Speaking of "gentle accent," I had, on one occasion, the full beauty of the Teutonic language borne in upon me in a peculiarly striking form. It was in _Robert der Teufel_, that I heard in Vienna. The instance that struck me was in the great scene during which he practises magic in the cave and makes the dead to rise so that they can dance a _ballet_ later on. Alice is wandering around, and the devil is in a great state of mind lest she has seen or overheard something of his magic. "_Was hast du gesehen?_" says he. "_Nichts!_" she replies. "_Nichts?_" he repeats. "_Nichts_," insists she. That "_Nichts!_" was repeated over and over until the whole theatre echoed and resounded with "nichts-ts-ts-ts!" like spitting cats. There never was anything less musical. "Heavens, Alfred," said I to Fischoff, who was with me at the time, "can't they change it to '_Nein?_'" But he regarded me in a shocked manner at the very idea of so sacrilegiously altering the text! German scores are full of loud ringing passages, built on guttural, hissing, spitting consonants. But, then, we must remember that librettists the world over are apparently men of an inferior quality of intellect who know little about music or singing. I cannot help feeling that by nature and cultivation the German writers of the texts for opera suffer from an additional handicap of traditional density. Even one of the greatest of all operas, _Faust_, suffers from being built upon a German theme. At least, I should perhaps say, it suffers in sparkle, vivacity, dramatic glitter. In the deeper, poetic meanings it remains impervious alike to time, place, and individual view-point. I never fully appreciated the _rôle_ of Marguerite until I met the German people at close range. Then I learned by personal observation why she was so dull, and limited, and unimaginative. Such traits are, as I suddenly realised, not only individual; they are racial. Any middle-class girl of sixteen might of course have been deceived by Faust with the aid of Mephisto, but that Gretchen was German made the whole thing a hundred times simpler. CHAPTER XXXI PETERSBURG When I received my engagement to sing at the Opera in Petersburg I was much pleased. The opera seasons in Russia had for years been notably fine. Since then they have, I understand, gone off, and fewer and fewer stars of the first magnitude go there to sing. In 1880, however, it was a criterion of artistic excellence and position to have sung in the Petersburg Opera. My mother and I, a manager to represent me, my coloured maid Eliza, and some seventeen or eighteen trunks set out from Vienna; and we looked forward with pleasurable anticipation to our winter in the mysterious White Kingdom, not knowing then that it was to be one of the dreariest in our lives.