I can only say that my head swam for a few minutes, and I was obliged to shut my eyes before I could tell whether I was singing or not. I was very thankful when somebody somewhere got out as a fugue came in, and we were stopped, because it gave me a breathing instant. But then again, breathless,--nerveless, I might say, for I could not distinguish my sensations,--we rushed on, or I did, it was all the same; I was not myself yet. At length, indeed, it came, that restoring sense of self which is so precious at some times of our life. I recalled exactly where I was. I heard myself singing, felt myself standing; I was as if treading upon air, yet fixed as rock. I arose and fell upon those surges of sustaining sound; but it was as with an undulating motion itself rest. My spirit straightway soared. I could imagine my own voice, high above all the others, to ring as a lark's above a forest, tuneful with a thousand tones more low, more hidden; the attendant harmonies sank as it were beneath me; I swelled above them. It was my first idea of paradise. And it is perhaps my last. Let me not prose where I should, most of all, be poetical. The rehearsal was considered very successful. St. Michel praised us. He was a good old man, and, as Davy had remarked, very steady. There was a want of unction about his conducting, but I did not know it, certainly not feel it, that night. The "Messiah" was more hurried through than it should have been, because of the late hour, and also because, as we were reminded, "it was the most generally known." Besides, there was to be a full rehearsal with the band before the festival, but I was not to be present, Davy considerately deeming the full effect would be lost for me were it in any sense to be anticipated. I feel I should only fail if I should attempt to delineate my sensations on the first two days of performance, for the single reason that the third morning of that festival annihilated the others so effectually as to render me only master at this moment of its unparalleled incidents. _Those_ I bear on my heart and in my life even to this very hour, and shall take them with me, yea, as a part of my essential immortality. CHAPTER VIII. The second night I had not slept so well as the first, but on the third morning I was, nathless, extraordinarily fresh. I seemed to have lived ages, but yet all struck me in perfect unison as new. I was only too intensely happy as I left our house with Davy, he having breakfasted with us.