“Shall I come and see you? You may safely say ‘yes’ for I shall not come. Forgive me! I am getting serious again, the pain is beginning and I most go to bed. Heartiest greetings to you both.”
To A. Morel.
“August 1864.—Thank you for your cordial letter. The officer’s cross and Vaillant’s letter pleased me—both for my friends’ sake and my enemies’. How can you keep any illusions about music in France? Everything is dead except stupidity.
“I am almost alone. Louis has gone back to St Nazaire and all my friends are scattered except Heller, whom I see sometimes. We dine together at Asnières and are about as lively as owls; I read and re-read; in the evenings I stroll past the theatres in order to enjoy the pleasure of not going in. Yesterday I found a comfortable seat on a tomb in Montmartre cemetery and slept for two hours.
“Sometimes I go and see Madame Erard at Passy, where I am welcomed with open arms; I relish having no articles to write and being thoroughly lazy.
“Paris gets daily more beautiful; it is a pleasure to watch her blossoming out.
“I hear there is to be a mighty festival at Carlsruhe; Liszt has gone there from Rome and they are going to discourse ear-splitting music. It is the pow-wow of young Germany presided over by Hans von Bulow.”
Rarely have I suffered from ennui so terribly as I did during the beginning of September 1864.
My friends were away except Stephen Heller, the delicate wit and learned musician, who has written so much lovely music for the piano and whose gentle melancholy and devotion to the true deities of Art made him to me such a grateful companion. My son was home from Mexico, he, too, was not lively and we often pooled our gloom and dined together.
One day, after dinner at Asnières, we walked beside the river and discussed Shakespeare and Beethoven, my son taking part in the Shakespeare portion, since, unfortunately, he was then unacquainted with Beethoven. We finally agreed that it was worth while living in order to worship the Beautiful, and if we could not annihilate all that is inimical to it we must be content to despise the commonplace and recognise it as little as possible. The sun was setting; we sat on the river-bank opposite the isle of Neuilly, and, as we watched the wayward wheeling of the swallows over the water, I suddenly remembered where I was.