Baroness Alphonse Rothschild sent me her box for the opera, and I asked the Metternichs and Herr Wagner, the composer, who was dining at the Embassy, to go with me, and they accepted. The Rothschilds' box is one of the largest in the opera-house. The Princess Metternich created a sensation when we entered--she always does--but Herr Wagner passed unnoticed. He sat behind and pretended to go to sleep. He thought everything most mediocre. The opera was "Faust," which I thought was beautifully put on the stage, with Madame Miolan Carvalho as Marguerite and Faure as Mephistopheles. They both sang and acted to perfection; but Wagner pooh-poohed at them and everything else. _Abscheulich_ and _grässlich_ alternated in his condemning sentences. Nothing pleased him. He fidgeted about and was very cross during the fifth act, where the ballet is danced. "Why did Gounod insert that idiotic ballet? It is _banal_ and _de trop_." (France is the only place where this fifth act is performed.) "You must blame Goethe for that," retorted the Princess Metternich. "Why did he make Faust go to the Champs Élysées if he did not want him to see any dancing?" "Why, indeed?" grumbled Wagner. "Goethe had much better have let Marguerite die on her straw and not of send her up in clouds of glory like the Madonna to heaven, and with ballet music." "Well," said the Princess, "I don't see any difference between a ballet in heaven and a ballet in Venusberg." The Emperor has made a fine _coup de popularité_. He refused to have the new boulevard named after his mother, and cleverly proposed it to be called Richard Lenoir, the man who led his fellow-workmen in the Revolution. We were invited to one of Rossini's Saturday evenings. There was a queer mixture of people: some diplomats, and some well-known members of society, but I fancy that the guests were mostly artists; at least they looked so. The most celebrated ones were pointed out to me. There were Saint-Saëns, Prince Poniatowski, Gounod, and others. I wondered that Richard Wagner was not there; but I suppose that there is little sympathy between these two geniuses.