“Nevertheless I want to see her.”
“Hector, I beg you will do no such thing. You will make a fool of yourself and upset her.”
“I want to see her,” I repeated doggedly, with clenched teeth.
“Fifty-one!” he cried again, “you had much better keep your bright, fresh, youthful memory of her.”
He gave me a pen, and subsided into an armchair in fits of laughter, while my incoherent, despairing letter was composed. I sent it, but no reply came. When next I go to Grenoble I mean to see her.
In May 1851 I was commissioned by Government to judge instruments at the London Exhibition, and wrote to Joseph d’Ortigue in June 1851—
“I want to tell you of the extraordinary impression made on me by the singing of six thousand Charity School children in St Paul’s Cathedral. It is an annual affair, and is, beyond compare, the most imposing, the most Babylonian ceremony I ever witnessed.
“It was a realisation of part of my dreams, and proof positive of the unknown power of vast musical masses.
“This fact is no more understood on the Continent than is Chinese music.