He was very much pleased with my achievements. I was very much pleased with everything; I was saturated with pleasure. That day has lasted me--a light--to this. Had I been stricken blind and deaf afterwards, I ought not to have complained,--so far would my happiness, in degree and nature, have outweighed any other I can imagine to have fallen to any other lot. Let those who endure, who rejoice, alike pure in passion, bless God for the power they possess--innate, unalienable, intransferable--of suffering all they feel. I shall never forget that scene. The hall was already crowded when we pressed into our places half an hour before the appointed commencement. Every central speck was a head; the walls were pillared with human beings; the swarm increased, floating into the reserved places, and a stream still poured on beneath the gallery. As if to fling glory on music not of its own, it was a most splendid day,--the finest, warmest, and serenest we had had for weeks. Through the multitudinous panes the sky was a positive blaze of blue; the sunshine fell upon the orchestra from the great arched window at the end of the vaulted building, and through that window's purple and orange border radiated gold and amethyst upon the countenances of the entering crowd. The hands of the clock were at the quarter now; we in the chorus wondered that St. Michel had not come. Again they moved, those noiseless hands, and the "tongue" of iron told eleven. We all grew anxious. Still, as all the clocks in the town were not alike, we might be the mistaken ones by ours. It now struck eleven, though, from the last church within our hearing, and there was not yet St. Michel. We were all in the chorus fitted in so nicely that it would have been difficult for some to get out, or if out, impossible to get in. They were all in the orchestra placed as closely as possible, amidst a perfect grove of music-stands. The reserved seats were full, the organist was seated, the score lay wide open upon the lofty desk; but St. Michel did not come!