“Yes, the father is long, long away; ah, and how long is the time to him! how every day is counted!  Patience! patience!  Day crawls after day.”

“God bless you, my deeply beloved ones!” he wrote once more.  “I count days, hours, minutes, until we meet again.  We have often been parted before, and loved each other dearly, God knows.  But this terrible yearning I have never known before.”

At last he grew so desperately sad that he broke his rule and wrote his wife full details of his suffering; he had given up hope of ever seeing his home again.

At this time, a singer wished to bring out a new song of his, and furnished him with words.  His once alert fancy groped long for a melody, but, as his son writes: 

“At last on the morning of the 18th of May, the great artist’s flitting genius came back to him, and for the last time gave him a farewell kiss upon that noble forehead now bedewed with the cold sweat of death—­for the last time!  But the trembling hands were unable to write down more than the notes for the voice.”

Fate had still reserved a bitter blow for him.  He had fastened his hopes upon a farewell concert, and grew morbid upon the importance of it to his future.

“This day week is my concert,” he wrote on the 19th of May.  “How my poor heart beats when I think of it!  What will be the result?  The last chances left me are this concert and my benefit.  When I think on all they cost me, should they not turn out so as to meet my modest expectations, it were hard indeed.  But I must not let my courage fail me.  I will rely on Him, who has already been so infinitely merciful to us.  You will think, my beloved life, that I lay far too much stress on this.  But remember that my hope of fortune for us was the only purpose of this weary journey.  Can you not comprehend, then, why I now hold for so important that which has always played but a subordinate part in my life?  Pray, dearest heart, pray that poor old papa’s wishes, which are all for your dear sakes, may yet be fulfilled.”

To complete the mockery of his last days, fashion declined to interest itself in his concert, and, to keep even the common public away, the skies poured down floods of rain.  The house was almost empty.  The enthusiasm of the few good hearts there were Job’s consolation.  At the end of the concert he was led to his room, where he sank down, a complete wreck in mind and hope, muttering: 

“What do you say to that?  That, that is ’Weber in London’!”

His hand trembled so that he could hardly write any more to his wife; still, in a quivering scrawl, he bade her address her answer not to London, but to a city on the way home, for he is starting homeward—­homeward at last!  But he is not coming home through Paris, as he had planned.  He writes: 

“What should I do there?  I cannot walk—­I cannot speak.  I will have nothing more to do with business for years to come.  So it is far better I should take the straight way home by Calais, through Brussels, Cologne, Coblenz, and thus by the Rhine to Frankfort.  What a charming journey!  I must travel very slowly, however, and probably rest for half a day now and then.  I shall gain a good fortnight thus; and by the end of June I hope to be in your arms.