“You ask how I manage to crowd Shakespeare’s five acts into one. I have taken only one subject from the play--the part in which Beatrice and Benedict, who detest each other, are mutually persuaded of each other’s love, whereby they are inspired with true passion. The idea is really comic.” * * * * * “_14th February 1861._--It worries me to hear of your state of mind. “I cannot imagine what dreams have made your present life so impossible. All I can say is that I was, at your age, far from being as well off as you are. “Nay, more; I never dared to hope that, so soon after getting your captain’s certificate, you would find a berth. “It is natural that you should wish to get on, but sometimes the chances of one year bring more change into a man’s life than ten years of strenuous endeavour. “How can I teach you patience? Your mania for marriage would make me laugh were I not saddened by seeing you striving after the heaviest of all fetters and after the sordid vexations of domestic life--the most hopeless and exasperating of all lives. You are twenty-six, and have eighteen hundred francs, with a prospect of rapid promotion. When I married your mother I was thirty, and had but three hundred francs in the world--lent me by my friend Gounet--and the balance of my Prix de Rome scholarship. “Then there were your mother’s debts--nearly fourteen thousand francs--which I paid off gradually, and the necessity of sending money to her mother in England, besides which I had quarrelled with my family, who cast me off, and was trying hard to make my first small mark in the musical world. “Compare my hardships with your present discontent! Even now, do you think it is very lively for me to be bound to this infernal galley-oar of journalism? “I am so ill I can hardly hold my pen, yet I am forced to write for my miserable hundred francs, the while my brain teems with work and plans and designs that fall dead--thanks to my slavery. “You are well and strong, while I writhe in ceaseless, incurable pain. Marie[25] thanks you for your kind messages. She, too, is ill. Dear boy! you have at least a father, friend, devoted brother, who loves you more than you seem to think, but who wishes that your character were firmer, your mind more decided. * * * * * “_21st February 1861._--Wagner is turning our singers into goats. It seems impossible to disentangle this _Tannhäuser_. I hear that the last general rehearsal was awful, and only finished at one in the morning. I suppose they will get through somehow. “Liszt is coming to prop up the charivari.