It is well for us that time does not stay,--not grievous, but a gladsome thought that all we most dread is carried beyond our reach by its force, and that all we love and long to cherish is but taken that it may remain, beyond us, to ripen in eternity until we too ripen to enjoy it. Still, there is a pain, wholly untinctured with pleasure, in recalling certain of its shocks, re-living them, returning upon them with memory. The most glorious of our days, however, strike us with as troubled a reminiscence, so that we ought not to complain, nor to desire other than that the past should rest, as it does, and as alone the dead beside repose,--in hope. I have brought myself to the recollection of certain passages in my youth's history simply because there is nothing more precious than the sympathy, so rare, of circumstance with passion; nothing so difficult to describe, yet that we so long to win. It is seldom that what happens as chance we would have left unchanged, could we have passed sentence of our will upon it; but still more unwonted is it to feel, after a lapse of eventful times, that what _has_ happened was not only the best, but the only thing to happen, all things considered that have intervened. This I feel now about the saddest lesson I learned in my exuberant boyhood,--a lesson I have never forgotten, and can never desire to discharge from my life's remembrance. Everything prospered with us after the arrangement our friend and lord had made for Maria. I can only say of my impressions that they were of the utmost perfectibility of human wishes in their accomplishment, for she had indeed nothing left to wish for. I would fain delineate the singular and touching gratitude she evinced towards Seraphael, but it did not distribute itself in words; I believe she was altogether so much affected by his goodness that she dared not dwell upon it. I saw her constantly between his return and the approaching examinations; but our intercourse was still and silent. I watched her glide from room to room at Cecilia, or found her dark hair sweeping the score at home so calmly--she herself calmer than the calmest,--calm as Anastase himself. Indeed, to him she appeared to have transferred the whole impetuousness of her nature; he was changed also, his kindness to myself warmer than it ever had been; but from his brow oppressed, his air of agitation, I deemed him verily most anxious for the result. Maria had not more than a month to work upon the rest of the symphony and to complete it, as Seraphael had resolutely resolved that it should be rehearsed before our summer separation. Maria I believe would not have listened to such an arrangement from any other lips; and Florimond's dissatisfaction at a premature publicity was such that the Chevalier--autocratic even in granting a favor, which he must ever grant in his own way--had permitted the following order to be observed in anticipation.