Then he loses himself
in his creations and soars into regions where his troubles cannot
follow. This joyousness is the portion of many extraordinary people.
Haydn and Mozart had it. "He has among other qualities that of great
joyousness," says Carlyle, in speaking of Richter. "Goethe has it to
some extent and Schiller too. It is a deep laughter, a wild laughter,
and connected with it, there is the deepest seriousness."
CHAPTER X
AT THE ZENITH OF HIS FAME
Fate bestoweth no gift which it taketh not back. Ask not aught of
sordid humanity; the trifle it bestoweth is a nothing.
--HAFIZ.
Napoleon's star, hitherto so uniformly in the ascendant, was now on the
wane. His victories at the battles of Luetzen and Bautzen in May of 1813,
could not atone for the disaster of Moscow in the previous year. The
crushing defeat encountered by the French at the battle of Vittoria by
the English under Wellington, and the battle of Leipzig in October of
the same year showed the world that here was only a man after all; a man
subject to the usual limitations and mutations of mankind.
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