All this is, of course, very unnatural. It would be so much more natural that the "Duke of Mantua" should first make a long speech to "Maddalena;" that "Maddalena" should then answer him; that afterwards both should remain silent while "Gilda," of whose presence outside the tavern they are unaware, sobs forth her lamentations at the perfidy of her betrayer; and that finally the "Duke," "Maddalena," and "Gilda," by some inexplicable agreement, should not say a word while "Rigoletto" is congratulating himself on the prospect of being speedily revenged on the libertine who has robbed him of his daughter. In the old drama, perfect sympathy between two lovers can scarcely be expressed (or rather symbolized) so vividly as through the "_ensemble_" of the duet, where the two voices are joined so as to form but one harmony. We are sometimes inclined to think that even the balcony duet between "Romeo" and "Juliet" ought to be in music; and certainly no living dramatist could render the duet in music between "Valentine and Raoul" adequately into either prose or verse. Talk of music destroying the drama,--why it is from love of the drama that so many persons go to the opera every night. [Sidenote: EXPLODED PLEASANTRIES.] But is it not absurd to hear a man say, "Good morning," "How do you do?" in music? Most decidedly; and therefore ordinary, common-place, and trivial remarks should be excluded from operas, as from poetical dramas and from poetry of all kinds except comic and burlesque verse. It was not reserved for the unmusical critics of the present day to discover that it would be grotesque to utter such a phrase as "Give me my boots," in recitative, and that such a line as "Waiter, a cutlet nicely browned," could not be advantageously set to music. All this sort of humour was exhausted long ago by Hauteroche, in his _Crispin Musicien_, which was brought out in Paris three years after the establishment of the Académie Royale de Musique, and revived in the time of Rameau (1735) by Palaprat, in his _Concert Ridicule_ and _Ballet Extravagant_ (1689-90), of which the author afterwards said that they were "the source of all the badinage that had since been applauded in more than twenty comedies; that is to say, the interminable pleasantries on the subject of the Opera;" and by St. Evrémond, in his comedy entitled _Les Opéras_, which he wrote during his residence in London.