Patience! perhaps Bice may at last bring her marvelous voice to my aid.
December 15.—Every day our communion has grown more exalted. She breathes upon me the atmosphere of that radiant world, and fills my soul with rapture. I live in a sublime enthusiasm. We hold intercourse by means of music. We stand upon a higher plane than that of common men. She has raised me there, and has made me to be a partaker in her thoughts.
Now I begin to understand something of the radiant world to which she was once for a brief time borne. I know her lost joys; I share in her longings. In me, as in her, there is a deep, unquenchable thirst after those glories that are present there. All here seems poor and mean. No material pleasure can for a moment allure.
I live in a frenzy. My soul is on fire. Music is my sole thought and utterance. Colonel Despard thinks that I am mad. My friends here pity me. I smile within myself when I think of pity being given by them to me. Kindly souls! could they but have one faint idea of the unspeakable joys to which I have attained!
My Cremona is my voice. It expresses all things for me. Ah, sweet companion of my soul’s flight! my Guide, my Guardian Angel, my Inspirer! had ever before two mortals while on earth a lot like ours? Who else besides us in this life ever learned the joys of pure spiritual communion? We rise on high together. Our souls are borne up in company. When we hold commune we cease to be mortals.
My Opera is finished. The radiancy of that Divine Love which has inundated all the being of Edith has been imparted to me in some measure sufficient to enable me to breathe forth to human ears tones which have been caught from immortal voices. She has given me ideas. I have made them audible and intelligible to men.
I have had one performance of my work, or rather our work, for it is all hers. Hers are the thoughts, mine is only the expression.
I sought out a place of solitude in which I might perform undisturbed and without interruption the theme which I have tried to unfold.
Opposite my house is a wild, rocky shore covered with the primeval woods. Here in one place there rises a barren rock, perfectly bare of verdure, which is called Mount Misery. I chose his place as the spot where I might give my rehearsal.
She was the audience—I was the orchestra—we two were alone.