like a torch, spreads like a bouquet of flames,
which glows and glows from fervor to fervor, ever more incandescent.

At last the god of day appears! His blazing front is adorned with
luminous locks of long floating hair. Slowly he seems to rise--but
scarcely has he fully unveiled himself, than he starts forward,
disengages himself from all around him, and, leaving the earth far below
him, takes instantaneous possession of the vaulted heavens....

The memory of the days passed in the lovely isle of Majorca, like the
remembrance of an entrancing ecstasy, which fate grants but once in life
even to the most favored of her children, remained always dear to the
heart of Chopin. "He [Footnote: Lucrezia Fioriani] was no longer upon
this earth, he was in an empyrean of golden clouds and perfumes, his
imagination, so full of exquisite beauty, seemed engaged in a monologue
with God himself; and if upon the radiant prism in whose contemplation
he forgot all else, the magic-lantern of the outer world would even cast
its disturbing shadow, he felt deeply pained, as if in the midst of
a sublime concert, a shrieking old woman should blend her shrill yet
broken tones, her vulgar musical motivo, with the divine thoughts of
the great masters." He always spoke of this period with deep emotion,
profound gratitude, as if its happiness had been sufficient for a
life-time, without hoping that it would ever be possible again to find a
felicity in which the fight of time was only marked by the tenderness
of woman's love, and the brilliant flashes of true genius. Thus did the
clock of Linnaeus mark the course of time, indicating the hours by
the successive waking and sleeping of the flowers, marking each by
a different perfume, and a display of ever varying beauties, as each
variegated calyx opened in ever changing yet ever lovely form!

The beauties of the countries through which the Poet and Musician
travelled together, struck with more distinctness the imagination of
the former. The loveliness of nature impressed Chopin in a manner less
definite, though not less strong. His soul was touched, and immediately
harmonized with the external enchantment, yet his intellect did not
feel the necessity of analyzing or classifying it. His heart vibrated in
unison with the exquisite scenery around him, although he was not able
at the moment to assign the precise source of his blissful tranquillity.
Like a true musician, he was satisfied to seize the sen