seconded so cordially the wishes of the composer by singing out of tune, even beyond the composer’s own efforts, that it was impossible to stay longer than the first fall of the curtain. South Germans would say they only sang the parts as they were written, and would refer to a caricature in which a leader of an orchestra at a rehearsal of one of Wagner’s operas was represented stopping suddenly and asking for the partition.
“Give me your part,” he says to one of the instrumentalists. “There is some mistake. It is in tune!”
Wagner went to Paris last winter to try the taste of the Parisian public, which considers itself the most infallible judge of musical pretensions. To be sure, when the young Mozart went to Paris he did not meet with undivided approval. Wagner may lay this flattering unction to his soul to compensate for his failure. But how will he reconcile himself to the treatment he received from Berlioz, on whose help he had relied, whom he had considered his alter ego, the Wagner of Paris, and from whom he received a most unflattering dressing in the feuilleton of the “Débats.” That Scudo, the musical critic of the “Révue des Deux Mondes,” an unflinching lover of old music, and the champion of Mozart, should attack an innovator, was to be expected; but Berlioz, who had composed unintelligibility to its most unintelligible development,—Berlioz, who had written heroic symphonies and obscured Beethoven,—if he deserted the cause of Wagner, who would support it? This was everybody’s expectation, and to everybody’s surprise Berlioz took the opportunity to disclaim all connection with Wagner and Wagnerism. And to a lady who said to him, “But you, M. Berlioz, you ought to like Wagner’s music,” he replied in his feuilleton, “Oui, madame, comme j’aime à boire du vitriol, comme j’aime à manger de l’arsenic.”
THE MEETING.
The old coach-road thro’ a common of furze
With knolls of pines, ran white:
Berries of autumn, with thistles, and burrs,
And spider-threads, droopt in the light.
The light in a thin blue veil peer’d sick;
The sheep grazed close and still;
The smoke of a farm by a yellow rick
Curl’d lazily under a hill.
No fly shook the round of the silver net;
No insect the swift bird chased;
Only two travellers moved and met
Across that hazy waste.
One was a girl with a babe that throve,
Her ruin and her bliss;
One was a youth with a lawless love,
Who claspt it the more for this.
The girl for her babe made prayerful speech;
The youth for his love did pray;
Each cast a wistful look on each,
And either went their way.
