Herr Heine, like all Germans, is a trifle tiring and long-winded; of course he is cultivated and accomplished, and they say he has written most interesting books, but I cannot read a word of German. He talks French well, but he is heavy and continues a subject long after one has sufficiently discussed it. This is so different from the French, who skate over every topic so lightly and never dwell too long on any subject, and understand what you want to say before you have half said it. All the same, you see at once that he is an interesting man, and every now and then he says something truly remarkable. He wears big spectacles, and his hair, which is very fair, is cut straight and is rather long and bunches over his low collar. He astonished everybody at supper by saying that the perpetual praise of Goethe and Byron tired him. “I cannot understand you Parisians,” he said, “when you talk about poetry. You go out of the way to search out and idolize all sorts of foreign poets when you have got a real native poet who is worth all these foreigners put together.” Somebody said “Victor Hugo.” “Nothing of the sort,” he answered, “Victor Hugo is like a wheel which turns round and round in space without any intellectual cog-wheel. It is all words, words, words. But he has no thought and no real feeling. He is screaming at the top of his voice about nothing.” “Then who is our great poet?” asked Madame Jaubert. “Why, M. de Musset, of course,” said Herr Heine. We all laughed, and Madame Jaubert said it was a very pretty compliment. M. de Musset himself appreciated the joke quite as much as we did. But they say he really does write very well, rather in the same manner as Lord Francis Egerton. M. de Musset remained sulky all through supper. Once or twice he said things across the table to Princess Belgiojoso, and she answered him as if she were an empty portfolio from which her real self was absent. We talked about music; Herr Heine said we were all barbarians as far as music was concerned; that it was true the Italians had a notion of what tune meant, but that the French, and especially the Parisians, did not know the difference between music and pastry. Somebody asked him how he could say such things after what we had heard that evening, and appealed to Bellini as to whether his music had ever been better interpreted. “Ah, Bellini is a genius,” said Herr Heine, and he turned to him and added: “You are a great genius, Bellini, but you will have to expiate your genius by an early death. You are condemned to die. All great geniuses die young--very young, and you will die like Raphael and Mozart.” “Don’t talk like that! for Heaven’s sake don’t say that!” said Bellini. “Please do not speak about death. Forbid him to talk like that,” he said to the Princess.