Eight years later he notes the first symptom of what was doubtless a growing infirmity. About a fortnight after his father's death he spent the evening in Dublin with some old friends, and sang a good deal for them.--"In singing 'There's a song of the Olden Time,' the feeling which I had so long suppressed" (for he had been active in endeavouring to keep up his mother's spirits) "broke out; I was obliged to leave the room, and continued sobbing hysterically on the stairs for several minutes." From this onward, the same proclivity manifested itself at intervals with growing vehemence. After any stress of emotion, the plangent quality of his own voice in singing tended to produce one of these outbursts, when it seemed as if his chest must burst under the strain. Yet he always fought against the weakness, and notes more than once how, after a sudden collapse of this kind, he made an effort, and returned to the piano, laughing at himself, while he rattled off gay songs. But the wrench which of all others seems to have done most to shatter him, came not long after this first breakdown (which dates from the end of 1826, his forty-seventh year); and it found a man strangely altered from what he had been ten or twelve years earlier. His eldest girl's death had left the second, Anastasia, to inherit a double share of affection, and her chronic delicacy kept her parents continually anxious. At last the beginning of the end came early in 1829, just at the moment when Moore was receiving news that Catholic emancipation was a certainty. "Could I ever have thought," he writes, "that such an event would, under any circumstances, find me indifferent to it? Yet such is almost the case at present." Even when he wrote this, he did not realise the worst; the truth was not forced on him till his wife had been "wasting away on the knowledge of it" for three weeks. We have his detailed account of the last fortnight, during which the parents could do nothing but make their child's last days as happy as they could--spending the evenings together with the girl, playing little games, reading aloud and so forth. His description of the end must be quoted:--