An hour later I went back to an empty theatre. The orchestra assembled and my overture was run through—like a sleep walker I listened, hearing nothing—when the performers applauded me I wondered vaguely whether Miss Smithson would like it too! Fool that I was!!
It seems impossible that I could, even then, have been so ignorant of the world as not to know that, be the overture what it may, at a benefit, no one in the audience listens. Still less the actors, who only arrive in time for their turns and trouble themselves not at all about the music.
My overture was well played, fairly received—but not encored—Miss Smithson heard nothing of it and left next day for Holland.
By a strange chance (I could never get her to believe it was chance) I had taken lodgings at 96 Rue de Richelieu, opposite her house. Worn out, half dead, I lay upon my bed until three the next afternoon; then, rising, I crawled wearily to the window.
Cruel Fate! At that very minute she came out and stepped into her carriage en route for Amsterdam.
Was ever misery like mine?
Oh God! my deadly, awful loneliness; my bleeding heart! Could I bear that leaden weight of anguish, that empty world; that hatred of life; that shuddering shrinking from impossible death?
Even Shakespeare has not described it; he simply counts it, in Hamlet, the cruellest burden left in life.
Could I bear more?
I ceased to write; my brain grew numb as my suffering increased. One power alone was left me—to suffer.