How fiercely then did Haydn’s music storm!
And soon he would have left our home in haste:
My father spoke to stay him. Long they spoke;
And sometimes wrathful were the words they used.
But then, at last, my father told him all,—
Why I had vow’d, that I his life might save,
And he broke down before it.
Never more
May God permit me to behold again
A broken man! Alas, how pleaded he!
And pray’d me for my pardon o’er and o’er,
Till wellnigh I believed he heard me not;
And in the end sigh’d out: “It might be so,
My plan be wisest; nay, he would not yield
His manlier judgment, to fulfil my wish,
To make me happy, or my sire or me:—
Doretta surely was a housewife wise:
It seem’d the older custom, thus to wed:
He young had been, had whims.—God bless us all.”