With my unhoped-for treasure I went back to the hotel to dine with Mademoiselle Patti.
As I entered her salon the charming diva clapped her hands joyously and danced up to me, holding up her lovely forehead for my accustomed kiss.
During dinner she spoilt me with her dainty coaxing attentions.
“There is something wrong with you,” she said, “what are you thinking of? I can’t have you miserable.”
They came with me to the station, she, with a friend and Strakosch, and they were allowed to go on to the platform. Adelina, dear child, clung to me until the signal was given, then the winsome creature flung both arms round my neck and kissed me, crying gaily:
“Good-bye, good-bye just for a week. We shall be in Paris on Tuesday and you must come and see us on Thursday.”
Why could I not claim such affection from Madame F. and mere politeness from Mademoiselle Patti?
Adelina was like a brilliant, diamond-eyed humming-bird fluttering round me; I was enchanted but not touched. Though I liked her greatly, I did not love her.
My soul was given to that old, sad, unsought after woman, hers it has always been and will be to my dying day.
Balzac and even Shakespeare—master painters of passions—knew nothing of love like this. Tom Moore alone has imagined and voiced it in—