DUeHRING. You see, there are performed ten new operas every year which become impossible after the second night, and every ten years a good one which lives. Now this opera of mine _is_ a good one, it is well adapted for the stage, it is sure to be a financial success. If you let me, I'll show you letters from Liszt, from Wagner, from Rubinstein, in which these men look up to me as to a superior being. And why has it remained unperformed to the present day? Because I don't stand in the public market-place. I tell you, it's like what will happen to a young girl who for three years has been the reigning beauty at all dancing parties, but has forgotten to become engaged. One has to give way to another generation. Besides you know our court theatres. They are fortresses, I can assure you, compared with which the armor-plate of Metz and Rastadt is the merest tin. They would rather dig out ten corpses than admit a single living composer. And it's in getting over these ramparts that I ask you to lend me a hand. You are inside at thirty, I am outside at seventy. It would cost you just a word to let me in, while I am vainly battering my head against stone and steel. That's why I have come to you (_very passionately_) and if you are not absolutely inhuman, if your success has not killed off in you the very last trace of sympathy with striving fellow-artists, you cannot refuse my request. GERARDO. I will let you know a week from now. I will play your opera through. Let me take it along.