I reo”
”That is the best of sorrow,--all passes off with tih we can hardly call it sweet I arieved I talked of violets, to touch upon any sorrow you rieved that you have had a sorrow, for you are very young”
”I seem to feel, Miss Benette, as if you h since I saw you, and I am forced to remember it is not the case I am not sorry you spoke about violets, or rather that I did, because some day I must tell you the whole story of my trouble I know not why the violet should remind me more than does the beautiful white flower upon that rose-bush over there, for I have in my possession both a white rose that has lived five su violet which will never allow et”
”I know, fro: but why is that so sad? We must all die, Mr Auchester, and cannot stay after we have been called”
”It may be so, and must indeed; but it was hard to understand, and I cannot now read why a creature so foro before any one had dreamed she could possibly be taken; for she had so ret I must ever feel, if you had also known her”
Clara had led me onwards as I spoke, and we stood before that rose-tree; she broke off a fresh rose quietly, and placed it in my hand
”I am more and more unhappy It was not because I was not sorry that I said so Pray tell , Miss Benette, only sixteen; and arden, or than any star in the sky; for it was a beauty of spirit, of passion, of awful iht by her how slightly I had learned all things; she had learned too much, and of what men could not teach her
I never saw such a face,--but that was nothing I never heard such a voice,--but neither had it any power, coenius and its sway upon the soul She had written a symphony,--you knohat it is to do that! She wrote it in three ht leisure of a ress, yet there was so about it that ot over the attack; and the tiht of an orchestra and command its interpretation It was a private perfor the players She did not carry it through In the very ht her dead then, but she lived four days”
”And died, sir? Oh! she did not die?”
”Yes, Miss Benette, she died; but no one then could have wished her to live”
”She suffered so?”
”No, she was only too happy I did not knohat joy could rise to until I beheld her face with the pain all passed, and saw her s”
”Sheshe loved except Jehovah, and no home but heaven”
”Indeed, she must have been happy, for she left some one behind her who had been to her so dear as to lad she was so wise, then, as to hide from him that she broke her heart to part with hiirl who could write a symphony,” said Clara, very cal the flowers she was holding in her hand ”Sir, what did they do with the symphony? and, if it is not rude, what did the rose and the violet have to do with this sad tale?”
”Oh! I should have told you first, but I wished to get the worst part over; I do not generally tell people It was the day our prizes were distributed she took her death-blow, and I received from the Chevalier Seraphael, who superintended all our affairs, and who ordered the rewards, a breast-pin, with a violet in amethyst, in memory of certain words he spoke to me in a rather mystical chat we had held one day, in which he let fall, 'the violin is the violet' And poor Maria received a silver rose, in memory of Saint Cecilia, to whom he had once compared her, and to whom there was a too true resemblance in her fateful life The rose was placed in her hair by the person I told you she loved best, just as she was about to stand forth before the orchestra; and when she fainted it fell to athered it up, and have kept it ever since I do not knohether I had any right to do so, but the only person to whom I could have co of her In fact, he would not permit it; he left Cecilia after she was buried, and never returned”
Clara here raised her eyes, bright and liquid, and yet all-searching; I had not seen them so
”I feel for him all that my heart can feel Has he never ceased to suffer? Was she all to him?”
”He will never cease to suffer until he ceases to breathe, and then he will, perhaps, be fit to bear the bliss that ithdrawn fro, I believe, for he is still now, and unco,--ever proud, but only proud about his sorrow Soree with rown into a soul so passionate”