"I don't know. I would tell him if it would do you any good, even though you disliked me to do so."
"Thanks; but it would do me no good. Florimond is poor: he could not collect an orchestra; and proud: he would not like me to be laughed at."
"Then what is it, Maria?"
"Carl, you know I am not vain."
I laughed, but answered nothing; it was too absurd a position.
"Well, I am dying of thirst to hear my first movement, which is written, and which is that sight to my eyes that my ears desire it to the full as much as they. The second still lingers,—it will not be invoked. I could, if I could calculate the effect of the first, produce a second equal to it, I know. But as it is yet in my brain, it will not give place to another."
"You have tried it upon the piano,—try it for me."
"No, I cannot, Carl. It is nothing thus; and, strange to say, though I have written it, I cannot play it."
"I can believe that."
"But no one else would, Carl; and therefore it must be folly for me to have undertaken this writing,—for we are both children, and I suppose must remain so, after all."