“Dear Humbert,—It is six in the evening, and I have only just got up, for I took laudanum yesterday and am quite stupefied. What a life! I would bet a good deal that you too are worse. Nevertheless I mean to go out to-night to hear Beethoven’s Septuor; I want it to warm my blood, and my favourite artists are playing it.
“The day after to-morrow I ought to read Hamlet at Massart’s. Shall I have strength to go through it? It lasts five hours. Of my audience of five only Madame Massart knows anything of the play.
“I feel almost afraid of bringing these artist natures too abruptly face to face with this supreme manifestation of genius. It seems to me like giving sight suddenly to one born blind.
“I believe they will understand it, for I know them well; but to be forty-five or fifty and not know Hamlet! One might as well have lived down a coal mine. Shakespeare says:
“Glory is like a circle in the water
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself
Till, by wide spreading, it disperse to naught.”
“26th April 1865.—How can I tell you what is cooking in the musical cauldron of Paris? I have got out of it and hardly ever get in again.
“I went to a general rehearsal of Meyerbeer’s Africaine, which lasted from half-past seven to half-past one.
“I don’t think I am likely to go again.
“Joachim, the celebrated German violinist, has been here ten days; he plays nearly every evening at different houses. Thus I heard Beethoven’s piano trio in B♭♯, the sonata in A, and the quartett in E minor—the music of the starry spheres.
“You will quite understand that after this I am in no mood for listening to commonplace productions praised by the Mayor and Town Council.