I should like to look into the wonderful eyes of the
old Ninette, to feel the soft cheek laid against mine, to hold the little
brown hands, as in the old _gamin_ days.
It is a foolish thought, because I am not forty yet, and with the moderate
life I lead I may live to play Stradivarius for another thirty years.
There is always the hope, too, that it, when it comes, may seize me
suddenly. To see it coming, that is the horrible part. I should like to be
struck by lightning, with you in my arms, Stradivarius, oh, my beloved--to
die playing.
The literary gentleman over my head is stamping viciously about his
room. What would his language be if he knew how I have rewarded his
tormentress--he whose principles are so strict that he would bear the
agony for hours, sooner than give a barrel-organ sixpence to go to another
street. He would be capable of giving Giacomo a sovereign to pocket my
coin, if he only knew. Yet I owe that unmusical old organ a charming
evening, tinged with the faint _soupcon_ of melancholy which is necessary
to and enhances the highest pleasure. Over the memories it has excited I
have smoked a pleasant cigar--peace to its ashes!
THE STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS
During five years of an almost daily association with Michael Garth, in a
solitude of Chili, which threw us, men of common speech, though scarcely of
common interests, largely on each other's tolerance, I had grown, if not
into an intimacy with him, at least into a certain familiarity, through
which the salient feature of his history, his character reached me.
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