will. But, though I would I cannot. What a room! The fire-place is
filled with orange peel and brown paper, cigar stumps and matches.
One blind I pulled down this morning, the other is crooked. The lamp
glass is cracked, my work too. I dare not look at the wall paper nor
the pictures. The carpet I have kicked into holes. I can see it
though I can't feel it, it is so thin. My clothes are lying all about.
The soot of London begrimes every object in the room. I would buy a
pot of musk or a silken scarf if I dared, but how can I?

I must get my bread first and live for beauty after. Everything is
refused though, everything sent back or else dropped as it were into
some bottomless pit or gulf.

Here is my opera. This is my _magnum opus_, very dear, very clear,
very well preserved. For it is three years old. I scored it nearly
altogether, by _her_ side, Hortense, my dear love, my northern bird!
You could flush under my gaze, you could kindle at my touch, but you
were not for me, you were not for me!--My head droops down, I
could go to sleep. But I must not waste the time in sleep. I will
write another story. No; I had four returned to-day. Ah! Cruel London!
To love you so, only that I may be spurned and thrust aside, ignored,
forgotten. But to-morrow I will try again. I will take the opera to
the theatres, I will see the managers, I will even tell them about
myself and about Hortense--but it will be hard. They do not know me,
they do not know Hortense. They will laugh, they will say "You fool."
And I shall be helpless, I shall let them say it. They will never
listen to me, though I play my most beautiful phrase, for I am nobody.
And Hortense, the child with the royal air, Hortense, with her
imperial brow and her hair rolled over its cushion, Hortense, the
_Chatelaine_ of _Beau Sejour_, the delicate, haughty, pale and