with the life he knew,
grew almost intolerable, and only a spark was needed to set his resolve
ablaze.

It was one evening when the summer had already dragged itself to a
close, that Maurice walked through a drizzling rain to the neighbouring
cathedral town, to attend a performance of ELIJAH. It was the first
important musical experience of his life, and, carried away by the
volumes of sound, he repressed his agitation so ill, that it became
apparent to his neighbour, a small, wizened, old man, who was leaning
forward, his hands hanging between his knees and his eyes fixed on the
floor, alternately shaking and nodding his head. In the interval
between the parts, they exchanged a few words, halting, excited on
Maurice's part, interrogative on his companion's; when the performance
was over, they walked a part of the way together, and found so much to
say, that often, after this, when his week's work was behind him,
Maurice would cover the intervening miles for the pleasure of a few
hours' conversation with this new friend. In a small, dark room, the
air of which was saturated with tobacco-smoke, he learned, by degrees,
the story of the old musician's life: how, some thirty years
previously, he had drifted into the midst of this provincial
population, where he found it easy to earn enough for his needs, and
where his position was below that of a dancing-master; but how, long
ago, in his youth--that youth of which he spoke with a far-away tone in
his voice, and at which he seemed to be looking out as at a fading
shore--it had been his intention to perfect himself as a pianist. Life
had been against him; when, the resolve was strongest, poverty and
ill-heath kept him down, and since then, with the years that passed, he
had come to see that his place would only have been among the multitude
of little talents, whose destiny it is to imitate and vulgarise the
strivings of genius, to swell the over-huge mass of mediocrity. And so,
he had chosen that his life should be a failure--a failure, that is, in
the eyes of the world; for himself, he judged otherwise. The truth that
could be extracted from words was such a fluctuating, relative truth.
Failure! success!--what WAS success, but a clinging fast, unabashed by
smile or neglect, to that better part in art, in one's self, that
cannot be taken away?--never for a thought's space being untrue to the
ideal each one of us bears in his breast; never yielding jot or tittle
to the world'