"She had engaged the best-known artists. For the solo songs she engaged a woman who had to be carried into the room in a motor chair, and was not allowed to stand up, before three architects had examined the solidity of the floor. Her range was from the deep _p_ to the high _l_. She sang baritone, and soprano at the same time, and what her tone wanted in width her _taille_ amply replaced. She sang nothing but Wagner, whose music, it would appear, is written for two-ton women only. No smaller tonnage need apply. While she sang, three dozen violins executed the tremolos of five hundred whimpering children, while forty counter-basses gave, every three minutes, a terrible grunt in _x_ minor. There were also fifteen fifes, and twenty-one different kinds of brass instruments, some of which had necks much longer than that of the oldest giraffe. The music was decidedly sensual and nerve-irritating. It was full of chords, both accords and discords, and what little melody there was in it was kneaded out into a tapeworm of prodigious length and such hydralike vitality, that no matter how frequently the strings throttled off its head, it yet constantly recurred bulging out a new head. "The men present liked the singer; the women adored the music. It gave them all sorts of shivers, and although they did not understand it at all, they yet felt that here was a new shiver. Or as one of them, the bright Mrs Blazing, remarked: '_Quel artiste que ce M. Wagner!_ He has translated into music the grating noise of a comb on silk, the creaking of a rusty key in an old lock, and the strident rasp of a skidding sleigh or motor on hard-frozen snow.' "The next artist was a Belgian violinist. For reasons that you alone, O Zeus, could tell us, the Belgians are credited with a special gift for pulling strings in general, and those of the violin in particular. Being a nation midway between the Germans and the French, they are believed to possess much of German musical talent and something of French elegance. This would easily make them good 'cello players. But not satisfied with the 'cello, in which they have excelled more than one nation, they must needs be great violinists too. However, the violin, while not at all the king of instruments, is yet the most vindictive and jealous amongst them. It is like the Lorelei: it allures hundreds, only to dash their bones against the rock of Failure. It wants the delicacy of a woman and the strength of a man. It requires the soul of spring and the heart of summer to play it well.