Sealed Lips — page 159: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SHALED LIPS. 151 “Constantin” was written, and that he made the great mistake of his life the day he left off writing operettas, to which he owed his success, and took up grand opera. The envious trampled on their enemy’s body, peddling the blackest of lies. According to the imagination of these story-tellers he was first a child found ina farmer’s cabin, then the cleverly disguised proof of some great lady’s weakness. As to the music of “Constantin,” he did not write it, but acomrade who died in his arms when at the college in Rome, and from whom he had stolen it, without the slightest scruples. Among his devoted partisans, for he was not without them, the greater part, his physician in par- ticular, thought his future more gravely affected physically than morally, and spoke of this idea of marriage, shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders. Thank Heaven, Godefroid heard only a small part of these unpleasant rumors, but he partly suspected the rest, and the joy mixed with agony that he found in his new happiness was seasoned with in- numerable mortifications. The saying, “That the hours that precede an unexpected happiness are more delicious than the happiness itself,” was not true in hiscase. Onthe morning of the first of May the three persons most concerned in our story were not sleeping. The only one who was com- pletely and peaceably happy was Madame Sauval. Gomichboo KS (E(@)