"Am I so frightful, then, Carl?"
"You are too beautiful, Maria; but your eyes seem to have no sleep in them."
"They have not had, and they will not have until I have completed this task the angel set me."
"Oh, Maria! you are thinking of the Chevalier."
"I was not; I was thinking of St. Cecilia. If the Chevalier had ordered me to make a symphony, I should to everlasting have remained among the dunces."
I often, often lament, most sadly, that I am obliged to form her words into a foreign mould, almost at times to fuse them with my own expression; but the words about the angel were exactly her own, and I have often remembered them bitterly.
"You will find it very hard to write without any prospect of rehearsal, Maria."
"I can condense it, and so try it over; but I am certain of hearing it in my head, and that is enough."
"You will not think so still when it is written. How did it first occur to you?"
"In a moment, as I tell you, Carl, while the violin tones, hot as stars that are cold in distance, were dropping into my heart. The subjects rose in Alps before me. I both saw and heard them; there were vistas of sound, but no torrents; it was all glacier-like,—death enfolding life."