‘Haydn has all the gracefulness of a rhetorician--his is a gentle music, quivering like the voice of a great-grandmother in powdered hair. Mozart, he’s the precursory genius--the first who endowed an orchestra with an individual voice; and those two will live mostly because they created Beethoven. Ah, Beethoven! power and strength amidst serene suffering, Michael Angelo at the tomb of the Medici! A heroic logician, a kneader of human brains; for the symphony, with choral accompaniments, was the starting-point of all the great ones of to-day!’ The waiter, tired of waiting, began to turn off the gas, wearily dragging his feet along as he did so. Mournfulness pervaded the deserted room, dirty with saliva and cigar ends, and reeking of spilt drink; while from the hushed boulevard the only sound that came was the distant blubbering of some drunkard. Gagnière, still in the clouds, however, continued to ride his hobby-horse. ‘Weber passes by us amid a romantic landscape, conducting the ballads of the dead amidst weeping willows and oaks with twisted branches. Schumann follows him, beneath the pale moonlight, along the shores of silvery lakes. And behold, here comes Rossini, incarnation of the musical gift, so gay, so natural, without the least concern for expression, caring nothing for the public, and who isn’t my man by a long way--ah! certainly not--but then, all the same, he astonishes one by his wealth of production, and the huge effects he derives from an accumulation of voices and an ever-swelling repetition of the same strain. These three led to Meyerbeer, a cunning fellow who profited by everything, introducing symphony into opera after Weber, and giving dramatic expression to the unconscious formulas of Rossini. Oh! the superb bursts of sound, the feudal pomp, the martial mysticism, the quivering of fantastic legends, the cry of passion ringing out through history! And such finds!--each instrument endowed with a personality, the dramatic _recitatives_ accompanied symphoniously by the orchestra--the typical musical phrase on which an entire work is built! Ah! he was a great fellow--a very great fellow indeed!’ ‘I am going to shut up, sir,’ said the waiter, drawing near. And, seeing that Gagnière did not as much as look round, he went to awaken the petty retired tradesman, who was still dozing in front of his saucer. ‘I am going to shut up, sir.’ The belated customer rose up, shivering, fumbled in the dark corner where he was seated for his walking-stick, and when the waiter had picked it up for him from under the seats he went away. And Gagnière rambled on: